Extent of participation by the farmers in the integrated watershed management programme (IWMP)

Abstract

The study was conducted in Raigad district of the Konkan region of Maharashtra state, where Integrated Watershed Management Programme was started to implement from the year 2010-11. In Raigad district, Mahad and Poladpur tahsils were selected for the study, where IWMP had completed the phases of work, so it was purposively selected for this study. From each tahsil, eight villages were selected randomly. Thus the total numbers of selected villages was sixteen. A list of farmers was obtained from the IWMP Cell of the Department of Agriculture of concerned tahsils. From 16 villages, total 160 respondents were selected for the present study. The study employed an ex-post facto research design & Personal interview technique was used for data collection in the year 2015. The study revealed that majority (71.25 percent) of the respondents had medium extent of participation in the Integrated Watershed Management Programme. In case of individual participation in Integrated Watershed Management Programme activities, overall full participation was observed in activities like awareness programme campaign, giving consent to the programme, meeting with local bodies, determining the needs, participation in group meetings, determining the different treatment for community land as well as private, determining different training programmes/Exposure tours, finalizing different livelihood activities, determining the locations for entry point activity, identification of different types of employments, deciding on different livelihood activities, strengthening of existing bunds, maintenance, restoration and development of assets in community land and selection and planting of forest tree species for community land.