Policy Impacts

A famous footwear brand has a logo that says, ‘Just Do It’ - three simple words that can give deep meaning to life. In fact, these three words mean much more than all the self-development jargon that gurus regularly dish out. At WOTR, there is a very similar approach. Do something that creates an impact in the lives of the villagers. Don’t just talk and plan on paper. Create change.

And so when we talk about watershed development and women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship and climate change and so many other issues, it’s not just talk. WOTR, over the last 15 years, has been toiling hard at the ground level to turn fragile and resource-deprived villages into ‘green’ icons of sustainability. And there are hundreds of projects to prove this. Further, what WOTR also pursues very actively is to push government agencies into re-thinking about policies so that benefits meant for the poor reach them in the measure and form they were intended to. For example:

• WOTR designed and implemented a large scale, focused and integrated Capacity Building Programme that is now accepted and adopted by other programmes in the country as a pre-condition and integral part of watershed programmes. This has led to WOTR being branded as ‘Mother NGO’ in Ahmednagar district.
• WOTR has developed and operationalised a process called the Participatory Net Planning Method (PNPM) for involving the farmer couple in the development of their farms and lands. This is now common practice (with local variations) in all major watershed programs and is increasingly seen as a tool not only for planning but also for the mobilisation of people.
• Concepts and processes developed and adopted by WOTR such as Ridge-to-Valley treatments, site specific and community determined measures, people’s ownership and civil society-public sector partnership, systems for public accountability, transparency and community contribution have been incorporated in government-run watershed programs and are now widespread across the country and part of the normal developmental discourse.
• Permission to treat degraded forest land was also obtained by WOTR for the Indo-German Watershed Development Program (IGWDP). This was a singular achievement as such lands come under the purview of the Forest Conservation Act, which is a very strict Act.
• A major structural initiative from the replication and upscaling point of view has been the setting up of the National Watershed Development Fund (NWDF) by the Government of India (GOI) at NABARD. This idea was presented by the then Executive Director of WOTR (Mr. Crispino Lobo) as well as the then Chairman of NABARD (Mr. Y.C.Nanda) to the Govt. of India. It was accepted and included in the Budget of 1999 with the intent of replicating the experience of the IGWDP across 100 of the poorest rainfed districts in the country. WOTR has supported NABARD in this role by conducting training and exposure programs for its officers, govt. officers as well as participating NGOs from different states of the country.