Voluntary Citizen or Civil Society Sector

The work done by the villagers of Hiware Bazaar (Maharashtra) in transforming their village, through soil and water conservation works with Government / Panchayat funds is well known.

Tarun Bharat Sangh and Rajendar Singh started a massive campaign to spread awareness of traditional water harvesting structures in order to restore the water resources of arid Rajasthan. The aim was to popularize the use of such traditional structures across the country.

1) Overview:

The policy brief has studied the NREGA implementation on its focus on creation of productive assets, the involvement of communities in designing their local development using the NREGA and the stumbling blocks in unlocking the development potential of the Act. 

This longitudinal study was undertaken by The Foundation for Medical Research and The Foundation for Research in Community Health in the Parinche valley in Purandar block (Pune district) of interior Western Maharashtra with the aim of testing bacteriological quality of rural water supplies.

To download the spreadsheet Click here

Baitarani River Basin Project is a civil society initiative to proactively explore options for futuristic resources management in this river basin. It also attempts to blend concerns for environment with livelihood, goals of local with global development, issues of rights with market and focus of sustainability with equity.

This status report  analyses the potential opportunities to popularize the same towards effective utilization of water resource, augmenting yield/income for the livelihood upliftment of farming community. The methodology followed in this study is random sampling of farmers of SRI practitioners and non-practitioners in delta and non-delta regions.

Queries, request for information & additional clarifications can be sought via the comments section.

Download here: Rapid assessment report - Tilak Tajpur Panchayat

This article is about an experiment taken up by Sambhaav Trust with communities in Barmer (district of Rajasthan), which tells us about the development of the rural area and how to bring about self sustainability to rural society. Readers may kindly write in with their feedback in the comments or to portal@arghyam.org. Comments & emails will be forwarded to Sambhaav Trust by the India Water Portal.

Introduction

The word rural is synonymous with backwardness in the eyes of the upper urban community. A general impression that has been created is that people living in rural areas are economically poor, uneducated, do not have any sense of business, are not hardworking and hence they are much below those who live in urban areas who are monetarily rich. This perception is a biased one. We have never asked ourselves - what are the indicators that make a man backward or advanced? We have measured everything in terms of monetary advancement. In our experience there are a number of indicators one can associate with development like social, political, value system etc. It is therefore important that we check our perception before we talk of rural development. We are not debating on the urban-rural divide. However, from our experience in the rural field we believe that if we are interested in national development and not just sectoral development, then it is essential to assess the potentiality of the rural sector to move forward. Our contention is that this potentiality has not been probed into. On the contrary, a policy to downgrade this sector continues year after year. We have to broaden our perception if we truly want a just state.