Eight Lakh Rupees in the Ravines: Sequencing Watershed Treatment
A watershed of 60 hectares near Dholpur, in the Chambal ravines, is to be treated under a state scheme. Survey findings: 34 per cent of the area is already cut into gullies; the gully head nearest the village road is advancing about 2 metres a year and now stands 40 metres from the road; soil loss on untreated slopes is estimated at 18 tonnes per hectare per year, against 4 tonnes on land already bunded. Sixty-five households share the watershed; 55 per cent are marginal farmers with less than one hectare, and 40 households keep goats.
The district has 8,00,000 rupees for this watershed. Quoted costs: contour bunding 4,000 rupees per hectare; brushwood gully plugs 1,500 rupees each, about 120 needed; a masonry check dam 6,50,000 rupees, irrigating 12 hectares but silting up within 8-10 years if the upper catchment is untreated; agroforestry on private land 9,000 rupees per hectare, with no return for three years. The downstream village has complained that silt is filling its tank, and the panchayat wants the check dam built first because it is the only visible work.
1. Allocate the 8,00,000 rupees. Show your arithmetic and defend the order of spending.
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Order: upper catchment first, gullies second, check dam last.
Arithmetic for the recommended package:
- Contour bunding on the 36 ha of untreated sloping land: 36 x 4,000 = 1,44,000
- 120 brushwood gully plugs: 120 x 1,500 = 1,80,000, plus 20,000 for thorn-brush protection, since 40 households keep goats and unprotected plugs will be grazed and burnt
- Agroforestry on 10 ha of private land: 10 x 9,000 = 90,000
- Sub-total: 4,34,000, leaving 3,66,000
The check dam at 6,50,000 cannot be funded this year. Two honest options: defer it to year two and use the balance for 15 more hectares of agroforestry and a second round of plugs; or fund it by convergence (MGNREGA labour plus watershed funds) while keeping about 1,00,000 in reserve for maintenance.
Justification: the bunding and plugs together cost about 3.4 lakh and directly cut the runoff and sediment that would otherwise fill the dam. Spending 6.5 lakh first would buy 12 hectares of irrigation for 8-10 years and then lose the storage - a good asset, built in the wrong order.
2. A panchayat member argues that building the 6.5 lakh check dam first would be more efficient because it benefits 12 hectares at once. Refute this using the data given.
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Four separate grounds, all from the case data:
- Sediment, not water, sets the dam's life. With 18 t/ha/yr arriving from untreated slopes, storage is filled from above. A structure commissioned before catchment treatment becomes a silted terrace within 8-10 years - the file itself says so. Money spent on storage that silts is money spent twice.
- Cost per hectare. 6,50,000 for 12 ha is about 54,000 rupees per hectare. Bunding at 4,000 per hectare reduces erosion across 36 ha for 1,44,000 - roughly 13 times cheaper per hectare treated.
- The advancing gully head. It is 40 m from the road and moving at 2 m/yr. A dam downstream does nothing about it; head treatment and plugs do. Access to the road is a safety issue, not an irrigation one.
- Equity. 55 per cent of households are marginal, and 40 keep goats that depend on common grazing. Bunding and agroforestry raise yields on land they already farm; the dam's 12 ha command area is usually the better-held plots.
The check dam is worth building - after the catchment that feeds it has been treated. 'Visible' and 'efficient' are not the same word.
3. How would you demonstrate in three years that the money worked? Give measurable indicators and one trap to avoid.
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Take a baseline before the first spade, then measure what the money was meant to change:
- Gully head position - resurvey the distance to the road each year. Success is retreat falling from about 2 m/yr to under 0.5 m/yr.
- Sediment - mark a stone at the downstream tank inlet and measure deposited depth annually. Target a 40-50 per cent fall in trapped sediment by year three.
- Ground cover and biomass - line transects for grass cover on bunded plots; sapling survival above 70 per cent on the agroforestry plots.
- Water - observation-well levels before and after each monsoon; cropping intensity on the 36 treated hectares.
- Adoption - number of households maintaining bunds and stall-feeding their goats, since the plugs survive only if grazing is managed.
Trap to avoid: reporting 'hectares treated' or 'rupees spent' as success. Those measure the department's activity, not the watershed's condition. A second trap is comparing year-three bird's-eye figures with no year-zero baseline - without a before, no after can be proved.