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Marcella D’Souza,
Executive Director - WOTR, Ahmednagar. |
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Bringing women to the forefront and proving their capability has been Marcella's contribution to WOTR.
Tasked with the mandate of giving women a voice in the development dynamic of a watershed effort, Marcella developed the gender oriented participatory operation pedagogy (GO-POP), an approach that step by step integrates women, without adopting a confrontational attitude. This approach is used both in the IGWDP and by WOTR. It is a continuous process that leads the watershed community to an even greater acceptance of women as equal partners.
What began way back in 1995, with bringing women into SHGs for savings and internal lending and for discussing their participation in the watershed effort, has spread beyond the confines of the watershed projects.
How do you link watershed development with sustainable livelihoods ?
Watershed development conserves and regenerates the natural resources specially soil, tree cover and water. This is especially important in rain-fed, drought prone regions. Since water is essential for agriculture and for living, one can say that watershed development is very closely linked with sustainable development even if there is low rainfall. Watershed development also helps in growth of fodder for cattle, which helps in livestock and cattle rearing activities. When this is done in a participatory manner (ie with involvement of the local inhabitants), the benefits are sustainably ensured.
Why are there so many farmers' suicides in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra? Is it only due to low rainfall and crop failure? Low rainfall and crop failure happens in many parts of India but we haven't seen farmers' suicide in such huge rate like Vidarbha region?
The farmers' suicide in Vidarbha region is quite baffling. There are many theories to explain the cause of those incidents. People say its due to low rainfall and drought, some says its due to crop failure and loan default. But I think that changes in rainfall pattern and its unpredictability has added to the woes to the farmers of Vidarbha who earlier had good cash crop like cotton. If the new seed variety requires timely moisture and nutrients, and if these are not obtained, poor productivity would be the outcome. I do think that their indebtedness plays a role. Here watershed development can play a very constructive and major role not only in ensuring water conservation, but more important it brings the village together as a community to address their land problems, developmental needs and give them the moral support they need.
Why do crop loans fail in most parts of the country?
I do not know why it is different in Vidarbha from other parts of the country. I do think that there is a lack of understanding of repayment of loan and bad timing of the loan delivery. If loans are not received on time, the agricultural work gets delayed, which in turn affects the productivity and hence the loan repayment. We should start the process of loan delivery mechanism well before the preparation of land. We are training farmers on preparation for taking timely loans planning for timely repayment.
If global climate change is really responsible for erratic rainfall and drought then why not engage corporate sector in finding a solution to it since the corporate sector is greatly responsible for greenhouse gas emission?
Corporates can and should contribute to mitigating the risk of climate change. We would like to partner corporates in helping rural communities adapt to climate change problems. Our strength is in engaging communities to successfully implement watershed and other development projects. This together with the funds and market linkages that the corporates bring would be a good partnership, where the local villagers concretely benefit.
What is your approach and methodology in watershed development?
Our approach is holistic watershed development with emphasis on sustainable livelihood of the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Capacity building of CBOs are realized through our unique Participatory Operational Pedagogy (POP) which is a step-by-step interactive strategy for awareness generation, training & skill development in various aspects of watershed development. We now assist the village in doing the
'Village Envisioning' and planning using the
'Objectives Oriented Project Planning (OOPP)' tools. The village community is motivated to engage the people according to the wealth ranking. All contribute, the better off contribute more and the poor proportionately less. The methodology adopted for planning of the watershed treatments is called Participatory Net Planning (PNP). We involve community in participatory impact monitoring. We also use Quality Assessment Matrix for monitoring and peer group assessment. This whole package is named the Wasundhara
Approach - Wasundhara meaning
'green, caring, harmony promoting Mother Earth. Capacity Building is central part of all our work and we do train a lot of people on watershed development.
Do you use GIS (Geographical Information System) to monitor the watershed development?
Yes we have used GIS in some case studies. We use data and images before and after watershed development for comparative study and assessment. And we have some good data using satellite pictures, which have shown the positive impacts of watershed development.
More information about Watershed Organisation Trust: Click here
Watershed Organisation Trust's website is http://www.wotr.org
Date: 29th Oct 2007
Interview conducted by Samit Dasgupta
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