On a late-monsoon morning in the Shivalik foothills, Sukhomajri village in Haryana used to watch torrential runoff tear away its thin soils and hopes alike. By 1976, the neighbouring Sukhna Lake had silted up by two-thirds, livestock grazed bare hillsides, and wells stood dry. Then the villagers and scientists from the ‘Indian Council of Agricultural Research’ and the ‘Haryana Forest Department’ tried something radical.
They fenced the slopes against open grazing, excavated staggered contour trenches, planted Shisham, Khair and Bhabbar grass, and built small earthen dams to store rainwater for gravity-fed irrigation. Within a decade vegetation returned, crop yields stabilised, and the lake stopped choking on silt—India’s first community-led integrated watershed management success story had been born.
Sukhomajri is one of more than a dozen case studies examined in the recent open-access paper “Integrated watershed management for transforming dryland livelihoods: A climate-smart strategy for sustainable dryland agriculture in India” (Watershed Ecology and the Environment, Vol. 7, 2025) by Ram A. Jat, Dinesh Jinger and colleagues. Synthesising evidence from field experiments, long-term monitoring plots and community surveys, the authors show that integrated watershed management interventions typically raise soil organic carbon by 22–32 percent, lift crop productivity by 30–45 percent and cut runoff by up to 60 percent across India’s rainfed heartlands.
How community-led interventions are transforming drylands across India
Across India’s drylands, ordinary villagers are leading extraordinary change—restoring landscapes, recharging wells, and transforming livelihoods. These are not isolated success stories, but a growing movement powered by community-driven watershed work.
Take Kothapally in Telangana, for example. Here, farmers combined simple soil and water conservation methods—like contour bunds—with better seeds, fertiliser micro-dosing, and intercropping maize with pigeon pea. In just five years, groundwater levels rose by up to 45%, and maize yields grew four times higher. With water and income secured, families began growing chickpeas and vegetables too. In Saurashtra’s Rajasamadhiyala village, similar efforts brought post-monsoon water tables up by 6.6 metres. As a result, the number of working borewells nearly doubled, putting an end to seasonal migration.
Hiware Bazar in Maharashtra tells a powerful story of recovery. Once drought-hit, the village built gabion check dams to catch nearly 29,000 cubic metres of rain runoff. Wells revived, dairy farming picked up, and incomes soared—so much so that it’s now one of India’s most prosperous rural communities.
In Odisha’s Kokriguda village, promoting kitchen gardens and crop diversification boosted rice-equivalent yields six times over and improved daily vegetable intake. In Madhya Pradesh’s ravine-scarred villages of Bindwa and Himmatpur, villagers reclaimed gullied land using small dams and tree planting. Their cropping intensity rose by up to 73%.
Even in Rajasthan’s arid regions, change is visible. In Dhoti micro-watershed, field bunding and lined ponds led to a 17–80% jump in grain production. Nearby, in Gujarat’s Vejalpura–Rampura watershed, rainfed paddy yields rose by 42% thanks to dug-out ponds for lifesaving irrigation.
Other lesser-known places offer more hope. In Netrenahalli, Karnataka, deepened village tanks preserved soil and boosted moisture. In Salaiyur, Tamil Nadu, farmers tracked how watershed work helped crops like maize, pulses, and cotton. And in Gujarat’s Mahi Ravines, bench terraces carved into steep slopes supported fruit orchards while reducing soil loss by a quarter.
Together, these examples show what’s possible when communities lead. Across diverse landscapes, Integrated Watershed Management (IWM) is not just about water—it’s helping people build natural, physical, human, social, and financial capital. In other words, it’s laying the foundation for climate-resilient rural futures.
What sets successful watershed projects apart? It’s not just the check dams, farm ponds, or bunds; it’s how everything works together. The best projects don’t stop at building structures. They combine physical works with nature-based solutions. Think of a check dam nestled between strips of grass, bamboo hedges, or rows of agroforestry trees. This smart layering slows down rainwater, helps it sink into the ground, and traps precious topsoil.
But it doesn’t end there. Farmers also adopt on-farm practices like using mulch, intercropping, drip irrigation, and better nutrient use. The result? More water stays in the soil and gets used by crops, not lost to evaporation.
And the returns aren’t just on paper. Across 182 watershed sites studied across India, people reported real changes in daily life. Women didn’t have to walk as far for water. Families found more work up to 182 person-days of employment per hectare each year. And most importantly, the benefits lasted well beyond project timelines because local people had a stake in making it work.
The data backs it up. Integrated watershed management increased soil moisture by 20–25%, improved soil carbon by up to 32%, and boosted farm yields by 30–45%. It also reduced soil erosion and water runoff significantly. Nature-based measures like lemongrass and bamboo not only prevent erosion but also capture carbon from the air. Planting trees like Melia dubia in agroforestry systems can more than double the amount of carbon stored in the land. All this shows that IWM isn’t just about managing water; it’s about managing land, livelihoods, and the climate, all at once.
The rise and shifting priorities of Sukhomajri: A look at its environmental and economic journey - A short film by Manu Moudgil, India Water Portal
Recommendations for scaling the revolution
Prioritise ridge-to-valley planning: Begin with soil-loss hotspots identified through GIS morphometric analysis and treat upper slopes first; downstream structures alone cannot solve siltation.
Institutionalise social contracts: Sukhomajri’s lesson is clear: without village-level rules on grazing, water turns and benefit sharing, physical works deteriorate. Gram Sabha–approved bylaws and women-led water user groups should therefore be non-negotiable.
Blend grey and green finance: The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana funds basic earthworks, but private social-impact capital can underwrite pressurised piped irrigation and sensor networks that raise water-use efficiency beyond 90 percent. Carbon markets for agroforestry (e.g., lemongrass–Melia dubia systems that more than double sequestration) offers an emergent revenue stream.
Adopt adaptive monitoring: Remote-sensing dashboards that track vegetation indices, reservoir spread and soil moisture in near-real time should replace one-off impact surveys, allowing course corrections after each monsoon.
Target equity outcomes: Landless households often benefit least from water harvesting yet bear common-use restrictions. Programmes should earmark part of watershed savings for revolving micro-loans, dairy collectives or horticulture on leased plots so that every resident sees tangible gains.
Prepare for climate extremes: Designs must accommodate both high-intensity rainfall and prolonged dry spells. Examples include bori-bund check dams that overtop safely, contour staggered trenches that recharge quickly, and drought-tolerant intercrops that exploit stored soil moisture.
A journey of innovation - Kothapally watershed 1999-2016 - A short film by ICRISAT
A blueprint for Sustainable Development Goals convergence
By integrating hydrology, agronomy and community governance, integrated watershed management delivers simultaneously on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 6 (clean water), SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG 13 (climate action) and SDG 15 (land degradation neutrality). The paper estimates that widespread adoption across India’s 120 million ha of degraded land could lift national food grain output by at least 15 percent while halving sediment inflow into dams and rivers.
The remaining bottlenecks—fragmented funding windows, weak post-project maintenance, and limited capacity in district line departments—are surmountable. India already spends billions on rural infrastructure; redirecting a fraction towards holistic watersheds with community ownership can yield outsized, compounding dividends.
From the terraces of Sukhomajri to the farm ponds of Hiware Bazar and the maize fields of Kothapally, integrated watershed management has proven that climate resilience need not wait for massive dams or desalination plants. It can be dug, planted and governed locally—with science as a guide and solidarity as glue. As drought cycles tighten and per capita water availability trends towards 677 m³ by 2050, scaling the approaches documented by Jat et al. is no longer an option; it is the surest path to keeping India’s drylands alive, green and thriving.