ARTICLE Raised and sunken bed land conﬁguration for crop diversiﬁcation and crop and water productivity enhancement in rice paddies of the north eastern region of India Anup Das • Jayanta Layek • G. I. Ramkrushna • D. P. Patel • B. U. Choudhury • Samik Chowdhury • S. V. Ngachan Received: 5 April 2014 / Revised: 21 November 2014 / Accepted: 12 December 2014 Ó The International Society of Paddy and Water Environment Engineering and Springer Japan 2014 Abstract The crop and water productivity (WP) of monocropped rice in lowland of north-eastern region of India is low mainly due to cultivation of long duration variety, meagre use of fertilizer and manure, and inefﬁcient water management, which needs to be improved for sus- taining food security. Raised and sunken bed (RSB) land conﬁguration (removing the surface soil layer from an area and depositing on the adjacent area to a height of about 50 cm by cutting and ﬁlling method) was demonstrated in a participatory research mode in farmers’ ﬁeld during 2010–2012 for promoting crop diversiﬁcation, enhancing crop and WP, and improving livelihood. The results indi- cated signiﬁcant improvement in cropping intensity, pro- ductivity, employment, and income of farmers due to adoption of RSB land conﬁguration compared to farmers’ practice (FP) of rice monocropping. The average rice equivalent yield (REY) of RSB land conﬁguration was 16.20 t ha -1 compared to 3.24 t ha -1 under FP. The enhancement in employment and water-use efﬁciency were 445 and 291 % due to RSB over FP, respectively. The WP enhanced by four times due to RSB (0.69 kg m -3 water) compared to FP (0.18 kg m -3 water). In raised beds, the highest gross (USD 7,346 ha -1 ) and net returns (USD 4,524 ha -1 ) were recorded under tomato–okra–broccoli sequence, while in sunken beds, the highest gross and net returns were obtained under rice–pea (USD 2,633 and 1,590 ha -1 , respectively) and these were substan- tially higher than those observed under FP (USD 775 ha -1 and USD 383 ha -1 , respectively). Multiple cropping index, cultivated land utilization index, and diversity index also increased substantially due to RSB land conﬁguration. Keywords Crop diversiﬁcation  Land conﬁguration  Livelihood  Lowland  Participatory research  Water productivity Introduction In subtropical north eastern region (NER) of India, rainfall is very high (average annual rainfall [ 2,000 mm). Drainage in valley lowlands is a major problem in this region during rainy season. Very often crop plants suffer from poor drainage leading to crop failure (Datta and Jong 2002). The hill and mountain topography of the region further aggravates the situation. The excess water from such lands comes down as runoff and creates temporary ﬂooding in valley lands causing damage to agriculture (Calder 2000; Bruijnzeel 2004). Even in winter season, the water table in valley foot hills remains high mainly because of continuous seepage from surrounding hillocks and uplands (Chris et al. 2010). Root zone soils of most agricultural lowland farms in this region remain over-sat- urated throughout the year. Therefore, especially in low- lands after harvest of kharif rice, it is not possible to grow arable crops such as vegetable due to excess moisture. Second, rice is not possible due to early onset of winter that results in spikelet sterility (Munda et al. 2006; Das et al. 2013a). A. Das (&)  J. Layek  G. I. Ramkrushna  B. U. Choudhury  S. Chowdhury  S. V. Ngachan Natural Resource Management Division, ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region Umiam, Umiam 793103, Meghalaya, India e-mail: anup_icar@yahoo.com D. P. Patel National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Baramati, Maharashtra, India 123 Paddy Water Environ DOI 10.1007/s10333-014-0472-9