ISSN (Print): 2328-3777, ISSN (Online): 2328-3785, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3793 American International Journal of Research in Formal, Applied & Natural Sciences AIJRFANS 13-339; © 2013, AIJRFANS All Rights Reserved Page 58 AIJRFANS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research) Available online at http://www.iasir.net Dryland Management in India: Backdrop, focus and the future B.Swaminathan $ , K.C.Siva Balan* $ Department of Agricultural Economics, *Department of Agricultural Extension Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India I. INTRODUCTION Rainfed agriculture in India is characterized by low productivity, degraded natural resources and widespread poverty. Most of the millions of people living in our country depend on agriculture and natural resource management for their livelihoods, so development planners are eager to implement productive, environmentally sustainable land and water management. It is in this context, the concept of watershed development has been introduced in our country. A watershed is a geographical area that drains to a common point, which makes it an attractive unit for technical efforts to conserve soil and maximize the utilization of surface and subsurface water for crop production. It is an ecosystem or bio-geographical unit in which the interdependence is internalized. Watershed development has been conceived basically as a strategy for protecting the livelihoods of the people inhabiting the fragile eco-systems experiencing soil erosion and moisture stress. The aim has been to ensure the availability of drinking water, fuel wood and fodder and raise income and employment for farmers and landless labourers through improvement in agricultural production and productivity. Conceptually the present strategy of watershed development is prompted by the need to protect the inhabitants of the fragile ecosystem from acute distress caused by recurring droughts. In this sense, it is a strategy for survival, even though in quite a few cases the successful implementation of the watershed development programme has led to a substantial increase in income and employment of the people. Even the many cases of outstanding success pioneered by the eminent NGOs reveal that such efforts were originally driven by acute distress caused by recurring droughts. But this is nowhere comparable to the policy framework and infrastructure available to the areas in the country which have experienced green revolution to the rainfed area is essential not only for deriving full benefit from soil and moisture conservation already accomplished in some area through the watershed development programme which Anil Shah has aptly described as “Watershed plus” (Shah 2000). But more fundamentally to provide the necessary economic incentives for turning watershed development into truly spontaneous and demand driven movement of the people in dry land areas not covered so far, and to sustain watershed development already undertaken when the current official programmes comes to an end. As millions of rupees spent on watershed development programmes it is essential that the programmes become successful. Keeping these issues in view, the present paper aimed to crtically analyse the key issues faced by our country to achieve sustainability in watershed management. II. WATERSHED DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA Watershed development has emerged as a new paradigm for planning, development and management of land, water and biomass resources following a participatory bottom-up approach. Some important ongoing watershed Abstract : During the past five decades of planned development, India has achieved spectacular increase in food grain production. The use of high yielding variety seeds, fertilizers, plant protection chemicals have stepped up manifold. Development of major and minor irrigation projects had gone up. But still, the overall gains had not been equitably shared by the farming community. This is mainly because two thirds of agriculture in our country is under rainfed. According to one recent estimate, the availability of water for irrigation would emerge as a critical bottleneck. The requirements of ground water exceed its availability for irrigation nearly 30 per cent. Since, the requirement will exceed the replinishable supplies for irrigation at the existing rate of recharge of ground water, it will lead to over exploitation of ground water in several state and by 2020 as much as 71 per cent of irrigated area is likely to be from ground water. Closely related to this is the problem of degradation of land in the rainfed areas. As it is, the rate of degradation of land in such areas in the 1990s is likely to have proceeded at more than twice the rate observed in 1980s, basically on account of soil erosion from run-off. Keywords: Rainfed agriculture, watershed development, issues, India