Livelihood Zones in West Bengal
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Livelihood Zones in West Bengal A scenario for AWM interventions Prepared by: Rajarhat PRASARI, Kolkata (India) In consultation with Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome (Italy) 1 PRASARI was established in year 2007 and is a Non Govt. Organization working in rural development sector. Within a less than four years’ span, PRASARI has proved its role in improving food sufficiency in southern parts of West Bengal viz; Sundarbans. PRASARI shares part of its success with local PRIs (Panchayeti Raj Institutions) as well who are taking further initiative and a lead role in some parts of Sunderban. Further in the line, PRASARI has expanded in the northern parts of WB as well viz; Jalpaiguri district and the theme over here, is to introduce and promote SRI (System of Rice Intensification). PRASARI believes that small and marginal farmers over here would be benefitted most with this new intervention. Today PRASARI is the leading organization in the state of West Bengal in promoting SRI. PRASARI receives its support from various national funding agencies such as NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) and SDTT (Sir Dorabji Tata Trust) and recently started consulting FAO of UN on AWM (Agriculture Water Management) Potential in India. This document has been prepared by PRASARI in consultation with FAO of UN, Rome, Italy. This document explains mainly about the Livelihood Zones identified during the workshop held during November 2010 in Kolkata (India). The data used in this document were collected from various government agencies as soft copy and though various online resources such as government websites. Mailing address: PRASARI 17 B, Bapujinagar, Jadavpur, Kolkata – 92 India [email protected] +91-33-24297935 +91-9836341858 May 2011 2 1 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 3 INTRODUCTORY NOTE ater is a precious natural resource and in Indian scenario, availability of water is getting scarce in several states; reason is not the unavailability and rather is not being able to harvest the W potential. E.g. the case of West Bengal - fig 1 (1 and 5) explains the situation; there is a huge difference between ground water potential (yield Litres/sec) and ground water quality where ground water is low. West Bengal where more than 72% of population resides in villages and is predominantly agriculture dependent; rural livelihoods are vulnerable to both floods and droughts - water has to be planned, developed, conserved and managed as such, keeping in view the socio-economic aspects and needs of the State (MInistry of water resources 2002). It is also one among most important aspects to be considered during development planning at ground level. In the light of technology where a major portion of agriculture can be fed with deep tube wells, horizons, even with shallow water pumps, can put drought prone areas vulnerable to mass famine (Fig 1; 4). Though the proportion of utilization would vary from state to state but various researches show that there has been a sharp decline in the ground water table over the years (Fig 1; 8). Availability of technology and proper infrastructures might help conserving water and make it able to get utilized for dry seasons but lack of awareness among communities towards water related issues can put efforts at risk. According to a NGO viz; Development Alternatives Group, It is recognized that water problems cannot be solved only by quick technical solutions; solutions to water problems require the consideration of various cultural, educational, and scientific aspects (DevelopmentAlternativesGroup 2001). In India, State Governments mostly run various schemes such as canal irrigation, RLI (River Lift Irrigation) etc. through local administration in the area and try to strengthen the situation of irrigation facilities for the local farmers. The arrangement in most situations is based on users’ cooperatives/societies (Phadhke 2002) and it should ideally be like this only. Somehow the trend shifts towards the utilization of ground water resources; reasons might be lack of proper maintenance of canals/RLIs or so (IWMI 2010). Furthermore, the use of shallow water tube wells and other low power irrigation devices allow users have independent rights to use ground water for farming purposes. In this light, if policies of devolving management of resources assume that (only) users will organize and take on the necessary management for community based irrigation facilities grow major possibility of the system getting dysfunctional within a short span of time only (Meinzen-Dick, Raju et al. 2002). Coupling the above information with monsoon rainfall; largest source for water for the agriculture – on all India time scale has been without any trend and mainly random in nature over a long period of time. But on the spatial scale, existence of trends was noticed such as Sub-Himalayan West Bengal & Sikkim and Bihar Plains (decreasing) and Punjab, Konkan & Goa, West Madhya Pradesh and Telangana (increasing) (Guhathakurta and Rajeevan 2008). Above mentioned trends are based on the rainfall data from 1901 – 2003 so It can be easily assumed that with vagaries of climate change, this rainfall trend might show a different trend in future as well. This also implies that policies for water use should be realistic and essentially be looking at broader perspectives and should not look for only immediate solutions as this might put Indian agriculture on a temporarily boost putting long term interests at risk. 4 IMPORTANT MAPS OF INDIA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Figure 1; 1 – Hydrological map, 2 – District wise population, 3 – Drought prone areas, 4 – Flood prone areas, 5 – Ground water quality, 6 – Land use, 7 – Population growth, 8 – Decadal ground water fluctuation (1997 - 2006) 5 2 BACKGROUND 6 BACKGROUND Workshop held in November 2010 in Kolkata (WB) helped produce a map of WB (Fig 1) with different zones1 delineated on the basis of similarity of living conditions of rural communities. Participants from different govt. and non-govt. agencies contributed to explore solutions as well to overcome the problems of water for agriculture purposes in WB; relevance of each solution was also defined for each zone. Further in the line, participants also helped to find out priority zones (where AWM can be an entry point) and few criteria such as poverty level, unavailability of infrastructure etc. were considered for it to be relevant in the context of rural communities over there. Figure 2: Different zones defined by the participants during the group discussion. The zones defined in Fig 1 are based on the information provided by the expert participants and does not necessarily match with the AEZ2 map of the West Bengal. This was a two days’ workshop and experts showed excellent participation for the entire group activities during the workshop; various group discussions and presentation helped brought key features of West Bengal forward. In total there were made five groups3; facilitators provided them with necessary tools such as different relevant maps, blank attribute sheets and that were with clear objectives. So in spite of being from different back grounds, participants could come to some kind of consensus and ultimately could produce the map showing different zones relevant for AWM interventions. Figure 3: AEZ map of West Bengal. 1 See annexure for details. 2 AEZ – Agro ecological zones 3 See workshop report for more details. 7 3 METHODOLOGY 8 METHODOLOGY Three main steps are considered in order to explain profile of different zones. A. Identification of different zones B. A brief look in to different aspects of State of West Bengal C. Different livelihood zones and major characteristics D. Identification of AWM investment potential A. Identification of different zones Workshop provided participants a platform to discuss and redefine the zones necessary for AWM intervention. Initially there were little disagreements pertaining to demarcation of different zones but later due to expert facilitation, participants could come on a common consensus. B. A brief look in to different aspects of State of West Bengal It would be worthwhile to have a look at this state in a nut shell; population and land use pattern are major in this topic – would be able to give an overview of the state in general. C. Analysis of different datasets Datasets pertaining to area, population, climate, workers, agriculture etc. were obtained from Bureau of Applied Economics & Statistics (Govt. of West Bengal) and National Atlas & Thematic Mapping Organization (Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India). A lot of information has been fetched from different scientific papers and secondary resources for making better analysis of existing datasets obtained from different government departments. D. Identification of AWM investment potential Looking at the several solutions been identified by the participants, it was a must task to find out the relevance of each solution in each area, hence every solution was checked against each zone (Table 2) as per its relevance for making an investment. 9 ZONES’ DELINEATION IN WB IDENTIFICATION OF DIFFERENT ZONES The two days’ workshop held in Kolkata facilitated by PRASARI and FAO gave participants from different government and Zones’ delineation in West Bengal non-government agencies a platform to Livelihood zones’ identification discuss about possibilities to improve agriculture-water situation in West Bengal. Livelihood zones’ nomenclature During the workshop, initially many zones were identified but rearrangement