Women’s participation in watershed management

Prof. (Dr) R.D. Gupta
Watershed is a dynamic and functional hydrological unit. It obtains the incoming precipitation and disposes it off. The characteristics of watershed govern the conductance of water through it and this constitutes the base and essence of the soil and water conservation for assigning optimum management practices in the wateshed area. In watershed, a holistic approach of area development including soil and water conservation, afforestation, improved crop production, horticulture/olericulture and animal husbandry management are adopted. The main aim of watershed management is to increase the productivity of food grains, fruits, vegetables, fodder, fuel wood, fiber and milk.
As women constitute the backbone of a number of agricultural, horticultural and animal husbandry operations, and majority of agricultural labourers are women, so their participation is necessary for successful implementation of watershed management/development programme. It is attributed to following reasons.
Contribution of women in food security: The growing of food is the most important source of livelihood for the majority of the world’s people, especially women. It is because the women are considered world’s original food producers and its security. Moverover, they continue to be the central to food production systems in terms of work they resort in the food chain.
There are a number of ways to ameliorate the capacity of women to enhance their contribution both in agriculture, horticulture and olericulture. Firstly, their skills can be upgraded to lessen their physical strain, labour, time and to improve the quality of work. Secondly, women can be involved in special production activities which require tender care and continuous attention. Thirdly adequate post production activities to shun wastage and value to the produce and eventually reduce the marketing cost. In view of the above, the women’s participation in watershed management becomes a part and partial to make its more success.
Women in Food production: Women are involved in every stage of food production, growing and gathering, preparing, selling, processing and storing. Women farmers are the custodians of indigenous knowledge and techniques that protect precious natural resources perfected with centuries of observation and experimentation. There is enough evidence to show that women grow plants/crops more carefully, utilize resources more optimally and possess more knowledge of varieties of various crops than men. This is the reason why the women are called Anapurna or feeders of the world.
Further more, scientists all over the word are increasingly concerned these days about the gradual dying out of many traditional varieties of food crops and farm animals. These varieties and breed, which were highly nutritious, adapted to local conditions and resistant to local diseases, were replaced by newly introduced varieties in a number of cases. This disappearance of biodiversity has grim long term.
It is here that women’s age old knowledge and practical experience is invaluable. After all, most of the alternative and appropriate agricultural technologies we are talking about are basically the results of women’s technologies. Horticulture requires intensive and tender care which can be handled very efficiently by women. Activities like establishment of kitchen gardening, flouriculture, olericulture and fruit orchards can be handled by women groups nicely.
Livestock husbandry: Livestock husbandry is another important avocation which can be very well handled by the women. It has been observed that women can manage the dairy animals and small scale poultry better than men. A woman can very easily take care of a family and three cross bred cows. It is worthwhile to mention that in livestock farming, women are involved in various operations like feeding, breeding, green fodder production, health care management, etc. Different income generating activities such as collecting cow dung and preparing its manure, firewood, honey etc, are mostly performed by women. Decisions in livestock production like purchase of animal, fodder cultivation and breeding of animals are resorted by men, while those of milk production and its disposal lie with women. Feeding and feed mixing is done using locally available material by the women. Tribal women have more say in livestock production activities owing to their greater participation in management of livestock and generating income.
Women and water management: Across the developing world, there are women who pay a highest price for the poor availability of water. In certain far flung areas, they have to walk for a long distance to fetch potable water for their families. As a consequence, they have less time for productive work. Apart from this, their daughters when do not accompany with their mothers to the nearest water source, have to stay at home and handle domestic chores or look after their younger siblings. They, therefore, have to drop out of school and this lack of education perpetuates the already low social status of women.
There are numerous instances available in our country where an integrated decentralized approach and gender perspective has assisted communities to protect themselves from acute water shortage. Since in “Watershed Management,” there is conservation of water and soil besides to increase production in agriculture/horticulture, so involvement of women’s group in particular can spur the projects progress.
Food processing: Food processing is another area that helps in reducing wastage and adds value to the produce. Small scale food processing is one of the famous activity performed by the rural women. Main advantage of this activity is that the technology is indigenous, well familiar with local women, low investment and has a ready market in both rural and urban areas.
In a complete cycle from producer to consumer, there is wastage worth of crores of Rupees in our country. Marketing lapses, transportation hassles, exploitation at the hands of brokers and quality degradation contribute to these losses. Post harvest food losses are nearly 40 per cent or even more due to pest and diseases, processing and storage. Since under watershed programme, there is not only the production of food grain crops but also that of vegetables and fruits, so women are urgently required to involve in this project. They require to be exposed to intergraded Pest Management and food processing to prevent post harvest food losses as stated above.
Operations under women’s domain: There are certain agricultural operations, which totally belong to the women’s domain. Such operations mainly consist of weeding, picking, winnowing, grading and packing. Even some crops like coffee, tea, tobacco etc; are women labour intensive crops.
It is concluded from the foregoing facts that women play a central role in the watershed development process not only while determining the family size, but also an environment planner. They manage resources stocks particularly soils, fire wood for fuel, water for drinking, irrigating the crops and other purposes for their households. They are also the charge of domestic sanitation and waste disposal. In several parts of Sub-Sahara Africa women contribute up to 70 per cent of the production, processing and marketing of food apart from taking care of soil, water, etc.

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