Leanings from farm and watershed level action research

Abstract

Watersheds are widely accepted as appropriate geophysical entities for natural resource management in the semi-arid tropics. Management of natural resources on watershed basis is a complex process involving several disciplines and institutions. It has been long debated about how to achieve convergence of various disciplines and institutions at watershed level. It is indeed challenging to bring together various agencies that have their own strengths, limitations, and styles of functioning, and form a consortium to deliver goods to the rural poor. ICRISAT took up this challenge of converging various agencies at watershed level by putting together a consortium of organizations – national and state agricultural research institutions, government departments, non-governmental organizations, farmers’ organizations, and women’s self-help groups – for effective delivery at watershed level. The basic characteristic of an effective consortium is the common vision of the project goal. The consortium partners must make conscious efforts to develop the vision of the set goal. The partners of the consortium should deliberate and discuss the objectives of the mission, know their roles and responsibilities, and develop a sense of belonging with their fellow partners. Developing a common vision of the project outcome is very critical particularly when the project is being up-scaled from ten nucleus watersheds to 40 satellite watersheds. It involved taking the institutions into confidence by holding a series of consultations. Once the organizations agreed to work in consortium mode each organization nominated team members to represent their organization on the consortium. The team building exercise started with the core team in the first round and spiraled up further to include the entire network of consortium partners in the fourth round. The project objectives were reinforced at all the levels and across all the partner-organizations of the consortium. The learnings that occurred at one level were reinforced at the next level and built into the process. The workshops adopted the principles of openness and complementarity to get the best out of the strengths of consortium partners. The proceedings of different levels of team building workshops and the outputs are documented in this report for use of research and development workers for analysis and use in similar contexts. Besides, it also details the learnings that accrued alongside.