The book deals with participatory issues in three major natural resource development programmes of government of India namely: Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT), Joint Forest Management (JFM), and Integrated Watershed Development (IWD). It makes an attempt to raise issues on the urgent need for genuine participation of people and the stakeholders for sustainable natural resource management system. It tries to highlight the facts that how participatory policies are relevant to India’s overall development strategy of reducing poverty, protecting the environment, developing human resources, and fostering farm sector growth. The chapter IMT looks into the reasons for participatory irrigation systems, scope of their work, reasons for successes and failures of different irrigation societies, and their impact on local agriculture. The chapter on JFM highlights the existing pattern of people’s participation in forest resource development. The study investigates various systems developed for protection, plantation, and sharing of benefits in JFM villages. The reasons for successful working of the JFM in some villages have been examined with special focus on participation of people. The study has also tried to investigate the reasons behind low participation of people and why were they reluctant to accept JFM programme. The chapters on IWD assesses the impact of watershed programmes on natural and human resources. Under natural resource development comprise aspects of improvement in groundwater level, increase in soil depth, improvement in cropping pattern and crop yield, and increase in availability of fodder and fuel. Human resource development deals with improvement in economic conditions, health and nutrition, decrease in drudgery of women, and institutional building. The book tried to analyze, how practice and experience of participatory approach varies from the theory. Looking at the diverse socio-economic, cultural and political environment, it is a challenge to apply participatory approach for satisfactory implementation of development of natural resources. The book makes an attempt to suggest, how to bring people, government officials, and NGOs together to make participation more meaningful and useful for management and conservation of natural resources for present and future generation. The book is based on actual field experience and has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to cater needs of planners, implementing agencies (Gos, NGOs, and funding agencies), agriculture and rural development professionals.
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