The book is an attempt to document what now has come to be popularly known as the Sadguru Model of Rural Development. The Sadguru model has attracted the attention of several reputed scholars and national and International organizations engaged in rural development, including Indian Planning Commission, which has shown interest in replicating its model in other tribal areas and backward districts of India. Outside India, some features of the model are being implemented in Ethiopia under a Triangular Co-operation Project between India, Ethiopia and Norway. The goal of Sadguru NGO is to promote sustainable, equitable and eco-friendly socio-economic development of tribal in its project area. Sadguru has pioneered a new approach to tribal development, which uses water as a catalyst for development and focuses on community-based water resources development and management. Sadguru’s work over the last 30 years has led to substantial Improvement in the socio-economic conditions of thousands of poor households. Sadguru has also been instrumental in creating many NGOs and building their capacity through training, and provision of technical and financial support. All those NGOs are also engaged in tribal development through judicious use and management of local land and water resources. Consequently, Sadguru directly through its own projects and indirectly through other NGOs has brought under the fold of micro watershed development nearly 300,000 hectares of the land. Sadguru itself has developed nearly 500 water resource development projects which are being managed by empowered village communities successfully.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Harnath Jagawat
Harnath Jagawat is Founder Director of a reputed NGO, NM Sadguru Water and Development Foundation (NMSWDF), popularly known as Sadguru. He founded the NGO in 1974 with its headquarters in Dahod in the erstwhile Panchmahals district of Gujarat. Sadguru has a noble mission of promoting sustainable and equitable rural development through community-based natural resource development and management. Harnath Jagawat holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from M.S. University of Baroda, and has over 32 years of experience in the field of rural development management working with Sadguru and ten years in the area of Human Resource Development (HRD) in a large industrial organization as Head, HRD. Since 1972, when he chose to adopt rural development as his life – long mission, he has been actively and single-mindedly pursuing his mission, working in poor tribal-dominated areas of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Unlike most rural Development practitioners, he is a prolific writer and has authored more than 50 technical notes, articles and seminar papers. Through the sincerity of his purpose and good work, he has established good working relations with government officers and improved the image of not only Sadguru but also other NGOs among bureaucrats and national and international donors. He has developed a multi-disciplinary team of professionally competent persons with expertise in the field of natural resource management (NRM), which is now recognized nationally and internationally. On invitation of international development donors, he has visited many countries and has delivered lectures and presented papers in seminars/conferences.
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