The Government of India and many people consider MGNREGA as the most prestigious flagship programme. By its size and public investment it is the largest Rural Development programme ever undertaken by Government of India.
INRM is a convergent programme aimed at synergy building among watershed concept, government employment generation and food security programme, i.e MGNREGS and decentralized planning. Being a facilitating NGO partner KALPAVRIKSH has promoted formation of VDCs/Farmers Club, Organized Capacity Building of VDC/FC members on preparation of village micro plan, facilitated Preparation of Micro Plan through VDC and community members, help approve the plans in Pallisabha & Gram Sabha and incorporated the village level works in Gram panchayat plan. Panchayat plays an important role in channelization of funds under MGNREGS. Kalpavriksh has facilitated sanction of funds for land development of BPL families, plantation in the land of BPL families and build structures for rain water conservation and irrigation. 30 Villages of Phiningia Block got administrative sanction according to their micro-plan and executed the same by VDC and gram Sabha.
The villager’s primary occupation is agriculture. But due to the topography of the lands, heavy and erratic rainfall, soil erosion is a major concern of the villagers. As putting new bonds in all the lands every year is both laborious and costly, the poor farmers could not afford this hence huge gully formation and washing off of bonds has happened. Due to which the productivity of the lands has reduced drastically. Some lands are covered with heavy layers of sand making the lands unproductive. So the farmers are forced to leave the lands fallow. Again the lands which are cultivated also suffer from water stress during long dry spells. People generally take single crop. The villagers depend on other livelihood options like NTFP collection, wage labour (which are also not stable) and just manage their lives from what they get out of all these sources. Year after year they live like this and the productivity of the lands are getting reduced. If the lands can be restored by putting bunds around them, digging small ponds within them to store water for saving the crops from the dry spells, it will boost the farmer’s confidence to invest in agriculture and take high yielding varieties. This will increase the income and food sufficiency of the farmers from their own lands. In case of low lands the ponds will help the farmers to take winter crop after harvesting paddy.
