ABSTRACT

Over the last decade India has made huge efforts to address the issues of alleviating poverty, redeeming ecological balance, and creating economic avenues through watershed development programmes. Monitoring and evaluation is an integral part of project management that provides a continuous flow of decision-oriented information for planning, implementation and overall steering of such programmes. Within the project-specific monitoring and evaluation, the purpose of impact monitoring is to measure the trend or the benefits achieved on the basis of development objectives set. Since impact can be change of attitude, behaviour, skills of target groups (e.g. organizational capacity of a community), and change in their economic, socio-cultural, and socio-ecological environment, its monitoring is of prime importance to reflect the success or failure of project interventions.

188The Changar project area consists of 37 ecologically degraded micro-watersheds, which have numerous sub-catchments. The concept of eco- development1 designed by the project is being implemented on the principles of watershed development. Village-based planning became a focus for precise and verifiable indicators of the project goal, purpose and results. Participatory impact monitoring was introduced (for instance by involving the community in spring-head water flow or recharge observations by giving minor incentives). Similarly, meteorological observatories were monitored by school-going children against an annual incentive (in kind) to the school. The aim was not only to collect technical data but also to generate interest and motivation among the communities towards the project work and its subsequent monitoring. The data collected was used for re-planning, reorientation and impact measurement.