ABSTRACT
This chapter contextualizes some emerging concerns in land-use geographies and socio-economic landscape of rural India and their implication for rural development in general and watershed-based development in particular. Watershed development has evolved over the years to accommodate emerging challenges from the field. However, the fast-paced transformation of the rural landscape since the 1990s, mainly as a result of the neoliberal developmental policies and programmes, is posing new challenges to natural resources. Data points towards large-scale land-use changes, loss of cultivable and community lands, changes in inter-sectoral water allocations, stagnation and slow growth in the agricultural sector, increasing proletarianization of rural labour, decrease in the rural population engaged in agriculture as a primary occupation, accelerated urbanization and the desire of people to move out of agriculture. It is important here to critically examine policies/programmes/practices related to rural and watershed development involving large public funds and assess how far they are equipped to address the challenges thrown up by the rural transformation that is slowly but surely taking place. The chapter calls for a biomass-based planning approach to watershed development as it can tie together both the sustainability and livelihood needs, opening up avenues for non-farm incomes to people.
