Rainfed agriculture productivity has constrained even in watershed areas after the termination of the watershed development activities in most places in India due to lack of exit mechanism and social regulation on use of groundwater. Under high risk, low productivity and fragile rainfed farming situation, 'water bodies' are found to be the way out after watersheds.

Rainfed regions are those where crop production is exclusively dependent upon rainfall. In India they cover 177 districts and exist in all agro-climatic regions but are mostly concentrated in the

This paper compares the widely used three irrigation systems, viz., drip, sprinkler and furrow, using the data observed in a laboratory farm located in the semi-arid region of Kenya. For these irrigation systems, the total irrigation requirements were 479.50, 610.55 and 783.50 respectively, but with same 428.95 mm of net irrigation requirement (NIR). The respective application efficiencies for the three systems were 89.72%, 70.31 and 54.54% indicating the drip irrigation system to be more efficient than the others in this study.

In recent years, there is growing opinion on the need to initiate soil and water conservation, to develop watersheds and to provide protective and supplementary irrigation particularly to wastelands, drylands, hill terrains etc., for enhancing production and produtivity.

The hot arid regions of India in economically and environmentally disadvantaged part of the country with unique problems. These, ecosystems are highly fragile and large liabilities causing severe impediments in development programmes.