Employment Guarantee Scheme, first of its kind drought relief scheme has had no impact on the drought-prone areas of Maharashtra in almost 30 years because it has failed to involve people in managing rural assets

Revisits by Down To Earth reporters to villages that undertook water harvesting offer some valuable lessons in drought management

The need of the hour is to decentralise drought management and think long term

A great example of how decentralised approaches to water harvesting boost innovation comes from Ladakh in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Chewang Norphel, retired engineer of the department of

The Institute for Rural Development of the Bharatiya Agro-Industries Foundation ( baif ) has undertaken the excavation of 330 farm ponds in Adihalli watershed, spread over an area of 700 hectares in

Everybody uses water for irrigating farmlands. But Gram Vikas Navyuvak Mandal, a voluntary organisation of Laporiya village in Dudu block of Jaipur district, Rajasthan, has evolved an innovative

In Kachchh district of Gujarat , the Vivekanand Research and Training Institute of Mandvi has designed a number of innovative water recharging structures to capture the meagre and erratic rainfall

In Dihra, a small village 28 km southwest of Bihar 's capital Patna, was facing water shortage. The canal that brings water from Sone canal river failed to meet their irrigation demands. Led by