An Impact Analysis of Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP): A Case Study in Baramulla District of Jammu & Kashmir

The study aims to evaluate the impact of the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) in Baramulla District, Jammu & Kashmir, focusing on agricultural productivity, and socio-economic benefits for local communities. In the current study, the Rafiabad area was selected as Kashmir’s first IWMP (Integrated Watershed Management Programme) was implemented in 2011-12. A multi-stage random sampling design was used for sample collection. Accordingly, 100 beneficiary samples/ respondents were selected randomly from the 13 villages, respectively. Considering the non-beneficiary respondents to be 25 per cent of the beneficiary respondents, i.e., 25 non-beneficiary farmers were selected randomly from the neighbouring villages where the IWMP project is not implemented for the comparative study which makes a way to find out the difference between the watershed and non-watershed implemented villages, respectively making it a total of 125 respondents. The three main characteristics of the watershed development methods are, supporting rural economic growth, creating jobs, and restoring ecological equilibrium. The cultivated area, production, and productivity of major crops showed a significant change in the post-IWMP scenario in relation to the pre-IWMP conditions. The project helped increase in majority of the farm and livestock inventories. The cropping intensity among the beneficiaries in the present scenario is 151.36 per cent against the pre-IWMP levels of 116.54 per cent and 110.68 per cent among the non-beneficiaries which depicts the positive development in the cropping pattern among the beneficiary farmers. There was a 34.70 per cent surge in employment among the beneficiaries against the pre-IWMP levels and it was also found that presently, the employment was 9.08 per cent higher among the beneficiaries compared to non-beneficiaries which shows the prominence of the IWMP project.