REMINISCING RECLAMATION OF SALINE-SODIC LANDS IN INDIA II: COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION UNDERGIRDED TECHNOLGY ADOPTION IN UP
Around 1990, 1.2 million hectares of saline-sodic (Kallar or Usar)lands in UP, mostly owned by resource poor farmers, were lying barren. Sporadic attempts to reclaim these lands had not made much progress. Taking a clue from Punjab, three (Pilot - Sodic I, Sodic II and Sodic III) World Bank funded projects implemented by the Government of UP (GoUP) reclaimed 0.4 million hectares of these lands from 1993 to 2018.
Peculiarities of UP sodic lands
Unlike Punjab, the sodic lands in UP were owned by poorest of the poor farmers. Some of these lands were originally government or community lands in remote villages; and were allotted to the landless or marginal farmers from 1950s onwards. Except for possessing a piece of paper called Patta the owners did not even know the location of their land. Many were labourers. The area owned by a farmer varied from 0.4 to 1.0 hectare. Except for manual labour, they did not have anything to invest in reclamation. They were invariably apprehensive of government or rich persons taking away their land. Simple technology solution centred around one individual farmer, which worked well in Punjab (see Part I of this Blog), was bound to fail.
UP model of land reclamation
Farmer mobilization and building human capital were essential prerequisites for land reclamation, but accomplishing it was not easy. Village level Site Implementation Committees and tube well level Water User Groups (WUGs) were formed. Lack of experience with participatory procedures led to forcing formation of these institutions too quickly to meet reclamation targets rather than readiness of the beneficiaries. Realization that these were not working effectively led to arrangements for training of UP Bhumi Sudhar Nigam (UPBSN — UP Land Reclamation Corporation — a UP Government para-statal and the lead implementing agency) staff by NGOs in WUG formation and social capital building.
Emphasis was laid on creating awareness and motivating villagers because in the beginning often the villagers ran away seeing project staff. After frustrating 2–3 years of trial and error, a functional template was ready. The project activities were sequenced such that the first two years were devoted to community mobilization, harnessing farmer commitment, and training for land reclamation activities before starting reclamation per se.
Much of the credit for pioneering this template goes to Mr. Ashok Seth, World Bank Team Leader, and Mr. D.K. Mittal, an enterprising and upright Managing Director (M.D.) of UPBSN. He assembled a team of energetic and committed middle level functionaries on secondment from Agriculture Department and provided them incentives similar to the private sector.
Social mobilization was followed by identification, demarcation and giving possession of the land and forming a WUG of about 6–10 farmers around one tube well, scraping off salt crust, land levelling, sinking tube wells, buying diesel engines, developing drainage system, flushing off salts, applying gypsum, leaching down harmful sodium, growing rice-wheat and a green manure. The basic reclamation unit was about 4 hectare contiguous area around one tube well. More than 70% land was C Class barren land and the remaining was B or B+ Class land which had salinity in patches.
Other need-based interventions were constructing link roads, Panchayat Bhawans and rural Haats (agriculture markets) in remote, inaccesible villages.
Inter-Department Coordination was critical
Coordinated by UPBSN, the project activities were executed in a sequentially synchronized manner by the Departments of Revenue, Science and Technology, Irrigation, Agriculture, Horticulture, Public Works, Agricultural Marketing and Panchayat Raj. For mitigating implementation risk across eight government departments used to working in silos, the Project Agreement included a legal covenant that UPBSN will always be headed by the Agriculture Production Commissioner (APC). He was usually the number two in GoUP bureaucracy, did not report to any minister, and monitored all agriculture-related activities at the highest level. This arrangement had ensured successful implementation of Phase I Pilot, and was continued in Sodic II.
Changing UPBSN Chairman
Pursuant to Constitution (91st) Amendment effective January 2004, the number of ministers in a state was capped at 15 per cent of the number of Members of Legislative Assembly (State Parliament — MLA). Consequently, Sh. D.K. Kashyap had to be removed as Minister of State in July 2004. He was appointed UPBSN Chairman. In August, the World Bank supervision mission reviewed implementation of the project. Hosting a lavish dinner at five star Taj Hotel, the new Chairman shared his grand plans in chaste Hindi (which several mission members could not comprehend!) for using project funds in his constituency. This was not consistent with the Project Agreement.
In the wrap-up meeting we flagged the issue of project becoming non-compliant with a legal covenant due to appointment of a politician MLA as UPBSN Chairman. The remedies available to the World Bank (which included suspension of fund disbursement), if the non-compliance was not addressed, were politely explained to the GoUP. While we were still in Lucknow, the GoUP transferred an upright UPBSN Managing Director (about which the World Bank could not do anything!), suspecting he had brought this issue to our attention.
Within a fortnight the APC was re-appointed UPBSN Chairman; the project achieved its development objectives and exceeded most of the targets, and was followed by a rare Phase III Project. Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav adjusted MLA D.K. Kashyap in UP Cooperative Union. Subsequent judgements by the Supreme Court declared such positions as Offices of Profit, permanently closing this option for the Chief Ministers to keep unhappy MLA in good humour.
Achievements of Sodic Projects
Poverty alleviation is an important goal of World Bank funded projects. The sodic land reclamation projects were really transformative. In 3–4 years barren lands were converted into lush green rice and wheat fields, providing food security to the project families. After two cycles of rice-wheat, productivity on the reclaimed lands was similar to the average productivity of UP.
Tangible reclaimed land asset gave poor farmers the confidence to make more investments and go up the value chain after withdrawal of project support. All the three projects exceeded land reclamation targets, and lifted more than 0.1 million small and marginal farmer families above the poverty line. Most of them belonged to scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and backward classes. There was no elite capture of project benefits as the sodic lands were self-selected through satellite imageries. Economic rate of return was 20% or higher.
There were positive ecological externalities as well. Land reclamation improved population and diversity of soil flora and fauna, and sequestered global warming atmospheric carbon in the soil.
Rehabilitation of drains increased wheat production beyond sodic lands by facilitating timely sowing of wheat by draining the swamps. Roads and bridges improved access to education, health and other government services. Roads constructed under Sodic and another Bank funded UP Diversified Agriculture Support Project were so good that people started asking GoUP why such quality roads were not constructed under other projects.
About 120 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs having 112,590 farmers) set up under Sodic III empowered farmers for getting competitive prices in input and output markets. Sixty nine FPOs were linked with e-NAM, a pan India Trading Platform, and with Small Farmer Agribusiness Consortium.
Adoption of income generating activities (dairying, beekeeping, goat rearing, jewellery and toy making) by landless women Self Help Groups (SHGs) improved livelihoods. Construction of Panchayat Bhawans provided venues for meetings by the lower segments of the society, freeing them of dependence on the rich. Third party independent concurrent monitoring quickly identified implementation and design weaknesses, and project flexibility facilitated their redressal. Counterpart funding (state share) was not a problem as with a huge state budget, allocating additional Rs. 100 crore or so was not a big deal. The trick was to promptly identify the bottlenecks and flag these at the appropriate level of the GoUP.
Most of the contractual staff was lost due to two year gap between Sodic II and Sodic III projects. To their credit, the GoUP and Managing Director Ms. Aradhana Shukla re-hired the essential staff for project implementation. Benefits available to UPBSN staff in Sodic I and II, however, were not restored. Rural employment guarantee (MANREGA) scheme lowered the enthusiasm of poor farmers for carrying out the hard On-Farm-Development work on their own barren lands.
New skills gained in these projects and the new ways of promoting participatory management proved an asset when the deputationists returned to agriculture and other parent departments. Many of them did commendable work in middle and senior management positions.
The best part was seeing smiling faces during implementation support missions who had looked hopelessly forlorn to their fate 3–4 years earlier; and the confident landless women telling that they did not need to mortgage their utensils to buy medicines for their sick children. When they told Mr. Sakwa Bunyasi how they had stopped the drunkards in the village from wasting money and beating their wives and children, he asked them if they could help him in tackling this nuisance in his tribe back home in Kenya!
The Project Theory of Change from the Implementation Completion and Results Report of Sodic III is reproduced below.
