Watershed management from the river basin perspective: a study on palar and ongur river basin watersheds of Tamilnadu state

The global water scarcity analysis shows that a large share of world population up to two thirds will be affected over next several decades in Asia and other region. The major reason for such situation is due to neglect of river basin approach and watershed management initiatives over a period of time. The macro level initiative of river basin includes micro molecules of watershed management. In India, watershed programs are implemented across many river basins for over three decades. However, most of the watershed management projects carried out till date have not addressed the “basin perspective” but implemented in isolated manner by different agencies. This paper focuses on impact of watershed program on river basin perspective. The Palar and Ongur river basins 33 watershed have been studied out of 40 watersheds implemented at Kancheepuram District of Tamilnadu state in India. The results show that the Palar basin is better than Ongur in Total factor productivity. The people in Palar basin are adopting technology as well as deriving benefits from watershed leading to benefiting the community at large. However this study has to be done with all river basins in order to maximize the benefits to the people living in the planet earth. The better connectivity between river basin and watershed will be the likely solution for solving water scarcity in the near future.