Case study: the Jhabua watershed and community management of commons

Detail

1. Where Jhabua is and why it was chosen

• Location: Jhabua district, Madhya Pradesh. It lies in the state's westernmost agro-climatic zone.

• Agro-climatic zone: an area with a similar climate, soil and pattern of farming. Planners use these zones to decide what to grow and how to treat land.

• Backwardness: Jhabua was one of the five most backward districts of India. This means it ranked among the poorest in income, irrigation, literacy and infrastructure.

• People: the district has many tribal people. Most of them are Bhils.
• The problem: the forests and land had become degraded. Land degradation means land losing its ability to produce, through soil erosion, loss of plant cover and overgrazing.
• The forests were cut, so there was less fuelwood, fodder and minor forest produce.
• Bare slopes lost topsoil in the monsoon rains, so farm yields fell.
• The tribal families depended on land and forest, so their poverty got worse.

2. The Bhils: who they are

• Bhils: one of India's largest tribes. They are found in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
• There are about 12.6 million Bhils, living mainly in western India [5].
• In Madhya Pradesh, the Bhils numbered 59,93,921 in Census 2011, which is about 8.25% of the state's population. They are entry No. 7 in the state's Scheduled Tribe list [6].
• For scale: India's total Scheduled Tribe population is 10.42 crore, spread across more than 705 groups (Census 2011) [7].

Feature	Detail
Core homeland	Western India: MP (Jhabua belt), Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra
Population in MP (Census 2011)	59.9 lakh, about 8.25% of MP [6]
Total population	About 12.6 million [5]
How they live	Farming on rainfed slopes; depend on forests and common land for fodder and fuel

3. Watershed management: the idea

• Watershed: all the land that drains into one stream or river. It is bounded by a ridge, which is the water divide.
• Watershed management: treating the land, water and plants (vegetation) of one watershed together, as one unit, with community participation.
• Cause: rain runs off bare slopes quickly and carries soil away.
• Process: bunds, trenches and check dams slow the water down. Planting trees and grass holds the soil in place. Water soaks into the ground.

• Result: soil erosion falls, groundwater rises, and crop, fodder and fuel supply all improve. Livelihoods get better.

• The aim is to improve livelihoods through natural resource management, meaning the careful use and restoration of soil, water and plants.

4. The Jhabua programme: who funded and ran it

• Funded by: the Union Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Agriculture.
• Run by: the Rajiv Gandhi Mission for Watershed Management, Madhya Pradesh.
• Scale: it treated 20% of the district's area in five years.
• Result: land degradation was checked and soil quality improved. The source is the Mission's Evaluation Report (2002).

5. Petlawad block: a model of the commons

• Place: Petlawad block in northern Jhabua. The work was in the Sat Rundi hamlet of Karravat village.
• Type: a government–NGO partnership. The government gave funds and the NGO organised the villagers.
• Common property resources (CPRs): land owned by the community rather than one person, such as pastures, village forests and ponds.
• CPRs supply fodder, fuelwood and minor forest produce.
• They matter most to landless and marginal farmers and to women, who collect fuel and fodder.

What the Bhil villagers did, step by step:

1. One tree per household: each family planted and looked after one tree on the common land.
2. Fodder grass: they planted grass on the pastures, the common grazing land.

3. Social fencing for at least two years: - Social fencing: a village agreement to keep animals off land that is regrowing, without building physical fences. The rule is kept by community pressure, not by wire or walls. - Young plants survive because no animal eats them.

4. Stall feeding: after that, cattle were fed in sheds (stall feeding) with cut grass. They no longer grazed openly. - Open grazing lets animals trample and eat young plants, which leaves soil bare. - Stall feeding takes the grass to the animal, so the pasture stays covered and keeps growing.

How the dispute over the land was settled:

• Problem: a man from a neighbouring village had encroached on (illegally taken) part of the common land.
• Step 1: the villagers called the tehsildar, the revenue officer of a tehsil (sub-district), to confirm their legal rights to the common land.
• Step 2: instead of throwing the man out, they made him a member of their user group. He then shared the benefits, such as grass and fodder.
• Result: the conflict ended with no court case. The person who might have damaged the land now had a reason to protect it.

6. Lessons, and how this model compares with others

• Main lesson: restoration lasts when the community owns it and benefits are shared fairly, including with possible spoilers.

Approach	How it is run	Main focus	Outcome
Jhabua / Petlawad	Bottom-up: Bhil villagers with an NGO and government	Commons, pasture, trees, social fencing	Degradation checked; disputes settled locally
Drought Prone Area Programme (DPAP) (NCERT: begun in the Fourth Five Year Plan)	Government programme that later took up the watershed approach	Drought-proofing, soil and water conservation	Moved from building public works to treating whole watersheds
Indira Gandhi Canal command area (Rajasthan)	Top-down irrigation from outside the area	Bringing canal water to the Thar desert	Higher farm output, but waterlogging and soil salinity

7. The same model in today's schemes

• WDC-PMKSY (Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana) is run by the Department of Land Resources (DoLR), Ministry of Rural Development.
• WDC-PMKSY 1.0: 6,382 projects sanctioned from 2009-10 to 2014-15 [4].
• Results of WDC 1.0: farmers' incomes rose by 70%, milk production by 40%, and groundwater levels by an average of 3 metres [4]. Annual farm income rose by ₹19,454 crore, which is 6.2 times the money invested [4].
• WDC-PMKSY 2.0 (2021-22 onwards): 1,150 projects covering about 50 lakh hectares were sanctioned, at a cost of ₹12,303 crore, across 28 states and 2 UTs (Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh) [2][3].
• In January 2025, 56 new projects worth ₹700 crore were approved. This took the number of projects under implementation to about 1,220, at a cost of ₹12,972 crore [2].

• A typical project covers about 5,000 hectares. Projects in hill states are smaller [3].

• MGNREGA natural resource management (NRM) works:

• The Act says 60% of spending must go to assets linked to agriculture and allied activities, through work on land, water and trees [8].
• Typical NRM works are check dams, ponds, renovation of traditional water bodies, land development, field bunds, plantations and contour trenches (ditches dug along the contour of a slope to catch runoff) [8].
• In December 2025, the government brought the Viksit Bharat – G RAM G Act 2025 to reform MGNREGA [9].

Prelims Hooks

• Jhabua is in Madhya Pradesh's westernmost agro-climatic zone. It is not in Rajasthan or Gujarat, even though Bhils live there too.
• The dominant tribe of Jhabua is the Bhil, also found in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
• The Jhabua watershed programme was run by the Rajiv Gandhi Mission for Watershed Management (MP). It was funded by the Ministries of Rural Development and Agriculture, and treated 20% of the district in 5 years.
• Petlawad block (northern Jhabua) → Sat Rundi hamlet → Karravat village.
• Social fencing means a community agreement to keep cattle off regrowing land. No physical fence is built. It lasted at least two years.
• The practice that replaced open grazing at Petlawad is stall feeding.
• An encroacher was made a member of the user group. He was not evicted. The tehsildar confirmed the village's rights.
• WDC-PMKSY is run by the Department of Land Resources (Ministry of Rural Development), not by the Jal Shakti Ministry [2][3].
• WDC-PMKSY 1.0 results: income +70%, milk +40%, groundwater +3 m [4].
• MGNREGA: 60% of spending is mandated for agriculture and allied assets linked to land, water and trees [8].

Mains Points

• Causes of degradation in tribal uplands (GS-I/III): deforestation, open grazing on commons and runoff from rainfed slopes all erode soil. Bhil families depend on forests and commons, so poverty and degradation feed each other. Jhabua is a textbook case of this.
• Why commons recover only with people's participation: social fencing, one tree per household and stall feeding all work through local rules, not policing. Settling the encroachment by including the encroacher shows that clear rights (checked by the tehsildar) plus shared benefits prevent the "tragedy of the commons" (shared land being overused because no one takes care of it).
• Bottom-up versus top-down development: the Jhabua and DPAP watershed model can be compared with the Indira Gandhi Canal's waterlogging and salinity. Integrated, small-scale treatment of land, water and plants is more lasting in drylands.
• Policy continuity (GS-III): WDC-PMKSY 1.0 raised incomes by 70% and groundwater by 3 m [4]. WDC 2.0 covers about 50 lakh ha [2][3]. MGNREGA's 60% NRM mandate [8] and the 2025 reform [9] carry the Jhabua idea into national schemes. The remaining challenges are keeping community institutions running after the project ends, protecting tenure over the commons, and checking quality.