How soil and water conservation transformed the lives of people in a remote village - The case of Gulliyada village in Talavadi block of Erode district, Tamil Nadu
Author:
Seetha Gopalakrishnan
MYRADA and the Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Erode district, Tamil Nadu
Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency - MYRADA - was founded in 1968 to assist the Government in resettling Tibetan refugees. By 1982, MYRADA moved out of resettlement and began to focus entirely on farmers and the marginalized communities in rural areas.
The village of Gulliyada is located in Talavadi block, mostly made up of undulating plains and hills
MYRADA, as an institution, has a respectable presence in the southern states of Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) operates Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) across the country. KVKs are managed by various Agricultural Universities and research institutes, in order to assess and refine latest technologies as well as products that will be of use to farmers as part of their agricultural extension activities where technology is taken from the lab to the farmer in his farm.
MYRADA KVK had started their work in land development and watershed management in the early ‘90s by constructing structures that harvest water and prevent erosion across the region. The number of structures and the extent of intervention progressively increased through the years and currently they have managed to work in more than 30 micro-watersheds in Erode district.
What is a watershed?
The area where a river “catches” its water is called its catchment or watershed. A watershed can be visualized as a landscape shaped unevenly like a bowl or basin. When it rains, water flows down from the top of this bowl to collect at the bottom. The undulating land area of any region forms several such units, each of which are called watersheds.Water within each of these units drains to a common point. So the hills, valleys, forests and fields that encircle the falling rain and guide it into streams and then rivers, all form the enclosure that is a watershed [1].
The top of a watershed from where the slopes start is called the ridge, because it is the dividing line that partitions one watershed from another. Ridges demarcate the region into distinct areas that ‘catch the rain’ for a stream or river [1].
In a watershed, the slopes falling from the ridge to the beginning of the plains are called the ridge area. The many channels that flowing rainwater drains into are called drainage lines. Gullies, streams and rivers are all drainage lines [1].