Upfront capital costs of micro-irrigation technologies are subsidized across the dark-zone regions of the state of Gujarat, where groundwater was observed as over-extracted, with an anticipation that wide-scale adoption could perhaps reduce pressure on the aquifer. From a macro-perspective, the real water saving potential depends on not only adoption of these technologies but also how best the farmers' get convinced about the looming water scarcity and try to adapt to the new technologies. While there are several plot-level studies with respect to water consumption, very limited research is being carried out at basin-wide and irrigation system level. The onus of this paper, henceforth, is to examine the impact of micro-irrigation adoption on groundwater utilization at the irrigation system level. In the study regions, either an individual or a group of farmers' extract water from the common aquifer, and therefore, it is being considered as a proxy for the irrigation system. Empirical observations were based on an in-depth survey of 430 tubewell owning farmers who have adopted micro-irrigation in the dark zone, and the information were collected by considering common aquifer as the unit of analysis rather than individual farm household. The major findings emerging from the study are: (i) micro-irrigation adoption per se was statistically insignificant to make any considerable plunge in the groundwater use, and (ii) technology adoption along with metered power connection leads to a reduction in groundwater extraction. It should be noted that we, based on the finding, do not categorically deny the possibility of declining groundwater use due to large-scale adoption of such technologies since negative coefficient values are found. From a policy angle, the study suggests that the promotion of these technologies may not lead to sustainable groundwater conservation outcomes unless the farmers are made to behave responsibly especially under extreme water scarcity conditions. It is also important that while supporting for the adoption of these innovations, the state also should effectively regulate the pilferages in farm power use by expediting the process of metering of unmetered connections, to achieve the desired goals of sustainable management of groundwater.
Entrepreneurship has been increasingly promoted as a means to achieve women’s empowerment in the pursuit of gender equal societies by international development organizations, NGO’s as well as national and local governments across the world. Against this, the paper explores the role and influence of multi-actor engagement on successful empowerment of women based on a case study of Kudumbashree program in a regional context of Kerala, in South India. Our objective is to examine the women empowerment outcomes of the Kudumbashree initiatives, implemented within a multi-actor engagement framework supportive of women’s empowerment through capacity building and social inclusion programs. The case study demonstrates ‘how multiple-level engagements help enhance women’s development and support broad sustainable social change, in view of their sensitivity to the embeddedness of women’s agency under specific socio-political and cultural contexts’. We find that Kudumbashree programs, through its multi-actor engagement, strives for an equilibrium between social change through policy and regulatory change (top down) and social change via mobilizing the people (bottom-up). From a policy angle, the key learnings from the successful outcomes of Kudumbashree may be considered for designing rural and urban community development programs with a focus on the multidimensional empowerment as well as social and economic inclusion of women and other marginalized communities.
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