State Level Stakeholder Consultation on Policy Governance and Participatory Groundwater Management : Learnings from Atal Bhujal Yojana and MGNREGS

The CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies (NPS) which aims to co-create with national and international partners with the primary objective of building policy coherence and integrating policy tools at national and subnational levels in eight countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Under this initiative, IWMI has undertaken a study on Political and Institutional Landscape Analysis through the lens of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABY). The study is being undertaken in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In Rajasthan, IWMI is partnering with the Centre for Microfinance (CmF) and the People’s Education and Development Organization (PEDO) for this study and addressing the capacity-building needs as identified through our study.

This study takes a qualitative approach to understand the governance and implementation of the two schemes, both of which have a focused emphasis on better convergence of resources and a bottom-up approach in governance and natural resource management, especially groundwater. The objective of our study is to develop better insights into the policy processes in India and identify interventions or innovations required to make them more inclusive and effective. Two major learnings from the study were the necessity of developing the soft skills of leadership and community mobilization within the community for scaling Participatory Groundwater Management (PGWM) and integrating scientific tools for facilitating bottom-up decision-making.

The purpose of this workshop is to facilitate deliberations on strengthening the bottom-up approach in policy governance and natural resource management in India.

Agenda