1. The project selected the most harmonious communities and avoided villages riven by factionalism. Some view this as successful analysis and selection. Others view this as a model that cannot be scaled up fully.

2. The program was able to build on 25 years of scattered organizational structures and infrastructure created by earlier government/NGO programs.

3. The participatory process was _tested in pilots_ and _adapted_ to conditions in new watersheds. Participatory appraisal capacity was built up before full scaling up. The Watershed Organization Trust, which gives engineering and computer support to the program, developed a Participatory Operation Pedagogy and Gender Oriented POP as an integral part of its capacity building effort. It also runs a training center that has created 42,000 graduates badly needed by NGOs. It has created new watershed maps from scratch. The _emphasis on field-tested manuals, technical soundness and adaptability_ has been vital.

4. Maharashtra State has long been a pioneer of innovations in rural development, _so political and technical commitment was substantiaL_ 5. A major bottleneck in scaling up has been insufficient hieh-quality NGOs to work out the complex social, technical and institutional arrangements.

# _4.2. Reclamaton of sodic soils, Uttar Pradesh, India_<sup>_25_</sup>

In Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, large tracts of poorly-drained land have become sodic and unfit for cultivation. Traditional top-down schemes for reclaiming sodic land yielded indifferent results. Then the World Bank supported a project focusing on _the participation of beneficiaries and NGOs. Strong poltical commitment_ led to the creation of a new autonomous executive agency with its own contract staff to oversee the project. The _technical and organizational design was carefully worked out in advance._ The 45,600 beneficiary farmers were organized into groups, which in turn formed 974 site committees. The farmers helped plan and execute the bunding of the land, sinking of borewells, land treatment with gypsum, and flushing out of surface salts. They kept reclaimed land under constant cultivation to reduce the water table. They undertook maintenance and collection of user charges more efficiently than bureaucrats had earlier. The result: against an initial target of 47,470 hectares, 69,000 hectares were reclaimed. According to an independent assessment by the Indian Institute of Management, average family income rose from Rupees 12,065 per year to Rupees 20,082. Family employment in farming rose from an average of 32.5 person-days/year to 119 person-days/year. Cropping intensity rose from 32 per cent to 230 per cent. The economic rate of return of the project was 32 per cent.

Spurred by this success, a second reclamation project has been launched in the state, this time covering 150,000 hectares. _The pilot yielded valuable lessons for scaling up,_ have some of which been _embedded in new manuals._ (a) Since the government farm extension was weak and unaccountable to farmers, the pilot _trained village level extension workers, whom farmers are willing to pay for advice._ This empowers local people, makes extension sustainable, and has been made an integral part of scaling up. (b) The pilot experimented with a farmer training institute which, in effect, makes farmers trainers through _peer-to-peer exchanges between farmers._ This is now being scaled up to ensure one such training institute in every district. (c) The pilot showed that roads are vital to enable farmers to market their new surpluses. So the scaled-up project has a specific financial provision for rural roads, _a good example of adaptation in the light of experence._ (d) Experimentation in the pilot proved the feasibility of using cheap locally-available materials to reduce the cost of land reclamation. The scaled-up project provides for further such 24 Kerr, John. Watershed Development, Environmental services and Poverty Alleviation in India. World Development Vol 30 No. 8., 2002.

Farrington, John and Crispino, Lobo. Scaling up Participatory Watershed Development in India; Lessons from the Indo-German Watershed Development Program. Natural Resource Perspectives, No. 17, Feb 1997 25 Personal communication with Task Team Leader, 2002.

18