It’s changed our world.’’ Yashodha Thakur, president of the mahila mandal of Kiarad Kalog, trips over words as she waxes eloquent about the changes wrought by the Integrated Watershed Development Project (Hills) in her village in Solan district, Himachal Pradesh.The signs of change are scattered all over — in the tall fields of maize, the sturdy check dams, the stone pathways, the neat little bridges across gushing nullahs, and in the scores of aquamarine water reservoirs.Till four years ago, these twin villages at the feet of the Shivaliks were at the mercy of whimsical weather gods — parched in summer, flooded in the monsoon. Today they are masters of their own fate, and the mountains have stopped ‘‘walking’’ (that’s how the villagers describe soil erosion).The metamorphosis was achieved by the IWDP scheme, a World Bank-assisted programme implemented in 837 villages of HP in the five districts of Solan, Sirmaur, Una, Kangra and Chamba.Gurnam Singh, assistant project director, Solan, says the project, which started in July 1999, focused on empowering villagers by setting up self-help and user groups under the Village Development Committee (VDC).The VDC not only drew up micro-plans but also chalked out solutions to local problems. As Sant Ram, the pradhan of Kiarad Kalog VDC, puts it: ‘‘We used to go with a begging bowl to the government for everything, right from roads and footpaths to dams, now we rely only on ourselves.’’That self-reliance has translated into prosperity shows the moment you begin your long trek down to Kiarad. A cobbled pathway invites you to continue climbing down in spite of the downpour. ‘‘Our villagers joined hands with IWDP workers to lay these footpaths, which now connect every house to the other,’’ smiles the matronly Nirmala Sharma. The twin villages have 65 families spread over a couple of kilometers.The all-weather pathways came up for discussion during the very first meeting of the VDC with IWDP officials. Water — either too much or too little — was another issue at the meeting. Little rivulets ran unchecked down the slopes, often flooding the stream at the bottom. This would then cut off Kiarad Kalog from the rest of the world, besides devouring crops.Now check dams regulate the streams to tackle the problem of plenty. The problem of too little water has also been sorted out with the help of a dozen-odd earthen dams and tanks, which keep the throats and crops wet all round the year.‘‘This has doubled our crop yield,’’ says Mukesh Sharma, a VDC member and maize farmer. Buoyed by the year-round availability of water, he’s also begun to grow an assortment of cash crops and vegetables.Alok P. Nagar, divisional forest officer, is all praise for the way the villagers have stopped the mountains from ‘‘walking’’ by planting trees. ‘‘One of the villagers in fact set an example for us by grafting pear on kainth trees,’’ says Nagar.Napier grass introduced by the project has done wonders to the milk yield of the village’s cattle.’’ This grass grows very fast and makes for good fodder, a rarity here,’’ explains Yashodha, whose mahila mandal has also gone from strength to strength in the past two years.‘‘The officials encouraged us to start by depositing Rs 20 a month, now we have a corpus of Rs 50,000. Thanks to this, the village women no longer have to visit moneylenders or banks for small loans,’’ says Kuntaa, as she tells you how she recently took a loan of Rs 5,000 to buy a Jersey cow.Officially, the project may be all set to conclude on September 30, but unofficially it’ll continue for a long, long time. As Yashodha puts it: ‘‘It’s not just about a couple of dams, it’s about being self-reliant. You can’t take that away from us.”
