Some dry and despairing facts stare India in the face. The present average soil loss in the country is about 16.35 tons per hectare per year, which is at least 3 to 5 times worse than

what it ought to be. Nearly 67% of the cultivated area in the country faces severe moisture stress for 5 to 10 months a year. Crop productivity in drylands is low, unstable and highly vulnerable to seasonality.

ITC's integrated watershed development initiative is a key intervention to reverse such moisture stress in some of the more acutely affected, drought-prone districts of the country. Currently, 460 small and large water harvesting structures built by ITC provide critical irrigation to nearly 7,000 hectares of land in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

ITC's watershed development seeks to achieve two critical objectives: water conservation and soil enrichment.

It constitutes water user groups and trains them to plan and build water harvesting structures like contour bunds, check dams, percolation tanks and farm ponds.

Trained farmers use their knowledge of the terrain to identify locations for building water structures and develop the related micro plans.

ITC contributes 75% of the cost, the balance 25% being mobilised by the user groups. The rich silt excavated from percolation tanks is used to enhance soil fertility. User groups raise regular contributions from the farmers to meet the maintenance cost of these water harvesting structures.

So far ITC has brought nearly 7,000 hectares of degraded land under its soil and moisture conservation programme, providing critical irrigation and generating employment during the lean season.