Village Tanks and Community Based Management in Gondia District, Maharashtra State, India

The paper presents the case of village tanks in Gondia District of Maharashtra State in India. Essentially the village tanks are the source of irrigation. They are characterized by their comparatively smaller command area – a cluster of 3-4 villages at the most. This study is focused on a particular type of village tanks called the Maji Malguzari tanks (the MM tanks). The MM tanks have distinct community based management history. This study is an attempt to understand the change in community based management over the period of last 100 years as a result of certain policy initiatives at national level. The MM tanks is a classic case of changes at policy level leading to changes at operational level. This study argues that two policy initiatives in India, one related to land redistribution and the other to increasing productivity of the biomass based rural society , have resulted in disintegration of community based management of the MM tanks. However, the paper also sheds light on the positive externality of the policy initiatives. In the past, when there was effective community based management of the MM tanks, it was founded on social inequity built in caste based hierarchical society. The policy initiative helped a disadvantaged section of the society in establishing itself as a competent user group. Management implication of these changes is that it will be a limited view to base the MM tank management only on the irrigation aspect. The paper concludes that to be realistic it is necessary that in the planning of MM tanks fishery should be integrated.