Natural resource potential and development through NREGA using free tools of geoinformatics
Student name: Ms Himani Singh
Guide: Mr V.S.P.Sinha
Year of completion: 2010
Host Organisation: Regional Remote Sensing Centre/ISRO (West), Jodhpur
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr J. R. Sharma
Abstract: India, with inherited regal heritage and manipulative feudalistic social systems, has been the
home to the large number of poor and malnourished. Over the fifty years since independence, the
country has evolved its own indigenous mechanisms, within the framework of grass root level
participatory democracy, to alleviate poverty. NREGA, National Rural Employment Guarantee
Act is a poverty alleviation programme which targets to reduce poverty through natural
resources management and conservation to generate future employment sources and sustainable
livelihood. The activities acceptable under this act includes, water conservation, land
development, rural network, afforestation etc. Poverty alleviation being a primary objective of
the act, we emphasize on its auxiliary objective of natural resource development. As study area
Pali block lies in arid-semi-arid part of the country, the importance of water involuntarily rises.
There has been many steps taken towards water resource management in this part of the country
using techniques of remote sensing and GIS, through many nationwide projects, under revered
institutions like RRSC (Regional remote Sensing Centre) and NRSC (National Remote Sensing
Centre). With the overture of high resolution data, this science has touched up to village level
and has contributed toward generating massive amount of database about resources available
with us and for their strategic management. NREGA, which has the potential to contest poverty
with natural resource development and conservation if converged with programmes under
geospatial techniques, can bring more concrete results and intelligent planning. Under this
convergence, we have used freely available GIS tools and data to do gap analyses for water
resources in Pali block. For that, we have also suggested possible water harvesting structures in
villages which have been rated for highest risk of poverty. So that, along with routine wages,
water structures can be developed or re-established if destroyed or unused. A villager though has
very much practical knowledge about his field or surrounding scenario but he may not be
informed about how resources are distributed and what the climate impact at large scale is. To
make him more aware about the changing patterns of behavior of climate and water distribution
spatially, RS and GIS tools may prove to be a boon. Also, with use of free/open source tools and
data, Government can think of providing each panchayat with these free tools and training at
NREGA sites in the beginning so as to offer direct access to the situation of the local
environment.
Keywords: NREGA, Convergence, Rural development, Open Source/Free RS and GIS tools,
Water conservation
