Case facts:

1.The village Hiware Bazaar was on of the most semi-arid villages of Maharashtra. Its forest were
cut, water resources were exploited which made its land very much unproductive and village also
faced many problems regarding shortage of water as its water storage systems were also exploited.

2. Youth weren’t having any source of income and only 12% of its were cultivable. Hence, peple
migrated to cities in search of employment.

3. Out of 976.84 hectares 795.23 hectares were cultivable. But due to uneven rainfall people did not
had that opportunity to cultivate the 795.23 hectares .

4. The village was also encompassed with various social problems like gambling and alcoholism. And
a survey also indicated that majority of the households remained under poverty line (168 out of
180).

5. Popatro Pawar when elected as Sarpanch took responsibility to change the fortunes of the village.
He took an inspiration from a nearby village and encouraged the people to apply for Adarch Gaon
Yojana but it required a five year integrated with water conservation as its main motive.

6. The principles which were included in the scheme were to basically to reserve natural resources ,
participatory involvement and ban on liquor (alcoholism).

7. The Employment Guarantee Scheme (1995-2000) also helped to ease the tension of the villagers
regarding earning facilities. The EGS alsoreleased Rs4000 per hectare to cover 1000 hectare of village
land and they also claimed to build a democratic and participatory institution which would be
involved in this process.

8. To regenerate forest, the best idea was to harvest rainwater. Hence they divided the village into 3
parts. The rain-harvesting included functions like tree plantation, contour trenching, contour
bunding, drain bunding, creating percolation, storage tan etc.

9. It was a dilemma for the village as to use what kind of water harvesting process. The same went
with villagers as to what kind of crops needed to be cultivated. Moreover, a side of the village had
run out of ground water. The village wanted to cultivate banana and sugar cane which was not
possible at that side. It needed bore well blasting to change the situation of the side which had no
proper ground water level.