Coping Strategies Case Study

3. Coping Strategies – The concept of coping strategies, “highlights the active or even proactive role played by the poor in providing for their own sustenance despite their lack of access to resources and services to an adequate income’’ (Schmink, 1984 cited in de Haan and Zoomers 2005, p.28). To cope with water deficit, both women and men were found carrying out a plethora of these strategies, with positive as well as negative outcomes. Some of these were noted during field visits.
• In village Lafuri (Punhana block), some poor farmers reportedly irrigated their small parcels of land with saline water, which further increased the salinity of soils rendering them infertile over time. The deep rooted pessimism also forced many of the younger
Improving water use efficiency and creating awareness through appropriate technological and policy interventions are the prime challenges in this district. Despite the existing situation, little efforts are being made to overcome challenges of water degradation in the region. India’s twelfth five-year plan (2012–17) puts emphasis on several water related concerns such as aquifer mapping, watershed development, involvement of NGOs, and efficiency in developing irrigation capacity. Since water is a state subject in the federal constitution, the state governments are expected to play a large role in addressing these issues. At the same time, many active NGOs are now able to enforce compliance with environmental obligations through the right to information act, active and competitive media, and growing awareness on water issues. The following suggestions attend to some of these pertinent concerns in the context of
Water efficient technologies are thus acutely required in the region for the sustainable use of water resources as well for sustaining agriculture. Farmers at large across different villages were found using flood irrigation in their farms leading to over-irrigation since this technique consumes a large quantity of water, a significant part of which is either lost through evaporation, percolation or drainage. Therefore, there is an urgent need for using micro irrigation and water saving techniques such as drip and sprinkler system, mulching, furrow irrigation etc. Sprinklers are proven to be very efficient with water savings of nearly 63 per cent over flood irrigation, can irrigate an additional 1-1.25 acres and can be effectively used in undulated lands and sandy soils (Mehra et al., 2012). Appropriate institutional efforts and mass awareness among farmers to this effect are required.
• Local people also need to be made aware of the consequences of excessive mining of ground water and the need for its economic usage. This problem can only be managed by a cooperative agreement among the users of the aquifer, who should know how much can be extracted without depleting the resource. This calls for community participation in combating water crisis through village development or water management committees or farmers’