The Happa: A Replicable and Sustainable Model

Helping villagers create a sustainable small scale irrigation structure in the form of a happa has wide ranging and long term benefits on their lives and livelihoods.

F ifty per cent of the people in India are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. A majority of them are the rural poor and marginal farmers, without any assured food security. Their dependence on the rains to irrigate the land greatly jeopardizes their crops and their food security. The happa experiment was launched to provide them with assured irrigation. The happa, or small tank, model is part of Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM), which focuses on both water and soil management.

The Government of India (GoI), under its flagship programme for employment generation, the MGNREGS, is funding the construction of happas—mud-excavated small water harvesting structures—of an average size of 50 × 45 × 12 ft in a command area of about 0.6–0.75 acres. Introduced as an experiment in some dry zones, the happa is being excavated on the private land of farmers so that they can irrigate their agricultural land. The construction of the happa is paid for by the government but it is subsequently managed by the farmers and all operational expenditure for maintaining it is incurred by them. This model has seen some success in the dry zones. A village in Bankura district, a dry zone of West Bengal, has been selected for the case study. There is a geographical concentration of backwardness and poverty in this area that has led to a continuous degradation of natural resources.