Priority in Watershed Management

What is the Priority of Watershed Management

Managing soil or Water ??

The 2 Natural resources viz. Water and Soil ,both are the Vital components of any Watershed Programme. Simply no question about that ! As far as concerned to its significance in Watershed, these 2 Components are so intact and attached to each other that one finds it difficult to Prioritized it.
Are both the components are at par or one has priority over other when question comes of Watershed management. Certainly the word “Watershed Management” itself give a view that Water is of Priority in managing a Watershed.

Let’s go through some question and think

1)Are we in Watershed project concerned with Water harvesting Structures .
2)Whether the Word “Watershed ” emphasis and prioritized our objective for fulfillment of Water requirements

3)Are we counting our success in harvesting thousand and lakhs litres of water in a Watershed project

In Watershed Management Programme while we deal with Natural resource Management we say the term ” Soil and Water conservation” . Why not instead we say it “Water and Soil conservation”. If water is the priority then Why the word “Soil” appears before the word ”Water” Whether it alphabetically arranged words and hence it is so or some logic is embedded in it. One can find a logic that as Soil is a medium to hold water So ,it appears before the Word “Water” in term “Soil and Water Conservation“

But in reality the fact is that Primary aim of Watershed Programme w.r.t Natural Resource Management is to “Conserve fertile soil layer by reducing erosion” and not the harvesting of Water in big manner. Water conserved in the practice of reducing erosion is the only water to be conserved .However, with changing Scenario of Water shortage ;the Water harvesting , its Collection and augmentation has also been given Priority.