Ralegan Siddhi — Community Watershed Development and Grazing/Felling Bans Reviving a Drought-Prone Village (Maharashtra, India)

Ralegan Siddhi (Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra) was a drought-stricken, impoverished village in the early 1970s. From 1975 community leader Anna Hazare mobilised villagers to build percolation tanks, check dams and contour bunds, plant trees, and adopt voluntary bans on open grazing, tree felling and (later) liquor and water-intensive crops, enforced through village institutions.
Reported results: the FAO case study and the Kapur, Mehta and Satpathy working paper (citing Selvarajan et al., 2001) report the water table rising from about 20 m to about 6.5 m with water available year-round; the working paper's table shows irrigated area rising from roughly 56 ha to 465 ha, and cropping intensity reaching 180–190% by 2000. A further academic summary gives a smaller water-table change (100 ft to 40–50 ft), so figures vary.
Evidence caveats: the sources are descriptive case studies; no controlled impact evaluation was found. Authors attribute success partly to Anna Hazare's moral authority, and note caste and local-political dynamics. Down To Earth (2017) also records about 200 deep borewells dug in Ralegan's watershed areas over a decade and tanker supply in a recent drought year, a sign that groundwater discipline has weakened compared with Hiware Bazar.

Read the full analysis: https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/127255/WP119_KapurMehta-Satpathy.pdf