Current World Environment

Sustainable development is now the much talked about term in the modern society owing to the increasing concern for the degrading environment. Water is the basic unit of life and without it one cannot think of the development in any form. In the present paper an attempt has been made to explain the concept of watershed management and show how effective such watershed project can be in enhancing the availability of water in the rural areas that suffers immensely owing to the situation of huge scarcity of water both in quantity and quality. Such approach can be highly effective in addressing the water scarcity issue and achieving the sustainable development and broadly the overall socio-economic benefit in the rural society. The present paper shows that such attempts under watershed activities like treatment in upper catchment, terracing of a piece of land on slopes, etc. helps in recharging of the wells that acts as a catalyst and further triggers the developmental activities in and around the catchment areas.