Assessing Attitude towards Activities of Rangamati Watershed Development Project in Cooch Behar District of West Bengal, India

Aims: Assessing the level of favourable attitude towards the activities of watershed development project and impact of attitude on extracting benefits from the project.

Study Design: Before-after study design.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in Rangamati watershed development project in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal, India. The geographical location of this watershed is 26°26'28" N to 26°29'21" N latitude and 89°11'17" E to 89°13'47" E longitude.

Methodology: 60 households (30 each from project beneficiary and non-beneficiary) were selected for the study. The attitude was assessed based on an attitude measurement scale. Value on the scale varies from ‘−2’ (most unfavourable attitude) through ‘+2’ (most favourable attitude).

Results: Persons having moderately favourable attitude dominated both the beneficiaries (70%) and non-beneficiaries (86.67%) of the watershed area with a mean attitude score of 1.38 and 1.22 respectively. Although both had favourable attitude towards the activities of watershed, but Fisher Exact test value was significant at p = .009 level; which implies that the beneficiary respondents had significantly more favourable attitude than the non-beneficiaries.

It is also seen from the study that the level of favourableness of attitude directly varies with the level of adoption of crop production technology [correlation coefficient (r)=0.288; p = .05) and watershed development technology (r=0.269; p = .05), change in cropped area in dry season (r=0.249; p = .10), change in crop diversity (r=0.291; p = .05), and change in occupation diversity (r=0.320; p = .05), which implies that more the attitude was favourable, more they gained the benefits.

Conclusion: The watershed development project has a positive effect in changing peoples’ attitude towards its activity. Favourable attitude helps to reap more benefit from the project.