Evaluating Impacts of Watershed Development Program on Agricultural Productivity, Income, and Livelihood in Bhalki Watershed of Bardhaman District, West Bengal

Watershed development facilitates in reducing the vulnerability of farm income to weather-induced shocks in rain-fed lands in India. The present paper estimates homogeneous as well as non-homogeneous effects of watershed development on farmers demonstrating a huge discrepancy in estimated values between two. It shows that initial differences in resource endowments, access to formal credit, education level, and caste membership can result in inequalities in the impact of watershed development programs on targeted parameters. The analysis also establishes the sensitivity of the estimates to the general level of multivariate imbalance as well as univariate imbalance in confounding covariates.