A community’s poorest families often receive limited benefits from watershed development, despite their greater need. The landless are unable to take advantage of improved soil and water conditions to plant more crops and vegetables. Those who own only a few sheep or goats may suffer disproportionately from grazing bans imposed on common lands. At the other end of the social scale, by the WOTR’s own admission, farmers with the most land have benefited disproportionately in Darewadi and other IGWDP project villages from new consumer items such as televisions, radios, motorcycles, and cooking utensils (D’Souza and Lobo 2004:10).

On the positive side, work on watershed projects can provide sustained wages for poor villagers with no livestock or crops. Families that earn enough to save can then lease, or even buy, small plots of arable land and pull themselves one rung up the economic ladder (Lobo 2005a).

In Darewadi, new agricultural work opportunities and the doubling of hourly wages for such labor have proven a big boon for poor families (Lobo 2005c). (See "Table 1: More water in Darewadi".) In the mid-1990s, two-thirds of households migrated each year in search of livelihoods. Today, people who had moved away are returning. In fact, additional farm laborers are now being drawn from nearby villages to work the new acres of cultivable land (D’Souza and Lobo 2004:11).

In another positive sign for poorer families, sheep and goat ownership has increased since 2001 as villagers benefit from the removal of grazing bans and increased fodder supplies (Lobo 2005c). “People do not have to go outside looking for work now and do not have to starve,” says Mrs. Zumbarbai M. Borade, a landless Darewadi resident. “The poor have benefited a lot from this project” (WOTR 2002:6).