Fr. Herman Bacher
Swiss by birth, Fr. Hermann Bacher came to India in 1948 as a Jesuit priest. Profoundly affected by the distress of the poor in the drought prone district of Ahmednagar, in the hinterland of Maharashtra, Fr. Bacher decided to devote his life to their social and economic upliftment.
In 1968, he founded the Social Centre, an NGO, to develop land, water and agricultural resources of the small and marginalized farmers. However, with frequent and severe drought regularly reversing gains made, Fr. Bacher realized that a change in strategy from resource extraction and utilization, to resource mobilization and conservation was called for, in order to mitigate the impacts of drought and secure advances made. He conceived the idea of making participatory watershed development a people’s movement for poverty reduction through environmental regeneration.
In 1989, he conceived and launched the path breaking and highly regarded bilaterally funded program called the Indo German Watershed Development Program (IGWDP) in Maharashtra. In 1993, he co-founded the Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) and continues to serve as its Chairman.
In 1994, Fr. Bacher was awarded Germany’s highest civilian Award, the Federal Order of Merit, Class 1 by the German Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation in Mendhwan, the very village where Fr. Bacher had successfully mobilized the people to regenerate their watershed. In the same year, the Govt. of Maharashtra bestowed upon him the Krishi Bhushan in recognition of his outstanding services to farmers in the state.
Fr. Bacher, affectionately called “Baba” by villagers, has been instrumental in helping hundreds of thousands of farmers free themselves from poverty and has touched the lives of millions of Indians through his dedication, zeal and perseverance. He is rightly referred to as the “Father of participatory watershed development in India” for making it into a movement and having, almost single handedly, contributed to demystifying watershed technology, making it widely accessible to villagers and ensuring its widespread dissemination across the country.