Community participation is critical in enhancing rural sustainability in terms of managing indigenous water harvesting structures. The long-standing illusion that the water crisis can only be tackled through a top down strategy design has been shattered by a successful community engagement model using the social, financial, and human capital of the community in the semi-arid village Laporiya of Rajasthan in India. The positive externalities created through the process of community engagement are not only via knowledge sharing but also water sharing with neighboring villages. The appropriate policy suggestion for the positive externalities so created is to build an extra market for ‘ideas’ creating incentives for these innovative practices in rural settings by allowing them to flourish in a hazard free manner, free from the risk of encroachment of common lands, or of future inter-sectoral resource conflict arising out of any industrial activity. The state-managed community participation has also been successful in reviving and creating water harvesting structures, but the sustainability of such program is at stake, in the absence of social capital. Communities do matter but in ways that sustain the local economy.

社区参与对于管理本地集水结构在增强农村可持续性方面至关重要。长期以来的幻想，即只能通过自上而下的战略设计来解决水危机，这种成功的幻想已经被成功的社区参与模式所打破，该模式使用了拉贾斯坦邦半干旱村庄拉波里亚的社区的社会，财务和人力资本。印度。通过社区参与过程创造的积极外部性不仅是知识共享，而且是与邻近村庄的水共享。针对这样产生的积极外部性的适当政策建议是为“想法”建立一个额外的市场，通过允许它们以无危险的方式蓬勃发展来激励农村地区的这些创新做法，避免了由于任何工业活动而侵占公共土地或未来跨部门资源冲突的风险。由国家管理的社区参与在恢复和创建集水结构方面也取得了成功，但是在缺乏社会资本的情况下，该计划的可持续性受到威胁。社区确实很重要，但以维持当地经济的方式。