To be clear, this is not always easy. Since the late 1990s, both the Indian government and a variety of nongovernmental organizations have funneled some $500 million annually into redeveloping watersheds in drought-prone rural areas. But experts say many such endeavors have fallen short of their goals or proved unsustainable, in large part because they have focused too much on the technical aspects of improving a watershed and too little on navigating the complex social dynamics of farming villages. In other words, no effort gets very far without a lot of hands-on cooperation. And if you're wondering what could possibly be so complex about a smallish group of marginal farmers living in the middle of nowhere, you should go to Satichiwadi and spend some time with the Kales and the Pawars.

Satichiwadi lies several miles off a two-lane road that crosses a high, semiarid plain dotted with meager-looking farms and drought-resistant neem trees. The road to the village, completed last year, remains little more than an axle-smashing series of dirt switchbacks descending some 600 vertical feet from the high bluffs to the flat valley floor. Many of the villagers still come and go the old-fashioned way, making a 45-minute, sweaty hike up a vertiginous footpath.

Members of the Pawar family like to say they got here first, about a hundred years ago, when this was a mostly uninhabited, forested place, and great-grandfather Soma Pawar, a nomadic shepherd belonging to the Thakar tribe, made his way down from the high buttes and liked what he saw. Sometime after that—precisely how long is in dispute—great-grandfather Goma Genu Kale, also a Thakar, is said to have ambled in and taken up residence as well.

For a time the Kale and Pawar families got along just fine, living close together in a small group of thatched-roof, mud-brick homes built near the temple. Working together, they cleared trees and tilled the land to grow rice and other grains. Then, about 40 or 50 years ago, the Kales abruptly moved to the other side of the valley. The reason is also in dispute: The Kales say they simply got tired of tromping the half mile or so back and forth to their millet fields. The Pawars say, somewhat huffily, that the Kales got sick of the Pawars.

Whatever the case, the two families—despite being separated by no more than 500 yards of fields—stopped talking. They held their own independent holy weeks to celebrate the goddess Sati and pointedly stopped attending one another's weddings. The Pawars stopped calling the Kales by name, referring to them instead as the "Fed Up People." The hamlet where the Kales now live is known simply as Vaitagwadi, Fed Up Town.