<p>We analyse the suitability of Government of India’s 2003 and 2008 common guidelines for prioritising micro-watersheds for<br /> restoration. These guidelines attempt to balance the need for improved hydraulic function with poverty alleviation and agricultural<br /> productivity. To do so, they provide a set of sub-criteria for prioritising micro-watersheds for treatment. We ranked the<br /> microwatersheds in the Kalivelli basin in South India based on these sub-criteria. We then compared the 2003 with the 2008<br /> guidelines using GIS and spatial statistics. Visual inspection of the resulting digital maps and spatial autocorrelation analysis<br /> showed that individual sub-criteria within a guideline were highly positively auto correlated. Spatial cross-correlations<br /> using Mantels test between sub-criteria in the same guidelines produced negative results however. Very different watersheds<br /> would have been selected for treatment using the 2003 vs. the 2008 guidelines. While this could have been evidence that the<br /> 2008 guidelines were an improvement over the 2003 guidelines, comparing the planning outcomes did not support this conclusion.<br /> We conclude that criteria used to select micro-watersheds for hydrologic treatment should be re-formulated emphasizing efffcient<br /> resource use and improved hydraulic function prior to social and economic concerns. Finally, we argue that a combined GIS<br /> and spatial analysis approach is amenable to quickly evaluating watershed selection criteria as well as assessing post implementation<br /> outcomes.</p>