Watershed development (WSD) is an important and expensive rural development initiative in India. Proponent of the approach contend that treating watersheds will increase agricultural and overall biomass productivity, which, in turn will reduce rural poverty. We used satellite measured Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index as a proxy for land productivity to test this crucial contention. We compared micro-watersheds that had received funding and completed watershed restoration with adjacent untreated micro-watersheds in the same region.