NRAA Technical Committee Reviews Watershed Development Guidelines Under REWARD Programme

New Delhi, Sep 23 (KNN) The National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, held a National Level Technical Committee meeting on September 22 under the REWARD (Rejuvenating Watersheds for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development) programme to review watershed development and management.

The meeting was chaired by Dr. Chandra Shekhar Kumar, IAS, Chief Executive Officer, NRAA, and attended by officials from the Department of Land Resources, ICAR, and the governments of Odisha and Karnataka, along with scientists, technical partners, academic institutions, NGOs and REWARD programme teams.

Discussions focused on validating claims in the draft National Technical Guidelines (NTG) using data collected under REWARD. Dr. A.K. Nayak, DDG (NRM), ICAR, called for clear documentation of methodologies and integration of Land Resource Inventory (LRI) with hydrology for watershed planning.

Nitin Khade, IAS, Joint Secretary (Watershed Management), Department of Land Resources, suggested reducing the time for preparing Detailed Project Reports from six months to three months and including convergence between different sectors in the NTG.

The committee also asked Odisha and Karnataka to share watershed data and Decision Support System (DSS) resources with stakeholders and consortium partners. The data will be used for analysis, report preparation and validation of the guidelines.

The NTG is being developed for future watershed development under the Watershed Development Component of Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana 3.0.

(KNN Bureau)