Major Watershed Projects In India

Watershed management refers to how the use of land and other resources is organised and guided in the watershed area. This type of management is carried out in order to provide services and goods without causing any severe effect on water resources and sorry. A watershed management project is an effort to achieve this particular objective by taking up the activities that will benefit the landless and by treating the unproductive and even underproductive lands. There is a strategy that is adopted in these programmes, and usually, the management involves all those stakeholders that are present in the watershed to cooperate in identifying the issues and concerns related to the watershed and even develop it further by adopting solutions that are economically sustainable and environmentally friendly. One of the special central programs that leads to the benefits of cultivators and families who are living under the poverty line is the National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas (NWDPRA).

Common Goals of Watershed Management

Some common watershed management goals include:

1. Pollution prevention
2. Keeping resource overharvesting to a minimum
3. Storage of water, flood management, and sedimentation management
4. Conservation of wildlife
5. Soil depletion management and avoidance
6. Charging up groundwater to ensure a steady supply of water

Major watershed development programme projects in India

In India, apart from the National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas, there are five other major projects for watershed development. So six major watershed development programmes have taken place in India, and these are:

• National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas
• Desert development programme
• Employment assurance scheme
• Watershed development is shifting cultivation areas
• The integrated wasteland development project
• Drought prone areas programme

In India, watershed development was initially managed by the national wasteland development board, which was under the Ministry of environment and forest. However, it is now under the Ministry of rural development and the department of land resources. All these six watershed management projects or development programmes account for approximately 70% of all the funds and the area that falls under the watershed programmes in India.

Neeranchal national watershed project

This particular watershed project is assisted by the World Bank and is undertaken by the Indian government. This Neeranchal national watershed project is designed to provide assistance and strengthen the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayi Yojana watershed development component. This program is currently implemented in nine different states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. This project is majorly designed to address some concerns, and these concerns are as follows:

• To bring institutional changes in rainfed and watershed agricultural management in India.
• To bring in strategies for improving the watershed management practices in the areas, even when the project support is withdrawn.
• To develop systems to ensure that there is a better concentration on these rainfed irrigation management and watershed programmes. 
• To support equity, incomes, and livelihoods with the help of local participation in these watersheds.

National watershed development project for rainfed areas

This particular scheme was developed to benefit the families who belong to cultivators and live a life below the poverty line. With the help of this programme, they can benefit such families by creating water bodies, treating arable and even non-arable lands, developing agriculture or horticulture crops, treating the drainage line system, providing household production system which is land-based or forestry-based, etc.; the primary focus of the National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas is on the rehabilitation or settlement of such families by developing the area. They also focus on developing the field activities by uplifting the usage pattern of the land of the area and developing water resources based on guidelines of the National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas which the Department of agriculture and cooperation issues, the Indian government, and even Ministry of agriculture. 

Conclusion

Watershed management projects in India play an important role in all the watershed areas. The project helps in improving the lives of cultivator families living in the watershed areas by bringing an overall improvement in the area. This improvement includes the development of land and water resources. These projects also aim to manage the land use pattern and ensure that goods and services are produced without causing any severe effect on the soil and water resources. In India, many watershed management programmes are running, but there are six significant projects which are mentioned in the article itself. All these critical projects, including the Neeranchal national watershed project, play an essential role in sustaining people’s lives in watershed areas.