27 MAY Delhi: The Secretary, Department of Land Resources (DoLR), Government of India (GoI) Shri Ajay Tirkey reviewed the Implementation Support Mission of World Bank Assisted Rejuvenating Watersheds for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development (REWARD) program.REWARD is a World Bank assisted Watershed development program which is being implemented from 2021 to 2026. The Development Objectives of REWARD program is to “Strengthen capacities of National and State institutions to adopt improved watershed management for increasing farmers resilience and support value chains in selected watersheds of participating States”. The program is being implemented to introduce modern watershed practices in the Department of Land Resources in the Ministry of Rural Development and in the States of Karnataka and Odisha. The total budget outlay of REWARD program is USD 167.71 million over a program period of 4.5 years. This includes USD 115 million from World Bank [Karnataka (USD 60 million), Odisha (USD 49 million) and DoLR (USD 6 million)], USD 46.71 million from two participating States [Karnataka (USD 25.71) and Odisha (USD 21.0 million)] and USD 6 million from DoLR. The funding pattern is 70:30, between World Bank and States whereas it is 50:50 between World Bank and DoLR.At the central level, the scope of the REWARD program covers management, monitoring, communication and knowledge sharing functions by DoLR. At the State level, the REWARD program will be contiguous in scope to the WDC-PMKSY 2.0, and support implementation of key science-based activities and demonstrations which eventually aims at synergising broader perspective of WDC-PMKSY 2.0 in other States in India.As a part of third Implementation Support Mission (ISM), the team of World Bank headed by Smt. Preeti Kumar visited DoLR & REWARD States for 3rd ISM to review the progress and to discuss about the plan of action for the next 6 months. After completing the mission, yesterday the team visited Department of Land Resources, Government of India to debrief the outcomes of ISM to the Secretary, DoLR. During the debriefing, the team felt that the progress of REWARD is on track and complemented the efforts of DoLR for the present progress and requested Secretary, DoLR for his continuous support to achieve the progress as per the Disbursement Linked Indicators of the program.The other points discussed during the debriefing meeting includes strengthening of Centre for Excellence on watershed component which was established in Bengaluru under REWARD program, organizing National level workshop on science based watershed management, development of protocols for expansion of Land Resource Inventory (LRI) across the country on a pilot basis, providing LRI based digital advisory services to farmers and Exposure visits of REWARD officials etc.Shri Nitin Khade, Joint Secretary (WM), Dr. C.P. Reddy, Senior Additional Commissioner, ISM members from World Bank, Experts of NPMU of REWARD program and other officials of DoLR attended the meeting.
