Two districts of Chhattisgarh mainly Jashpur and Kanker have been included in Centre’s Neeranchal National Watershed Project Implementation Plan.
The project will be implemented in nine States viz Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana, officials stated.
These States were selected based on the exatent of rainfed agricultural area. These States cover approximatelay 60 percent of the total rainfed area of the country. Neeranchal supports Capacity Building, Planning, Innovation, Communication, Knowledge Management and M&E which will benefit the components of PMKSY across all States. Some components of the project will be demonstrated in selected sites of the partner States to be scaled up across the State in a phased manner.
As a Technical Assistance (TA) project, Neeranchal aims to strengthen the existing structures and systems without creating parallel ones. This would ensure effective integration of learnings and their upscaling within project States and at the Centre.
The focus of Neeranchal is on value addition through targetted capacity building, development and testing of new models, software and skills and piloting of new approaches and innovations through demonstrations at scale, creating awareness and knowledge networks including access to best practices, and addressing existing gaps in the system. It shall ensure institutional and systemic strengthening for effective and efficient programme delivery. Thus in essence, Neeranchal is designed to add value to all aspects of the Watershed Component of PMKSY and cater to the specific requirements of the nine project States.
Further, the learnings from Neeranchal can be utilized across all the components of PMKSY particularly in planning, capacity building, IEC activities a nd M&E. It aims to move beyond the conservative framework of a demonstration project to provide benefits at scale.
Specific software, models and systemic innovations such as for integrated planning, capacity building, IEC, M&E, financial management, etc. developed within Neeranchal could be applied to all States under PMKSY.