Rajasthan govt completes Phase-1 of MJSA project

Nearly 93 per cent work under phase one of Rajasthan government's ambitious project that aims at making every village self-reliant in water and increasing productivity of land has been completed, a top official said today.
"There was a target of 1.08 lakh structures related to water conservation in Phase 1 of 'Mukhya Mantri Jal Swavlamban Abhiyan' (MJSA) that began in January. Till July, 91,043 structures have been finished," Sriram Vedire, Chairman, Rajasthan River Basin and State Water Conservation Authority told PTI in an interview here.
He said all district collectors of the state have been asked to ensure that the structures are photographed showing how the area looked before and after the rainy season.

Vedire hailed the coordination among the watershed, groundwater, water resource and forest departments for making the project a success.
"Ensuring coordination among various departments was a task as the area covered under the programme was huge and involved many stakeholders," he said.
The official said roping in modern technology like geotagging and various mobile applications in implementing the programme helped in keeping corruption at bay.

"Geotagging helps the authorities concerned to keep a tab on the progress of structures online. Thus field officers will not be able to manipulate work, i.E. Showing it on papers but not doing it on the ground. Our web portal can be used by anyone to check the on-going work on real-time basis.

"Mobile applications like 'Rajdhara' and 'Way point' help the head office to monitor each and every construction happening in the villages under the programme," he said.
Vedire said the state was the first to employ the use of such technology in a mass programme.
"Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) has now taken a cue from MJSA and decided to use geotagging in its programmes," he said.
Possessing barely 1.6 per cent of water resources of the country, the desert state of Rajasthan had launched a "people's movement" to recharge its scarce natural resource through the MJSA.
More than 3,000 villages will be covered under the campaign in four years in different phases.

Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje kicked off the first phase of the campaign from her constituency Jhalawar in January.
Vedire said apart from modern technology, the programme has also taken into account various rainwater harvesting methods based on traditional knowledge.
"We have renovated many ancient water conservation structures like bawdi, tanka etc," he said.
Talking about the second phase of the MJSA programme, Vedire, who is also the adviser to the Ministry of Water Resources, River development and Ganga rejuvenation, said the Rajasthan government was mulling to use drones for better surveillance of the project.
"The idea is to incorporate best technology so that no area is left out from the purview of the programme. With the use of drones, we can get 3-D images of the area. In Phase-1, we found out that few regions around the ridge or border area were not covered because of the manual method of surveillance.

"There were also reports of repetition of work without knowing that a particular area has already been selected. Thus we have designed 'Way point' mobile application that gives a clear layout of the areas already covered," he explained.
A whopping Rs 60 crore was collected in donation from the public, corporates, NGOs and other cultural organisations for Phase-1 of the project.