Nabard's big push to watershed projects in South

The National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has taken up watershed projects worth Rs 300 crore in 25 distressed districts in south India.

Included among the projects are 465 micro-watersheds, in clusters aggregating 465,000 lakh hectares, spread across 16 districts in Andhra Pradesh, six in Karnataka and three in Kerala, according to a report on 'Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2006-07' released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

"The fund requirement for watershed projects is being provided as grant from the Watershed Development Fund (WDF), maintained by Nabard. These projects are being backed by appropriate agronomic intervention and supplemented with compatible family level livelihood support activities such as agro-horticulture-silviculture development, animal husbandry, non-farm sector activates, micro-finance, especially bank linkage of farmers' self-help groups," the report added.

As of November 2007, projects over 80,000 hectares have been identified and are in their different stages of implementation in Andhra Pradesh. About 75 per cent of the watersheds and clusters have been identified in Karnataka in the districts of Belgaum, Hassan, Chitradurga, Chikmagalur, Kodagu and Shimoga.

Watersheds aggregating to 15,000 hectares have also been identified in Kerala. In Maharashtra 15,000 hectares in six districts of Vidarbha region has been under implementation since 2006.

Simultaneously, in all the 31 distressed districts in the four states watershed projects are under their various stages of implementation and the entire programme is expected to be completed within 3-4 years.

The report said watershed projects are being implemented in remote villages and on completion would ensure their financial inclusion and a reasonable standard of living for the community in a sustained manner.

It is expected that the credit offtake (on an average of Rs 1 crore per project), that is Rs 465 crore, will be effected in all the 465 watershed project villages over a period of 2-3 years, over the project implementation period.