Uniform Rules For Wasteland Development

The government has come out with common guidelines for the development of wastelands. The guidelines envisage an approach in which members of the village community will decide their work programme themselves. This was disclosed by minister of rural areas and employment Kinjarappu Yerranaidu at a function here.

Technical support for the programme will be provided by the watershed development team which consists of specialists trained in developing wastelands.

Under the common guidelines, all area development programmes like drought-prone area programme, desert development programme, integrated wastelands development project and a part of the employment assurance scheme will be implemented on watershed basis with the active participation of village community, non- government organisations, panchayati raj institutions and social workers at the grassroot levels.

 

The minister said the zilla parishad and district rural development agencies will be responsible for implementing, funding, training, monitoring and providing guidelines to projects at the district levels. Panchayat samitis at the block level and gram panchayats at the village level will be associated with planning and implementation of the projects. The gram panchayats will also be responsible for the maintenance of the created assets such as pasture lands and plantations.

Yerranaidu said his department was also keeping in touch with the department of bio-technology for developments in the area. The idea behind this is to develop technology packages and farming practices for each agro-climatic zone so that these could be used to develop wastelands and degraded lands.

The minister also said the government was making efforts to complete mapping wastelands in all the districts using satellite imagery through the national remote sensing agency, to build up a database on wastelands at the national level.