Third national consultation at Nagpur takes up draft technical guidelines for watershed management

4 November 2026

A two-day third national level consultation on the draft National Technical Guidelines for Improved Watershed Management was held at Nagpur on 4 and 5 November 2026. The Department of Land Resources of the Ministry of Rural Development organised it with the National Rainfed Area Authority and ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, which hosted it. The guidelines are being drafted for REWARD, a World Bank-assisted programme whose full name is Rejuvenating Watersheds for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development, and they will also feed into the next phase of the Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana. Officials noted that project timelines were cut from seven years in the first phase to five years in the second. Odisha and Karnataka are the REWARD States, and participants included NABARD, the World Bank, ICRISAT and several ICAR institutes.