10th Governing Body Meeting of OCTDMS Held

Bhubaneswar: The 10th Governing Body Meeting of the Odisha Community Tank Development & Management Society (OCTDMS) was held under the Chairmanship of the Chief Secretary, Odisha Pradeep Kumar Jena in the Loka Seva Bhawan today today.

Besides the DC-cum-ACS, Department of Water Resources, the Principal Secretaries A &FE; Finance & Energy; F & ARD; PR & DW Departments and senior officers of key Departments associated with the projects under the society were present.

While the Chief Secretary appreciated the convergence of the key stakeholders, the DCcum ACS stressed on the need to boost expenditure.

Needless to say both the projects, i.e., Odisha Integrated Project for Climate Resilient Agriculture(OIIPCRA) and Green Climate Fund (GCF) are sustainable agriculture projects of the Department of Water Resources with game-changing impact.

Odisha Integrated Project for Climate Resilient Agriculture (OIIPCRA) aims to intensify and diversify agricultural production and enhance climate resilience; demonstrate climate smart agriculture in irrigation command of 538 selected Minor Irrigation Projects (MIPs) of 15 project districts in Odisha.

It seeks to promote improved crop productivity; farmers adoption of resilient agricultural practices and technologies; diversification of crops and adaptation to climate change; reliability of irrigation service delivery and efficient use of water; sustainably delivering good quality, better yielding and resilient seeds to farmers; facilitate improved agricultural produce marketing; adopt cascade approach to investments in tank irrigation systems; quality and reliability of irrigation service delivery and promoting efficient and sustainable use of water at cascade and catchment levels.

The primary stakeholders include farmers; Pani Panchayats; women; Farmer Producer Organizations; Fisheries Co-operative Societies, Agro- Entrepreneurs etc.

The key intervention strategies put in place are: participatory bottom-up planning; focus on command saturation model under irrigation; sectoral convergence; implementation facilitation by support organizations; value addition and market linkage support by ABSOs; technical collaborations with institutions of repute: IRRI, ICARDA, ICRISAT, World Fish, NRRI, CIWA, IITs etc; IT driven monitoring & decision support by ‘Samanwaya’ application etc.

Good practices and innovations promoted are: mechanized dry DSR;green manuring; Custom Hiring Centers for Pani Panchayats; hybrid vegetable seeds; PP centric crop and business plan; scientific pisciculture; biofloc; kits for water quality testing; dragnets for efficient fishing; innovation (2 climate resilient chickpea lines through ICRISAT; 4 short duration rice lines through IRRI; Village Knowledge Center through NRRI; Rice-Fish IFS through NRRI); improved water availability by cascade approach; use of surplus ground water; feeder channel assessment; soil moisture assessment by remote sensing.

Green Climate Fund project aims at ‘Ground Water Recharge and Solar Micro Irrigation to Ensure Food Security and Enhance in Vulnerable Tribal Areas of Odisha’ in 1000 Minor Irrigation tanks and 9000 PRDW tanks of 15 water stressed districts of Odisha, with a completion target of Nov,2025. The project objectives are for augmentation of ground water with 50,000 recharge wells in 10000 ponds and sustainable use of ground water through 1,50,000 dug wells; use of solar pumps in 1000 tanks; water security and increased income of vulnerable farming households; operation and maintenance of project through 20,000 Jal Mitras; capacity building of community members on crop water budgeting efficient use climate resilient agriculture and horticulture practices; training to landless and vulnerable women members on livelihood in farm and non-farm activities; IT driven monitoring & decision support by ‘Samanwaya’ application etc. Good practices and innovations promoted in implementation of these projects are Recharging of subsurface water table; GIS based mobile App for automated billing etc,which have been discussed in the meeting. To implement and assess the integrated outcome, a comprehensive MIS and GIS web-based application ‘Samanwaya’ has been developed. It involves and produces spatial data sets; geo-tagging; integrating data from various scales; organizing data structures and establishing GIS database. It is an interactive query-based system for department officials and a mobile application for users.