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DoLR Secretary Sets Out Watershed-Led Dryland Strategy at Dryland Congress 2026 — UPSC Current Affairs 2026

Schemes & Committees11 Sept 2026

DoLR Secretary Sets Out Watershed-Led Dryland Strategy at Dryland Congress 2026

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Department of Land Resources Secretary Narendra Bhooshan told the Dryland Congress 2026 Partner Spotlight in New Delhi that India must shift from reacting to droughts to building resilient dryland landscapes through integrated watershed development.
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He placed the Watershed Development Component of PMKSY at the centre of that shift, citing 7,602 projects over about 34 million hectares in twelve years and a benefit-cost ratio of roughly 2:1.
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A proposed Watershed Portal is to serve as digital public infrastructure across the project lifecycle, carrying geospatial datasets so that landscape resilience, not just asset location, can be tracked.

●Dryland Congress 2026 is running at the NASC Complex, New Delhi from 10 September 2026, with more than 800 participants from over 25 countries.
●Its organisers are ICRISAT and ICAR. ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, was set up in 1972, is a CGIAR centre headquartered at Patancheru, Hyderabad, and works on six mandate crops including sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut.
●Rainfed agriculture covers about 61.39 million hectares, or 43% of India's net sown area, and contributes around 40% of national food production.
●The Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, runs both WDC-PMKSY and DILRMP. WDC-PMKSY 2.0 was approved on 15 December 2021 for 2021-26 with an indicative central outlay of Rs 8,134 crore and a target of 49.50 lakh hectares; DILRMP has been a 100% centrally funded Central Sector Scheme since 1 April 2016, replacing the 2008 National Land Records Modernisation Programme.
●Twelve-year WDC-PMKSY record cited in the release: 7,602 watershed projects across about 34 million hectares, roughly 0.9 million water harvesting structures created or rejuvenated, protective irrigation on about 2 million hectares, nearly 6 million farmers benefited, 67 million person-days generated and 0.3 million hectares brought under plantation, at a benefit-cost ratio of about 2:1.
●The proposed Watershed Portal is to be an integrated digital public infrastructure covering the whole project lifecycle and carrying key geospatial datasets. Bhuvan, India's standing geoportal for such data, is built and run by ISRO's National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, and was launched in August 2009.
●The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India, published by ISRO's Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, recorded 97.85 million hectares, or 29.7% of India's geographical area, as degraded in 2018-19 in its 2021 edition.
●The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, adopted in 1994, is the only legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management; at its COP14 in New Delhi in 2019 India raised its land restoration target to 26 million hectares by 2030.

Exam Relevance

upsc

GS Paper 3 > Agriculture > Irrigation Systems and Rainfed Farming; Environment > Land Degradation

Expected Questions

★UPSC may ask which body publishes the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India, or pair WDC-PMKSY with its implementing department.

Key Terms

Watershed development

Treating land, water, vegetation and livelihoods together over a drainage unit rather than plot by plot, so that soil moisture and groundwater recharge improve across the whole landscape.

Land Degradation Neutrality

The UNCCD goal under which the amount and quality of land resources needed to support ecosystem functions stays stable or improves over a given period.

priority_highMust Remember

•WDC-PMKSY 2.0: approved 15 December 2021, period 2021-26, indicative central outlay Rs 8,134 crore, target 49.50 lakh hectares; implemented by the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development.
•Rainfed area is about 61.39 million hectares, 43% of net sown area, producing roughly 40% of India's food.
•The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India is a Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad product; Bhuvan belongs to NRSC, Hyderabad. The two ISRO centres are frequently swapped in options.

tips_and_updatesExam Tips

•The high-yield pairing here is department-to-scheme: the Department of Land Resources sits under Rural Development, not under Agriculture, a trap that recurs with WDC-PMKSY because PMKSY itself is split across departments.

Question 1 of 2Score: 0/0

Factual

The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India is prepared and published by which organisation?

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Current Affairs Pulse

DoLR Secretary Sets Out Watershed-Led Dryland Strategy at Dryland Congress 2026

Key Points

Quick Facts

Exam Spotlight

Exam Relevance

Expected Questions

Key Terms

priority_highMust Remember

tips_and_updatesExam Tips

Practice Quiz

The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India is prepared and published by which organisation?

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