The Central Water Commission, the Government of India representatives from 10 states and the World Bank, had signed a $250 million project today, the project is for a long term dam safety program and for improving the safety and performance of the existing dams across various states of India.
This Second Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project would strengthen the dam safety, the DRIP-2 would be building dam safety guidelines, bring in global experience, and would also introduce innovative technologies. The dam safety management would be transformed by another major innovation of the project which would introduce a risk-based approach to it which would help to effectively allocate financial resources towards the importance of dam safety needs.
DRIP-2 would be implemented in over 120 states and at a national level through the CWC. The states where the project would be implemented are Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Meghalaya, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya. During the project implementation, other states might be added.
The Department of Economic Affairs, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Finance on behalf of Government of India, and the representatives of the State Governments and Mr Junaid Ahmad, Country Director of India on behalf of World bank signed the agreement.
The recently closed DRIP-1 is also included in the World Bank support to dam safety in India which would improve the safety and sustainable performance of 223 dams in six states of India and a central agency.
The other important measure that would be supported by DRIP-2 also includes flood forecasting systems and integrated reservoir operations which would contribute to building climate resilience, the DRIP-2 also supports the preparation and implementation of Emergency Action Plans to enable vulnerable downstream communities for the preparation and enhancement of resilience against the possible negative impacts and the risks of climate change, and it would also support the piloting of supplemental revenue generation schemes like the floating solar panels.