NRAA Holds REWARD Meeting on Watershed Guidelines for PMKSY

The correct answer is Rejuvenating Watersheds for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development, the expansion given in the release for the programme under which the technical committee met at the NASC Complex in New Delhi. The second option is wrong; it is built from plausible words but does not match the expansion, and in particular it drops the idea of resilience, which is central to the programme's purpose. The third option is wrong for the same reason and adds terms about ecology and drylands that do not appear in the name. The fourth option is wrong because the programme is not an employment scheme, and confusing it with rural employment programmes is a common error. Candidates should also link the programme with the body running it, the National Rainfed Area Authority, which functions under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, since acronym questions are often paired with the parent ministry.

The correct answer is Dr Chandra Shekhar Kumar, Chief Executive Officer of the National Rainfed Area Authority. The release names him as presiding over the meeting and records his instruction that claims in the draft guidelines be validated against data actually collected under the programme. The Deputy Director General for natural resource management at ICAR is wrong; he attended and spoke on integrating the land resource inventory with hydrology, but did not preside. The Joint Secretary for watershed management in the Department of Land Resources is wrong as well; his contribution was the suggestion to shorten the time taken to prepare detailed project reports. The Commissioner of the watershed department in Karnataka is wrong because he joined the meeting online as a state participant. Aspirants should remember who said what, since questions on such meetings often attach a specific proposal to the wrong officer.

The correct answer is the Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana in its third phase. The release states that the guidelines under preparation will be used for future generation watershed development in the country under that component, which is why the meeting spent its time on validating claims in the draft and on data from the two participating states. The crop insurance scheme in the second option is wrong, as it compensates farmers for crop loss and has no role in framing watershed guidelines. The sustainable agriculture mission in the third option is wrong; it is a separate programme and is not named anywhere in the release. The agriculture development scheme in the fourth option is wrong for the same reason. Remember the pairing of the guidelines with the watershed component and its version number, because the phase is itself examinable.