Cabinet approves Rs 10,000 crore project to improve dams in India
The cabinet committee on economic affairs on Thursday approved a Rs 10,211-crore project to improve the safety and performance of select dams across India.
The dam rehabilitation and improvement project (DRIP)–phase II and phase III–is financially supported by the World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. India is the third ranked country in terms of total number of dams, next after the US and China, and it has 5,334 big dams and another 412 dams under construction. “Almost 80 per cent are over 25 years old….There is a need for rehabilitation and improvement of these structures,” the minister said.
DRIP will be implemented over a period of 10 years in two phases – each of six years with two years overlapping from April 2021 to March 2031. The first phase of this project started in 2012.
