The Bank had announced a $194 million IDA credit in the previous fiscal for the project for the reclamation exercise in the state for 1.5 lakh hectares of sodic lands in the state which have been proven barren due to high content of sodium.

The World Bank has said that the project has been able to boost the income levels of about 85,000 farmers and their families by enabling re-usage of the land that was earlier used for plantations. It has, at the same time, also succeeded in formation of the groups to boost socio-economic well-being.

Developed around the concept of group savings, the project has has been split into various small and micro-projects with an independent financial assistance from the Bank.

The project system consists ofparticipatory management between the World Bank, the local government as well as NGOs. The project had targeted the restoration of the low-yielding and barren croplands by suggesting new methods to the local government as well as assisting in procuring the technical as well as financial support.

An independent accounting system of the project is also carried out by the participating NGOs to appraise the progress of the projects from time to time.

The above mentioned project in the state of Uttar Pradesh has been so successful in reclaiming the lost barren sodic lands, the Bank claims, that the state government has already asked the Bank to help it carry on the project for the reclamation of other tracts of high sodium content agricultural land. The user groups formed by the NGOs, local agencies as well as contractors work with technical support from the state implementing agencies in completing the project.

Uttar Pradesh has about 17 million hectares of land under cultivation and accounts for 10 percent of the country's sown area and 25 per cent of the total irrigated area. The state produces as much as 20 per cent of the entire foodgrain production in the country.

Alongwith the increasing pressure of population and land degradation the state's cultivable land resources have increasingly under pressure. Adding to this, is the built of excessive salt deposits in many parts of the cultivable land that has rendered as much as 7 per cent of the land as uncultivable. The land in this area has become so sodic that it has affected the growth of crops as well as the health of the animals who feed on these plants or live on this area.

It has vastly brought down crop yields, says the World Bank in its report. The rice yields have slowed down to about 1 per cent from a high 5 per cent in the 1980, the Bank's report says. At the same time, the yield of wheat has suffered substantially and come down to 1.6 per cent from the previous high yield of 2.4 per cent in 1980, it says.

The project has comes as bigstep in the area of reclamation of barren and sodic croplands that have shown a growing tendency in the many parts of the world, particularly in the developing countries, which are faced with a massive problem of drainage as well as rapid urbanisation.