**8. Interlinking of rivers to get new push during the year 1999–2004**

An ambitious project on interlinking of river got new impetus during the year 1999–2004. It focuses mainly on rivers linking of sub-basins within a larger basin or nearby basins instead of going on for distant inter-basin river linkages.

Government of India considered those rivers basin for interlinking which are adjacent to each other, keeping in the mind its feasibility and utility to larger beneficiaries/stakeholders. It has done the interlinking of rivers in a manner that it simultaneously looks after irrigation and drinking water needs of human beings and ecological concerns.

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Sri Lanka and the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) have designed a 3 year project on "Strategic Analysis of India's River Linking Project" to qualitatively improve the troubles and route of the prevailing NRLP debate [7].
