Home 
Sectors and Themes Water Stories Country Water Actions India
|
|
Country Water Action: India
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
More than 30 percent of Asia's irrigated land is in India, around 59 million hectares. And where there is irrigated land, there are greener pastures. Poverty rates are lowest in those Indian states with a high percentage of irrigated land.
This wasn't always the case. Between the country's independence in 1947 and the 1970s, agriculture was hit hard by droughts and floods and the country suffered mass famine. But investments in irrigation and the adoption of modern farm technologies have progressed in India remarkably over the last three decades. Today, the country is self-sufficient in food production and has a store of nearly 44 million tons of food grain, according to a 2001 ADB survey.
Despite these achievements, the tail ends of many state-managed irrigation systems still suffer low productivity and high poverty rates. This is greatly the result of low, inequitable, and unreliable water supplies. Progress is stalled in many places.
A recent study on "Pro-poor Intervention Strategies in Irrigated Agriculture in Asia," funded by the Asian Development Bank and conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), used a holistic approach to understand rural poverty and identify practical, pro-poor interventions. The study focused on six Asian countries, among them India.
The study critically reviewed the performance of the Government's irrigation management transfer (IMT) schemes, also known as "participatory irrigation management." The study looked at four different transferred irrigation systems in two states (Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh), and interviewed 1,097 households in 2001-2002.
The goal was to decentralize the management and transfer power to user associations. The move hoped to equalize water distribution, improve revenues and make users responsible for a system's operation and maintenance.
Until this study, IMT's effects on the efficiency and equity of water use were not clear-especially regarding poverty. The links between irrigation performance, management reform and poverty alleviation had hardly been assessed.
The IMT approach for pro-poor irrigation employed different tiers of management for different-sized schemes. No matter the size, though, water user associations (WUAs) are the basic management unit. The three schemes are as follows:
New laws provided farmer organizations (FOs) with water rights and guidelines for scheme operation and administration. FOs were also made legally responsible for the preparation of O&M plans, conflict resolution and system maintenance. Irrigation Department (ID) officials were made accountable to FOs, whose decisions they had to implement.
Funds were supposed to be raised by the FOs or provided by the Government as a percentage of water fees collected from users.
State governments made various payments to the WUAs to cover set-up and administration costs. This has contributed to Madhya Pradesh (MP) now having 1,470 WUAs and Andhra Pradesh (AP) has 10,292 WUAs and 174 DCs.
Almost always, irrigation propels a positive cycle of higher productivity, higher yielding crops, higher incomes and higher technology.
But who's producing and who's earning? Unless policies, projects and programs are explicitly pro-poor, it is not the poor benefiting.
While the IMT schemes improved the performances of irrigation systems, the poor may not be benefiting proportionately or as much as they could be. Because of inequitable access to water and irrigated land, poorer households produce less.
The key to pro-poor irrigation, as demonstrated in IMT irrigated districts, equitable distribution and access to:
Water. Inconsistent water supply means inconsistent benefits that are often distributed in very unequal ways. Where water is abundant, farmers are able to grow crops, even rice which requires much water. Where water is scarce, farmers tend to grow local varieties rather than high-yielding varieties.
Poverty rates are higher in the tail ends of systems, where water is less and productivity is low. Strangely, though, poverty rates are not necessarily lower in the head reaches, even though they are nearer to the water source.
Irrigation. Benefits of farming in irrigated plots range between US$35 per hectare to US$194-a result of variations in access to water, production inputs and cropping patterns.
Poverty rates are consistently higher in non-irrigated rather than irrigated areas. However, in rain-fed areas surrounding the studied systems, poverty levels were reduced by factors of non-farm income, larger landholdings and groundwater use.
Within systems, the poor generally receive less irrigation water than the non-poor in both dry and wet seasons.
Households with smaller families, larger landholdings, and more diverse sources of income tended to be less poor. Being situated in the middle reaches of the systems was also beneficial.
An irrigation system is only as good as its management-a major area the IMT program is attempting to improve upon.
The study found that the IMT systems are far from financially self-sufficient, which directly affects a system's sustainability. Several factors are to blame:
There is no incentive to use water efficiently. Irrigation charges are not linked to the amount or quality of the water supplied or to farm income, productivity, or O&M costs.
All fees collected go directly into general government funds. Generally, a budget is then simply allocated to each system. But, since February 2001, the AP government has given 50% of the water fee collected directly to the farmer organizations.
Charges are too low in some systems because farmers are charged a flat-rate fee, regardless of the volume of water received. Farmers who receive little water are reluctant to pay the flat fee.
The majority of O&M budget is spent on salaries and overheads. If 100% of fee were collected, only 25% of total O&M costs would be covered.
Socially sensitive issues inhibit water user associations from accepting full responsibility for assessment, collection and enforcement of water charges.
Given the inequitable access to water and the management of systems, IMT offers mixed outcomes.
On one hand, irrigation system performance has improved in both states. The overall quality and cost-effectiveness of O&M work have also improved. And there are 15 percent fewer disputes over water distribution; small farmers now have forum to resolve their issues.
Problems still abound, though. For one, WUAs need to improve water-use efficiency and productivity. Too, almost none of the WUAs have generated additional funds from the water users as planned.
Disadvantaged groups also face major projects. Poor farmers, women and the landless are poorly, if at all, represented in WUA management committees; higher castes tend to dominate these committees. They are also often taken advantage of by some WUA and DC officials who collude with irrigation officials to serve their vested interests.
The study offered the following recommendations and interventions:
Distribute water more equally along the head-tail sections of irrigation systems.
Encourage crop diversification, and reduce rice cultivation, which requires huge amounts of water. Heavy rice cultivation and a lack of regulations allow head-end farmers to use more water than they should.
Improve institutional arrangements. Better developed institutions in India's older irrigation systems allow for more equitable distribution of water, higher wages, and higher outputs per hectare. The management institutions in the other irrigation systems should similarly be developed to benefit users directly and speed up the reform process.
Improve rate-setting and fee collecting. Despite reforms intended to increase farmers' involvement in irrigation systems, water charges are still fixed and collected by the government. Equitable rate setting could have significant pro-poor benefits.
Improve fee-collection mechanisms to increase collection rates. The fact that collected funds are being misappropriated also urgently requires action. To encourage users to pay, the service delivered needs to be improved and the charges applied made more transparent.
Build the management capacity of system officials. Irrigation officials and farmers need to be trained to address and implement irrigation-sector reforms, and to do so collaboratively. Support must be provided to build capacity and improve the operation of institutions, and ensure devolution of powers from irrigation departments to WUAs and DCs.
Increase the number of women managers in WUAs.
Combat land degradation.
Implement legal reforms to protect vulnerable groups and allow them to benefit from refor. IMTs institutional changes have had positive impacts but many of the issues facing the poor and the landless have yet to be addressed.
| © 2012 Asian Development Bank Terms of Use |
 Top of page |
RSS Feeds
