Introduction: Organising the use of irrigation water

Agricultural Administration 17 (1984) 169-175

Introduction: Organising the Use of Irrigation Water

Douglas Thornton

Department of Agricultural Economics and Management, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 2AT, Great Britain

(Received: 19 April, 1984)

The papers brought together in this issue are concerned with the human problems of organising the use of irrigation water. They derive from the study of experienced observers in sharply contrasting parts of the tropical world. Yet they are all concerned with the fundamental issue-how can humans reconcile their instinct to compete for self-interest with the need to co-operate in order to reach a level of achievement otherwise unattainable?

The importance of the issue of irrigation organisation in the tropics is not in doubt. And it is certain to increase. Globally, the amount of land still available to be colonised for economic rainfed cultivation is limited; the pace of advance of this frontier has slowed in recent years and is not expected to move much further in the foreseeable future.4 Yet demand for agricultural products will continue to rise inexorably so that, if it is to be met, the rate of growth of production must increase by some 50% through the rest of this century, and, no doubt, beyond. Intensification of the use of land already cultivated is therefore the only solution. The deployment of water resources, especially for irrigation, is the key to this intensification.

But water is a much more difficult resource than land to handle. Because of the variability, between locations and over time, of its value in assisting plant growth, it is difficult to use efficiently and, because of its mobility, it is difficult to measure and share. Fundamental problems in the organisation of its utilisation thus arise.

Moreover, as Wade observes (in this issue), these problems do not fall 169

170 Douglas Thornton

neatly within the territory of any one academic discipline. They are equally a central concern of agronomists, engineers, sociologists, political scientists and economists, while others, from soil scientists to lawyers, can contribute to their examination and solution. When the ultimate users, the farmers, act as irrigators, they must have appropriate knowledge and skills in all these areas. Wade is therefore right to stress both the need for a multi-aspect approach and the tardiness of international recognition of the need for studying irrigation organisation in all its aspects. The nature of the contributions in this issue provides examples not only of geographical diversity, but of the diversity of approach which it is necessary to develop rapidly and integrate in the service of irrigators.

It may be useful here to draw out briefly some points of interest, most of which are addressed in the papers that follow.

IRRIGATION AS A SUPPLEMENT TO RAINFALL

First, irrigation water is almost always a supplement to rainwater. Indeed, as global demand for agricultural products grows, we may expect that local rainfall regimes will be increasingly perceived as inadequate, and ways of improving water supply to plant growth will be sought in new areas and at levels of precipitation where irrigation has not hitherto been contemplated. The increasing interest in irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa, with its very rapidly growing population and developing food crisis, illustrates this (see the cases of Senegal and Zimbabwe in this issue).

But the fact that irrigation does supplement rainfall raises problems for irrigation organisation. These grow with the unpredictability of the rainfall, the unreliability of irrigation supplies and the size of the irrigation ‘scheme’ (ranging from, say, the one-man shaduf to the multi- million hectare operation). One comparatively simple, and in some ways elegant, solution is to design a scheme which, in seeking to spread the benefits of supplementation as widely as possible, leaves all users with less water than they would ideally like to have. Malhotra et al. (in this issue) show, in the warabundi system of the Northwest Indian Sub-continent, that it is possible to organise very large numbers of cultivators with a high degree of uniformity and fairness in these circumstances. Here it seems to be the case that the competitive instincts of the irrigators can, with strictly imposed rules, be contained. The benefits of a wide spread of the incremental product from irrigation, together with modest administrative

Organising the use of irrigation water 171

costs, may well outweigh any opportunity costs arising from the failure overall to apply a given amount of water in optimal relation to other resources.

Such a solution to the question of how to organise in the face of water inadequacy and uncertainty may not always be possible, however, for reasons ranging from topography to politics. In any case, areas receiving light watering may, in certain circumstances, be subject to the long-term problem of waterlogging and salinity; which takes us on to our second point.

IRRIGATION AS AN ADDITION TO SOIL WATER

At the centre of all irrigation issues, including its organisation, is the fact that optimal plant growth, with such growth sustained indefinitely over a series of years, depends on the control of water between certain limits in the soil profile. In the past, the approach to the prescription of this flow has been seen either positively-in terms of how much is needed for uninterrupted plant growth, or negatively-in terms of how much stress arising from deficit is tolerable. While there still seems room for further detailed exploration of this paradigm, individual irrigators and those responsible for designing, building and managing large schemes have to make decisions. It is clear that, in the past, these decisions, particularly the large-scale ones, have often been bad. In the short term, in existing schemes, and at a crude level of water-use efficiency, it may, as Wade suggests, be possible to rely on the experience of the irrigators themselves to signal when danger of water deficit threatens. But, in the long run-and particularly when designing new schemes-it is important to think in terms of creating the optimal soil-water conditions, taking into account losses in value product likely to be incurred by falling short of this optimum. Of course, the nearer the approach to the optimum, the higher the costs are likely to be in various forms. These may include more investment in water control devices and higher management costs at all levels, from the origin of the water supply to final destination at the field. There will be no unique solution for all cases. But it is clear that rising demand for agricultural products can be confidently expected to drive irrigators to approach nearer to the optimum; which may entail both a shift to more efficient watering of the commodities already produced and a shift between commodities to those which give a higher value per unit of water.


It will be for society as a whole, through government, to balance the importance of the long-term reliability in the continued expansion of production against the short-term interests of individuals and interest groups. It would seem likely that this implies more organisation rather than less, and less individual freedom of choice. In some cases, as where tubewells are introduced with the role of recycling irrigation water derived from gravity flow, irrigation as a four-dimensional problem involves irrigators, tubewell operators and suppliers of gravity water as decision makers. The situation demands that all of these be integrated in a common objective with rules of conduct centred around the need to achieve and maintain the best water table level, water quality and soil moisture conditions that are possible.

IRRIGATION AS AN ELEMENT IN SOCIAL CULTURE

The introduction and intensification of irrigation has a profound effect on the quality and texture of the life of the individual and of the society of which he is a part. A great deal depends on the character of that society before its introduction and on the way that irrigation is introduced.

Where the process is rather slow and largely initiated by the people themselves, there is time for institutions and organisations to grow organically. In these cases government and society’s leaders (maybe religious and ideological) play a facilitating and stimulating role. This would seem broadly to have been true in Central Java and in Senegal (see Duewell and van der Laan, respectively in this issue). Java is a case where, following a land reform some sixty years ago, irrigation policy has been implemented in such a way that a densely populated society has been able effectively to organise itself in a complex, yet flexible, structure; there is a high degree of local autonomy operating within a framework of widely acceptable cultural norms. The same seems to be happening in the Senegal case, though its origins are much more recent.

Where the introduction of irrigation is either sudden or involves a very large jump in technology and the quantity of irrigation water used, irrigation practices are imposed, together with other institutional changes and organisational innovation, on the existing society. In the worst cases the potential beneficiaries may then become victims of an alien system rather than enthusiastic co-operators with the initiators.

The central decisions are almost always taken by government. In the


past the governments concerned may have been imperial; even where this is not so there may be a wide divergence between the interests of the irrigators, as they perceive them, and the objectives of government. The government’s view is likely to be urban-based; it may be acting primarily from the strategic interests of the national economy as a whole, or, at worst, so as to satisfy thefolie de grandeur of its charismatic leader. While the effects of the intervention of local politicians on behalf of their constituents must not be ignored, these interventions are not necessarily to the advantage of all the constituents.

In these circumstances it is likely that irrigation organisation will be hierarchical, patrician and stratified, that government personnel will form the upper strata and that organisational problems will arise between the strata; it also, commonly, arises between departmental interests within government, as Rukuni shows in this issue.

Of course, it is often inevitable that government should take the lead in irrigation development. Due to the disposition of the natural resources of water and irrigable land, the scale of investment may be such that, if irrigation is to be introduced at all, only the government can do it. Also, where the funds required can only be found overseas, the government is the necessary conduit for such funds. Furthermore, the government is in the best position to assess, nationwide, the case for investment in irrigation rather than in other things. The chief task then becomes one of examining how best organisation for irrigation between government and people can be fashioned or, where already in place, how it is working and whether it can be improved.

In schemes where government is heavily involved organisation problems are many. Their range depends to some extent on the range of government involvement. For instance, a crude distinction can first be made between those cases where government intervention is primarily as a supplier of water through an Irrigation Department (that is, as the provider of a utility broadly parallel with electricity, piped drinking water supplies, sewerage, etc.), as contrasted with those cases where it acts in a comprehensive and integrated way, often through a parastatal body, to organise production from a scheme. The Indian cases described in this volume tend to fall under the first head; schemes like the Sudan’s Gezira and Kenya’s Mwea fall under the second. In the latter type the autonomy of the farmer is limited not only by central control of water delivery but heavily also in the pattern of cropping and marketing of produce. In the former the farmer has, in theory, more autonomy, though, in practice, the


pattern, periodicity and reliability of water supply may severely affect his freedom of choice. Clearly, in those schemes comprehensively organised, government control involves more points of contact with the farmers and a more complex organisational problem on the government side. A parastatal organisation would seem to have merit in these circumstances though it may suffer in its managerial effectiveness through diseconomies of scale and, in its relations with the farmers, through the excessive development of a corporate image. The latter consequently leads to a feeling of ‘us and them’ by the members of the parastatal body on the one hand and the farmers on the other. Moreover, it does not necessarily follow, in cases where government intervention is comprehensive, that, in the crucial matter of water distribution, allocations to farmers are wholly predictable and equal. (See Barnett’s discussion’ of these problems in the Sudan Gezira.)

The efficiency of the water delivery service is the question of crucial importance in both types of scheme. It is normally discussed in terms of what happens before water is transferred from government to farmers as individuals or groups; that is, above and below the ‘outlet’. (This may, in some cases, as Wade shows, be an over-simplification.)

Problems below the outlet, on the watercourse for which farmers are chiefly responsible, most commonly arise where the water supply is, or is expected to be, insufficient for everyone’s requirements. A distinction may emerge between top-enders and tail-enders. The former have the advantage, and not uncommonly take unfair advantage in circumstances of insufficient and uncertain supply. Difficulties become compounded where top-enders have, or acquire, bigger farms and also acquire superior control over capital items like tractors and oxen and maybe of credit3 Such inequalities may already be characteristic of rural society before the arrival of irrigation; irrigation water certainly makes matters worse unless carefully designed and acceptable arrangements are introduced to reduce the danger and, probably more important, unless beneficiaries are encouraged to organise themselves for equitable group-sharing of the water input. As both Duewel and Wade show, the development of an irrigation facility creates new roles in local society, with specialisation of labour and changes in the nature and distribution of responsibilities among local leaders. Extensive field study and active research is now getting under way, especially in Southern Asia, which is addressed to improving both water allocation efficiency and the fair sharing of supplies at the local level.


Above-the-outlet problems occur within the bureaucracy. This is partly a matter of organisation structure and partly one of motivation.’ But the problems may be summed up by saying that water acquisition, transport and delivery to the outlets must, in future, be ‘managed’ rather than ‘administered’. This requires that the Irrigation Department be organised so as to be able to learn the effects of decisions made. Feedback of the total performance of the irrigation must be built in to current practice. Suggestions towards this end are spelt out by Malhotra et al.

IRRIGATION DEVELOPMENT AS A DYNAMIC PROCESS

It has been implied above that preparation must be made for the expansion of irrigation to new areas, intensification of irrigation in areas already irrigated, and for economising in water use so that limited supplies can be used the more effectively in further extensification and intensification. Finally, it is necessary to emphasise the dynamic nature of irrigation development. As demand for the products of irrigation rises steeply-almost certainly more steeply in the future than it has in the past-the current state of irrigation practice everywhere will require close scrutiny. While there is still much to be learned about plant-soil-water relationships and the engineering of dams, canals, sluices, etc., there is already a wide range of technology options, from components like canal lining to wholly new delivery systems like trickle-and-drip. It is inevitable that institutional change-the relation of actor to resources and of actor to actor-must also occurparipassu. We are still only at the beginning of understanding the nature of institutional change, what are the changes most likely to be useful in any specified set of circumstances in the future and how these can be organised. The papers that follow will help in improving our understanding of the issues.

REFERENCES

1. Barnett, T., The Gezira Scheme: Illusion of development, London, Cass, 1977. 2. Bottrall, A. F., Comparative study of the management and organisation of

irrigation projects, World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 458, Washington, DC, 1981.

3. Farrington, J. and Abeyratne, F., Farm power in Sri Lanka, University of Reading, Department of Agricultural Economics and Management, Development Study No. 22, 1982.

4. FAO, Agriculture toward 2000, Rome, FAO, 1979.

Introduction: Organising the use of irrigation water

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