FARMERS' ROLE IN IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT - CASE STUDIES OF IRRIGATION SYSTEMS IN NEPAL

Abstract

In Nepal, substial investments have been made in the past for developing the irrigation infrastructures of the country. Yet the irrigation development is at the rudimentary stage and the net area irrigated is not more than forty five percent of the total irritable area. Furthermore, there is a growing concern that even most of the existing irrigation systems, particularly managed by the agency have not functioned efficiently. Some people considered that this "Performance Deficit" was due to an imbalance between the roles of the government agencies and the farmers, in all phases of irrigation development including planning, design, operations, and maintenance. According to this view, which is now widely accepted, the results of irrigation development should be much more satisfactory if the farmer's role in decision making was increased, in all of these development phases. In this context, currently there is keen interest in many developing countries in transferring responsibility for operating large government constructed irrigation systems to farmer beneficiaries of the systems. The concept of participatory irrigation management is not new to Nepal. Existence of thousands of well performing FMIS in the country furnish some of the finest examples of users' participation in irrigation development and management and are testimony to the possibility of collective action under self governing institutions. Traditionally FMIS have established mechanism to accomplish the irrigation management activities: water acquisition, water allocation, water distribution, resource mobilization and conflict management. The evolution of mechanisms have been possible due to tradition of ownership, organizational capabilities, users' participation and mutual trust and accountability. The mechanisms were time tested: tried, modified and tried again, and dynamic: changed over time in response to the stresses of social, economic and ecological forces with assured participation of users at every stage.