Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Women and Water Policy 247
advances in this direction. The driving force behind this thinking was a
strong production agenda. Improved irrigation facilities, along with other
agricultural inputs, have had a phenomenal impact on the overall development
in agriculture. However, the many benefits are also accompanied
by water insecurity for a large number of poor women and men. Expansion
of irrigation to meet the livelihood requirements of the poor has
rarely been on the irrigation agenda.
The present policy thrust is focused on the pricing of water, recovery
of capital costs, and decentralised management of the resource. In the following
section we look at the impact this has on water-deprived groups,
particularly women (see Kulkarni 2005).
PRICING AND COST RECOVERY
With the policy thrust on treating water as an economic good, debates
around water pricing and full cost recovery are now gaining ground. The
irrigation sector has been recognised as a loss-making one, and the state
therefore wants to rid itself of the responsibility of managing it. One of
the solutions to recovering the costs of operation and management is seen
in the user pays principle. Although fine in theory as far as the productive
use of water is concerned, in plain terms it simply implies that only those
who are ready, willing and have the ability to pay will have access to water.
No distinction is made in pricing policies for water for livelihood needs
and water requirements beyond that.
This has two kinds of implications: the first is the priority given to
industrial water use over irrigation for agriculture. Since the simple rule
of economics says that allocation is to be accorded to wherever the returns
are the highest, water for industry becomes the more favoured option.
The second implication is vis-à-vis cropping preferences within irrigated
areas. As men increasingly come to see greater advantages in either selling
or using the available water to generate cash incomes, there is the possibility
that access to water for non-marketable produce or survival tasks
will be restricted (Green and Baden 1995). In such a scenario, it is usually
the ‘paying’ crops that get preference over the ‘non-paying’ food crops
largely cultivated by women. Women have often informally used irrigation
water for micro-enterprises concerning small-scale activities, such as goat