economics of on-farm development - Institute for Social and ...

command areas in India. All the more, it is important to note that there are not
much emphasIs given to ensure water availability at the right time in adequate
measures. It is also important to note that the farmers are not to be made to pay
for the inefficient and poor delivery services. All these eventualities invariably
points to the need for institutional reforms in the water sector in India.
2.2.7 Institutional reforms in Indian irrigation
There has also been a growing academic interest in understanding and explaining
the process <strong>of</strong> development <strong>of</strong> irrigation systems in the broad framework <strong>of</strong> the
New Institutional Economics (NIE). Much <strong>of</strong> this literature has been necessitated
by the growing realisation that the mainstream (neo-c1assical) economists, by and
large, have tended to neglect the interaction between economic policy and the
complex institutional arrangements II as well as the transaction costs in the water
. 12
sector .
In India, the wide range <strong>of</strong> issues and problems emerging in the irrigation
sector over a period <strong>of</strong> time necessitated thinking in terms <strong>of</strong> institutional
reforms necessary to ensure efficient and productive use <strong>of</strong> water on a
sustainable basis. Scholars, by and large, have addressed these issues and
II
For an extensive and comprehensive revIew and discussion <strong>of</strong> the institutional
arrangements in the water sector and the divergent theoretical positions as well as
experiments, see Runge (1981, 1986); Carruthers and Morrison (1996); Stone et al
( 1996), Alston et al (1996); Thobani (1997); Easter et al (1999); Hearne and Easter
(1997); Potkanski and Adams (1998); Easter et al (1999); Saleth and Dinar (1999);
Kemper and Larry D. Simpson (1999)
12 Both the rent-seeking as well as game theoretic approaches are used by scholars to
explain this institutional processes (Repetto, 1986).
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