Organizational Change for Participatory Irrigation Management

(vii) Research policy, since the priorities of research are likely to be predicted in part on
the overall proportion of irrigated farmland and on future irrigation plans.
Organization Management within MAFF
The Land and Water Resource Management Division was created within the MAFF in
1972, initiative for developing irrigated rice project, including facilitating rice cultivation in
general under rainfed condition. Initially, two main projects were taken up for rice irrigation,
namely Lakena Irrigation Project in the Central Division and Dreketi Irrigation Project in the
Northern Division, where also some minor projects like Dama, Coboi and Naruwai Irrigation
Projects too were taken up. All these projects were implemented under pumping criteria where
water was pumped from river or creeks and used for irrigation via artificial channels and
drains. Dreketi Project had been converted to gravity irrigation under Australian aid, where
a weir had been constructed across Naibulu creek and water lead into the irrigation channels
by gravity.
Participation
According to Rahnema (1992:117) the word participation and participatory appeared for
the first time in the development jargon during the late 1950s. The social activists, field
workers and developers joined the development bandwagon in the hope that they could help the
oppressed unfold, like a flower from a bud, had some against a reality which was totally
different from the earlier expectations. This led them to attribute most of the failures to
development projects to the fact that the populations concerned were kept out of the process
related to project design, formulation and implementation. With their great majority, they
started to advocate the end of ‘top-down’ strategies of action and the inclusion of participation
and participatory methods of interaction was realized as an essential dimension for the
development process.
Furthermore, Rahnema (1992) points out that some practitioners referred the
participatory development concept as ‘popular participation’ so as to save development from
the prevailing social crises and to give new stand for enabling the grassroots population to
regenerate their life spaces.
Fals-Borda as one of the founders of Participatory Action Research (PAR) views it as
‘a methodology within a total existential process’, that means at ‘achieving power and not
merely growth for the grassroots population’. According to Oriando Fals-Borda, it is a special
kind of poor-people’s-power which belongs to the oppressed and exploited classes and recoups
and their organizations, and is the defense of their just interests which enables them to advance
towards shared goals of social change within a participatory system.
Irrigation in Central Division
Currently there are two major irrigation projects in the Central Division namely Navua
East and Navua West Irrigation Schemes. Navua East Irrigation Project commenced in 1985
under Agricultural Development Program financed partially by ADB and aimed at developing
750-ha rice irrigation. A major objective of the Wainikavika Dam is to provide irrigation
water to enable double cropping. So far irrigation facilities have been developed 300 ha.
The Wainikavika has been constructed up to second stage and has 3 million m 3 storage
capacity irrigating 750 ha. Headworks consist of earthen dam built of homogenous clay
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