Beneficiary Participation in Irrigation Water Management: The Kerala

modernisation and its functions. The views and comments of farmers were accommodated
to the extent they were technically and economically feasible. The boundaries of farmer
groups usually coincided with the boundaries of the physical irrigation unit. One noteworthy
feature of the farmer groups was that the leader of the group was more accountable to the
farmer groups, than to the project authority who operated the irrigation system. Mass
participation and group activity were encouraged in all water and farm management activities.
A Farmers Organisation Authority was formed which undertook the responsibility of staffing
and management of farmers’ co-operatives, provision of mechanised agricultural services
rendered necessary due to shortage of farm labour in Malaysia, imparting training to members
and staff of farmers’ co-operatives, and provision of chemical fertilisers. It is worth
remembering that all these functions were introduced in a land, in which farmers had
traditionally operated their farms on an individual basis, using own and hired labour, and
the practice of mutual assistance had been in vogue for transplantation of paddy seedlings
and for harvesting. The efforts resulted in increase in productivity of rice from 2 tons to 3
tons per hectare.
N. G. R. De Silva (1984) reported details of irrigation water management in Sri Lanka. He
traced the history of farmer associations in Sri Lanka, and identified factors of their success
or failure in the socio-economic and cultural milieu of the country. Cultivation Committees
which constituted the first attempt since independence at democratisation and decentralisation
were composed solely of elected farmer representatives with powers to develop and maintain
irrigation works within their areas of operation. The Committees failed to serve their purpose
and met the same fate of the Headmen System 23 . The reasons for the failure were the
following: (i) members of the Committees, mostly old farmers were not receptive to changes;
(ii) individualism and lack of the spirit of co-operation were displayed by members, and (iii)
village financiers and landlords, who were not real farmers, crept into the system and
hijacked the Cultivation Committees. They spread their tentacles of influence over all matters
that came under the purview of these Committees, and took decisions favourable to their
vested interests. Lack of finance and sources of funds was a major constraint. The arealevy,
which was the major source proved to be inadequate. There was difficulty even in
enforcing this levy among the defaulters. The ineffectiveness of these Committees led to
their replacement by Agrarian Services Committees in 1979, composed mostly of public
officials. This was not an effective organisation of farmers either.
According to De Silva, (i) attendance of officials of some government departments was low
due to poor co-ordination of activities at the district and the national levels (ii) lack of funds
proved to be a constraint in accelerating the pace of the programme to achieve the social
transformation aimed at, (iii) resource personnel were required in fairly large numbers to
act as change agents, (iv) farmers got acquainted with the decision-making process, and (v)
officers admitted that the extension task had become easier once the pilot project was
executed.
The organisation of the new Committee System seems to have been closely similar to the
one being practised in Kerala for beneficiary participation. The project W.M. Committee
was more or less the same as the Project Advisory Committee (PAC) of the Malampuzha
project 24 and the sub-project committee consisting of 12 farmer representatives plus the
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