Beneficiary Participation in Irrigation Water Management: The Kerala

management function, with an expert at the top is uneconomic. Therefore, instead of a
generalist administrator, a technician or other specialist competent to perform water
management functions, namely distribution and utilisation of water, is desirable. The
technician or specialist may be drawn from engineers (for managing distribution functions)
or agricultural scientists (for handling utilisation aspects). For efficient performance, it
could be desirable to conduct training programmes for engineers and agricultural scientists
to apprise them of water management problems and techniques. The training programme
should include modules on water course management and field-level application of water.
In Kerala, it is the technocrat rather than the generalist who is placed at the apex of CADA
administration. The lapses observed must therefore be due to inefficiency in implementation.
Some issues in irrigation management
Irrigation Extension
Out of the three important field activities of irrigation management, viz. water distribution,
system maintenance, and irrigation extension, extension activities should receive particular
attention at the initial stages of the project; distribution and system maintenance arise only
at the subsequent stages. But events have not turned out in India in this order. MIP has
already a history of more than four full decades after its first commissioning and is one of
the first four CADA projects in Kerala. With the introduction of CADA, the irrigation
management organisation of MIP was remodelled with emphasis on extension. Lapses in
the functioning do not seem therefore due to the organisational set-up; they should have
been the result of defective implementation.
Government interference
Inadequate commitment and excessive interference of the public authority are the two main
reasons for the ineffective management of irrigation projects 46 . The shortfalls in the
performance of MIP seem to be due more to excessive interference of the public authority
than to its inadequate commitment. The general trend the world over, is to attribute failure
in irrigation management to poor organisation, caused primarily by the absence of a clear
distinction between administrative and management tasks. Planning, designing, construction,
and control are administrative tasks which might well be performed by government; operation
and maintenance are, on the other hand, management tasks. When government tasks are
performed jointly by several ministries conflicts are usual. This is due to lack of common
understanding of the projects at hand to the personnel of these different ministries. Among
the three possible management types – public authority, private agency, and water users –
water users’ associations are found to be the most desirable. When management tasks are
assigned to public authority, confusion between the two types of tasks - distribution and
utilisation - arises. Public companies are subjected to accountancy rules and other strict
regulations. They may also have too many functions, to discharge. They usually end up in
failure 47 . When the management tasks were entrusted to private agencies, they were found
to be effective in some agro-industrial irrigation schemes like the production of sugar in
Zimbabwe. Here besides the inherent defect that part or whole of the value-added might
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