I am highly disappointed by the way many irrigation schemes (specially government supported small scale irrigation projects) are managed. once the dam/diversion is built farmers are being left with the irrigation infrastructure without any guidance and the follow-up from local water resource office is very poor. As a result, farmers are benefiting nothing from the schemes. I have identified not only irrigation water management problems, but also problems related to selection of seeds, disease control and marketing of products. Please share your ideas on this topic and let's create a network that would work on tackling the problems.
Towards a Framework for Irrigation System Improvement, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291056110_Towards_a_Framework_for_Irrigation_System_Improvement, may be of interest. This is an unpublished précis, dated 1995, that underscores the need for organizations to develop capabilities for establishing priorities for irrigation system improvement. It applies to Asia but the rationale is applicable everywhere else.
Research Proposal Towards a Framework for Irrigation System Improvement
The poor governments can do dams to help farmers. But, the extension services must prefounded in those projects. At least to keep sustainability
The concept of Management of Irrigation Systems is as old as human history, as we had several traditional water management systems in various country contexts. In India's context, the government had launched a major programme in the 1974, called Command Area Development Programme, which was intended to achieve efficiency in water distribution and management in case of the large and medium scale canal irrigation systems. But, in many states of India, the performance of CADA was farm from realising the goals. Later, the participatory irrigation management (PIM) was launched in India based on experiences from other countries. The PIM also has been proven to be ineffective in most cases, except few states, such as Andhra Pradesh. Quite interestingly, canal based surface irrigation systems had attracted huge investments from the national and state governments, while much of the irrigation area expansion taken place using the groundwater resources, which turned as the dominant mode of irrigation system in most states. Currently, almost 70-75% of the irrigation coverage in India realized through groundwater irrigation, dominated by the tubewell technology. Irrigation Management scenario has become much more complex with the proliferation of tubewells and the virtual lack of governance mechanisms and regulatory interventions containing the expansion of groundwater irrigation. Of late, the national and state governments have been promoting water saving irrigation systems, such as sprinkler and drip irrigation, but the level of adoption is quite slow and widely varies across states due to a variety of reasons.
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