ABSTRACT
Poor service delivery, persistence of head-tail inequity, growing gap between irrigation potential created and utilized, build-neglect-rebuild syndrome, patchy performance of Participatory Irrigation Management and poor service fee recovery are among the problems that concern irrigation managers and policy makers in India. In explaining this, we propose a contingency hypothesis that canal irrigation performs differently under different ‘contingency clusters’. Nature of the Indian state, aspects of India’s agrarian society, nature of agrarian institutions and access to new technologies are four contingency clusters that seem to shape the working of canal irrigation. We argue that explosive growth in private tubewell irrigation within canal commands has emerged as a game changing contingency, marginalizing canal irrigation. To retain its significance, public irrigation management needs to do the following: (1) maximize the areal extent of conjunctive use of surface and groundwater by managing canal systems as extensive irrigation systems; (2) mimic the demand orientation of groundwater systems, thereby reducing groundwater demand and energy consumption; (3) reconfigure canal systems as hybrid systems, making the Irrigation Agency responsible for reliable bulk water deliveries while private Irrigation Service Providers retail the water to irrigators. Instead of by default, this needs to happen by design.
