ABSTRACT
As we noted earlier, water scarcity, especially in agriculture, is a major concern in India. The rising demand for water due to population growth, economic development, food production needs and industrial growth is making scarcity even more acute. Accordingly, improving the efficiency of water use in agriculture has become far more important. 1 Irrigation systems, particularly those related to canal irrigation, are besieged by a number of problems such as poor maintenance, degraded infrastructure, difficulties in the allocation of water, water-logging and salinity. Perhaps not surprisingly then, it has been persuasively argued that the economic gains from many surface irrigation projects are not commensurate with the large public investments and subsidies given to them (Vaidyanathan, 1994; Marothia, 1997). Frequently, government or state management and control of canal irrigation have shown a poor record. Better institutional arrangements are required and farmers’ groups and cooperatives can play a crucial role in this regard, potentially overcoming some of these problems and improving the economic yield from irrigation (Joshi, 1997; Gandhi and Namboodiri, 2002).
