Comparative Evaluation of Implementing Participatory Irrigation Management in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Participatory irrigation management is gradually being introduced in the canal irrigation system in Pakistan. In this study, performance of a participatory irrigation management system is compared with that of a conventional centrally controlled irrigation system. The study is carried out for canal irrigation systems of Lower Chenab and Jhelum, both located in Punjab, Pakistan. The performance indicators used included: establishment cost, operation and maintenance cost, water fees (abiana) collected and equity of water distribution. The data for performance assessment were collected from various sources, including field measurements, interviews with farmers, interviews with officers of the irrigation department, previous studies, and data from the Punjab Irrigation Department and the Punjab Irrigation and Drainage Authority. The analysis indicates that establishment costs of both public–private partnership management and a centrally controlled irrigation system are more than operational and maintenance costs. The water supply in the main canal is satisfactory in both systems. Water fees (abiana) collected are declining in the case of the participatory management system. Structural change in the participatory management system and extensive work on capacity building are required in order to obtain the benefits of transferring management to farmers' organizations in Pakistan. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From Sharing the Burden of Scarcity to Markets: Ill-Fitting Water Property Rights and the Pressure of Economic Transition in South Asia

“…This has manifested in Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) and in some cases Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT). It is important to note that there are wide variations in PIM and IMT across the region but in most jurisdictions the shift in authority to farmers has been partial, at best (see, [32,33]). In addition, little attention has been given to the real challenge of property rights prior to endeavours to have farmers purportedly take control.…”

Performance evaluation of participatory irrigation management as an alternative to a state‐managed irrigation system*

“…The ratio of existing discharge to sanctioned discharge at the head or tail is called the delivery performance ratio (DPR). It is the most extensively used indicator to assess equitable water distribution services (Latif and Tariq, 2009; Ghumman et al, 2014). Higher values indicate good performance while poor performance leads to lower values for the irrigation system.…”

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“…Prominent among management outcomes evaluated in this literature is the level of abiana collection; studies focusing on FOs and WUAs find recovery of charges to be both incomplete (Ghumman et al, 2011) and declining over time (Asrar-Ulhaq, 2010). Also prominent are measures of inter-channel equity measured as differences in DPR (Ghumman et al, 2014;Shah et al, 2016), tail discharge (Jacoby et al, 2018), or agricultural productivity (Raza et al, 2009); these studies generally-though not universally (e.g., Shah et al, 2016)-observe lower reliability to persist in irrigation water provision for middle and tail reaches than for head reaches. Jacoby et al (2018) go further to find inequity in water outcomes enhanced under participatory management, most acutely in channels whose upstream users were wealthy landholders with large holdings.…”