Achieving PIM in Pakistan: Principles and Prerequisites

Previous issues of the INPIM Newsletter have highlighted recent developments in Pakistan's water sector concerning PIM, expressing optimism for significant change in farmer participation in irrigation management in that country's large Indus Basin canal systems (cf. No. 2, Pakistan Adopts PIM as Centerpiece of New Water Policy; No. 5, PIM in Pakistan: An Update). The vehicle for that process has been identified, viz. a series of provincial distributary canal-based pilot projects under the PIDA reforms component of the National Drainage Program. However, little so far has been said about changes in the structure of existing institutional relationships in irrigation management certain to be required if PIM is to move forward from potential to reality in Pakistan.

An appropriate point of departure for examining this issue is to consider a minimum set of principles and prerequisites that are likely to be essential if genuine farmer participation in the process of distributary canal O & M in any of the planned pilot projects is to be secured. This is particularly the case because many distributary canals being proposed for provincial pilot projects by the Provincial Irrigation Departments (PID), in Punjab and NWFP for example, are among the worst in meeting their water delivery performance objective. Some are tail-end channels; others are recognized ``problem canals." Consequently farmers in the service areas of such poorly performing canals are perhaps least likely to be ready, willing and able to accept the real financial and associated social transaction costs involved in assuming responsibility for canal O & M and other PIM activities, unless certain basic principles are established and key prerequisites are met.

Some essential principles and prerequisites for PIM are already known through experience in farmer managed irrigation and farmer organization development in Pakistan as well as in other countries in South and East Asia. Others, however, are more site and situational specific to Pakistan's Indus Basin canal systems, derived from recent extensive field experience and surveys of farmers in several canal commands. What is proposed here represents an initial set, intended both to initiate discussion of this important topic as well as to provide a more substantial foundation for successful pilot project implementation. It also is likely that the experience of the planned PIM pilot projects will generate both additions to and changes in our suggested set of principles and prerequisites.

Informal Organizations along the Watercourse

Informal organizations of water users now function reasonably effectively at the level of the watercourse community, the service area of the outlet (mogha), especially in NWFP and Punjab. The watercourse community comprises all land-owning and permanent tenant farmers who participate in the warabandi, the roster of irrigators which specifies each farmer's time and length of turn for directing the flow of canal water in the watercourse to his fields from his nakka, the specified point in the watercourse at which the farmer takes his irrigation turn.

The strength of the informal watercourse community is that while several or many resident kinship-based groups are present, factionalism and is largely kept separate from the arena of irrigation operations and related water management activities. Water is too scarce, too precious, too essential for productive agriculture and economic well-being to be disrupted by the arguments of a few.

Typically each kinship group has identified through consensus a member it trusts to represent its interests in the activities of the watercourse. Those activities include organizing and managing inputs for periodic watercourse maintenance, mobilizing resources to enhance the outlet's water supply or to protect it, and negotiating solutions to the petty, localized arguments and disputes of water distribution that still occur.

Non-formalized methods and organization function effectively at the watercourse level, and they are much less costly in time and energy inputs for farmers than are formal organizations. They reflect the irrigation community's institutional preference, and it is these watercourse institutions that now provide useful insight for crafting an organizational and institutional strategy for sustainable farmers' participation in irrigation water management.

Crafting Distributary-Level Farmer Organizations

Everyone recognizes that viable and effective farmer organizations are essential if there is going to be meaningful farmer participation in irrigation management, especially distributary system O&M, as now envisaged through the PIDA reforms in Pakistan. For that to occur in the often acrimonious environment of present farmer-agency relationships will require clear, up-front recognition of at least the following six principles:

The watercourse irrigation community is the basic building block of the water user organization. The watercourse irrigation community is comprised of farmers owning land within the service area of the outlet. Sharecroppers and tenants can be included as members if they are so recognized by those with water rights.

There must be a clear incentive for farmers to formally organize and remain organized. Without good reasons and benefits that the farmers recognize, an effective formal organization cannot be established.

Any higher level farmers' water user organization is hydraulically-based. The organization and its constituent elements will each comprise a clearly defined service area commanded by a control point or structure where canal water deliveries can be monitored and verified by any member of the water user organization (i.e. there is transparency).

Farmer-members of higher-level water user organizations are landowners (and tenants) with a confirmed right to canal water. The farmer's right is a proportional share of the discharge entering the minor or distributary. This water right is accessed on a turn-by-turn basis. The right to canal water can be sold, leased or traded, but it can not be transferred out of the watercourse command in which it is lodged independent of the land to which it is attached.

Equity is the objective in canal water distribution. Both excesses and shortfalls in water deliveries are proportionally shared by all farmers in the system.

Every farmer-member is proportionately liable for O&M costs and other water charges. The proportionate liability of a farmer-member is the ratio of service area owned to the total service area of the distributary and/or watercourse system.

Several other preconditions also will have to be met to ensure a reasonable opportunity to achieve the objectives of PIM in Pakistan. Perhaps foremost among them is that farmers' organizations must have a formal legal personality. Farmers are acutely aware that without a suitable legal basis for their organizations and the exercise of powers required for distributary canal O&M, resource mobilization and dispute resolution, they will be unable to function effectively. This requirement appears to have been met in the PIDA Ordinances recently adopted by the provinces.

Another critical prerequisite will be for the PIDs and provincial governments to provide autonomy to each pilot project area. All government operations and revenue activities should be halted within each distributary command effective the date specified for starting pilot project implementation. An independent canal operations and management support unit should become responsible for managing distributary O&M on behalf of the nascent farmer organizations until such time as the latter are sufficiently established to begin functioning on their own. This is a critical precondition because farmers overwhelmingly express distrust of agency operations and revenue staff and the conviction that they and colleagues in related water management agencies will work to undermine the development of meaningful PIM.

From an irrigation operations perspective, it is very important that there be a mechanism whereby every farmers' organization will be guaranteed an assured water supply. The Provincial Irrigation Department (PID) should supply to the head gate of each pilot distributary canal its currently authorized discharge. That mechanism should provide for a binding agreement that the discharge will be no less than specified in the most current canal capacity statement except in such instances where environmental conditions clearly preclude that level of water delivery.

A closely related prerequisite is transparency in all water-related transactions between the PID and the farmers' organization, subject to easy mutual verification. Without transparency in these water relationships, it is impossible to conceive how trust can be established where a climate of mutual suspicion of the other's actions and motives prevails.

Finally, farmers and their organizations are highly unlikely to accept responsibility for distributary canal O&M, resource mobilization and improved water management unless the severely eroded and poorly maintained physical system is restored to good working condition. This does not mean extensive canal lining or other expensive rehabilitation; it does mean effective canal desilting and embankment strengthening, gates and other control structures returned to operational condition, a functioning discharge measurement capability, and other modest physical improvements to the distributary system.

Agreement upon and implementation of such pilot project principles and prerequisites would confirm government's "good faith" and commitment to PIM and the institutional reforms embodied in the PIDA Ordinance. That will be an important and possibly vital reassurance for the farmers. After all, the PIM process will require Pakistani farmers to contribute substantial time, energy and capital resources to an enterprise with which none has had any prior experience and the positive outcome of which cannot be guaranteed. The risk here to the farmers, whose livelihood remains largely dependent upon the management of the scarce water resource and the infrastructure that delivers it, is far greater than is government's.

- Edward J. Vander Velde, Jamshed Tirmizi, and Robert Yoder