Researchers Conference

The Long Road to Commitment:
A Socio-Political Perspective on Irrigation Management Reform

Editor's Note: Immediately before the INPIM Seminar in Hyderabad in December 1999, a workshop took place in which small group of researchers convened for four days of intense debate on an important, but often neglected subject, the political aspects of irrigation reform. From international trade agreements to village elections, politics are an important consideration when implementing reform. The Researchers' Conference was held Administrative Staff College of India, from December 11-14, 1999, The conference was Sponsored, organized, and supported by, the World Bank,IndiaNPIM, the Government of Andhra Pradesh, Wageningen Agricultural University, and Ministry of Development Cooperation, the Netherlands. A report from the organizers follows.

I. INTRODUCTION

In the Researchers Conference 12 papers were presented in the plenary sessions, with case studies of irrigation/water resources reform processes in 11 different countries or states.. The other case studies were about: Andhra Pradesh, Mexico, Colombia, Turkey, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia.

II. OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the conference were:

A) To make available to the general public and water sector professionals detailed accounts of irrigation reform processes from a socio-political perspective. The papers will be published as a book by an international publisher.

B) To show that ``the politics of irrigation" is an important theme to study and discuss for those involved in irrigation reform processes. Socio-political analysis can help avoid misdirection of development funds by providing more realistic assessments of reform models and processes, it can inform strategic action for enhancing reform, and it can be a source of information for public debate and awareness raising.

C) To develop a research agenda for further work in this field.

III. BASIC CONCEPTS

In the conference the meaning of ``politics" or ``socio-political perspective" was not confined to the most obvious reference: official state and party politics. The definition of politics used was the following. Politics is ``the debates, conflicts, decisions, and cooperation among individuals, groups and organisations regarding the control, allocation, and use of resources and the values and ideas underlying these activities." (Kerkvliet, 1990:11). Politics is about the mediation of different interests, the balancing of the social relations of power and strategic action.

The following four levels of politics exist.

A) The everyday politics of water resource use (the day-to-day interactions of users and others in resource use).

B) The politics of irrigation policy, referring the contestation of policy formulation and implementation by different interest groups, shaping what policy is and what it does.

C) ``Official" state and party politics, including inter-state politics on joint basin management (hydropolitics).

D) The global politics of water (cf. international conventions and agreements like the Rio and Dublin meetings on the environment and water).

The Reseachers Conference focussed on level B), the politics of policy, as this is a strategic, but little investigated, field for irrigation reformers.

IV. RESULTS

The studies of 11 different countries show that there is great diversity in the origins of irrigation reform processes, the way they unroll, and whether they achieve what they set out to achieve. This means that these reform processes are highly locally specific. It is very important to have a thorough and strategic understanding of the country/state-specific factors that induce, enhance, or block reform processes. The transfer of reform `models' from one place of the globe to another should therefore be looked at with great reservation, and generally be avoided. This obviously does not exclude the possibility to learn from reform processes in other places.

Irrigation reform processes generally have a long history of lobbying for it and preparation and experimentation, before they are `formalised', and applied on a large scale. One should not be deceived by the seeming suddenness of a reform like that in Mexico: its initiation actually started in the 1970s. Central theme in this process leading up to country or state-wide implementation of reform is the `alignment of agendas' of different interest groups that needs to take place.

Reform processes enforced by development funding agencies (often somewhat misleadingly called donors) generally run into the sand. More precisely: external agencies can facilitate and support reforms processes, but a `domestic base' of the reform in the local polity and economy seems to be a condition for successful processes to take place.

There are considerable contradictions in the way development funding agencies/donors approach reform. Two themes, among others, are 1) the observation that development funding agencies not always seem to take their own institutional conditionalities for loans and programmes very seriously, that is, they do not always pursue the institutional component of irrigation loans vigorously, and 2) that the large physical structures component of many irrigation reform loans may actually hamper that reform because it reinforces the position of the irrigation agency, and reproduces its focus on construction, rehabilitation and maintenance.

Well organised consultation processes before and during the reform policy formulation and implementation seem to be a powerful tool for enhancing reform. Consultations not only shape the outcome, that is the content of the policy, but may also generate support and aewareness, and may change the behaviour of stakeholders already before the refrom is implemented. Consultation processes may act as negotiation platforms.

Irrigation reform processes need to be situated in the wider context of agricultural and rural development, poverty alleviation, integrated resource management and improving governance. More work is needed to develop methods to do this better.

It is important to identify more precisely the sources of and reasons for resistance to irrigation reform processes. In the different country studies two main groups that may resist reform processes were identified as 1) the hydraulic bureaucracies, and 2) rural elites/large farmers. Their, and others' interests, strategies, and behaviour needs to be understood better.

More work is needed to evaluate the different costs and benefits of reform processes.

By Dr. Peter P. Mollinga, Department of Environmental Sciences,
and Dr. Alex Bolding, Irrigation and Water Engineering Group
Wageningen Agricultural University
Nieuwe Kanaal 11,
6709 PA Wageningen
The NetherlandsFax: +31 317 484 759
email: alex.bolding@users.tct.wau.nl