North Bengal - PIM to IWRM

Note from the Editor: The authors, based on their experience with WUAs in North Bengal, argue that WUAs initially created only for irrigation management can and should expand their role over time to manage other water resources in their area.

In promoting irrigation management transfer (IMT), two processes are usually at work. The first process aims to create acceptance of a different mode of management—irrigation no longer a public service. The second process aims to set up a new management structure. These processes run side by side and they are intertwined. As a result, the process almost inevitably leads to participatory irrigation management (PIM) by local users. The initial outcome is typically a heavily-governed Water Users Association (WUA), even where the management tasks at hand are relatively minor.

The small farmer-managed river lift systems developed under the North Bengal Terai Development Project in North Bengal (India) are a good example. The WUAs manage diesel pump-based systems which typically serve a command area of 20 ha, owned by 30 to 45 farm families. The WUAs consist of general assemblies and 6 to 8-person committees. Each WUA appoints an operator and a cashier to collect water charges.

After a number of seasons, however, such an elaborate organization is not required to operate the system. Effective operation requires only a small local utility, with a farmer-appointed operator and collector of bills.

Forming the WUA creates considerable social capital; a strength of the WUA is that it brings together all landowners in the area. Therefore, it can expand its activities to local integrated water resource management (IWRM).

To make the transition from PIM to IWRM, WUAs in 15 river lift systems were asked to do ``micro water-management planning." The planning efforts aimed to build the awareness and capacity of water users to deal with issues beyond irrigation management, to develop plans of action, and to inform the local government about water issues.

First, the association made an inventory of water resources in the command area using participatory appraisal techniques. Then they discussed the problems and future vision for the area's water resources. From the vision, they developed points for immediate action. The process was supported by 2 to 4 visits from the same social organizers that had earlier supported the establishment of the WUA.

The action plans for the 15 areas identified activities, such as:

· Cleaning of the open ring wells used for drinking water. This was done by pumping out the water with the pump set of the river lift system, cleaning the accumulated sediment, and using bleaching powder.

· Restoring fish cultivation in ponds. In many places, ponds were used for retting jute. (Jute is an East Indian plant whose fiber is used to make burlap or twine, which must be retted, or soaked, in water to loosen the fibers from the plant.) The ponds had become too shallow to cultivate fish. Ponds were excavated and catfish cultivation was started. Unlike other types of pisciculture, catfish combine well with jute retting.

· Constructing a free intake to take surface flow to another command area, which allowed the cultivation of an additional 15 ha of land.

· Building a spur (or diversion) to take river water to the pump house for the irrigation system.

This first step concentrates on immediate goals and helps create confidence in WUA members. The second round of micro water management planning does not concentrate on individual water sources, but looks at the linkages. For example, WUAs look at the link between contamination from retting ponds and poor drinking water quality, or regulation of withdrawals from minor rivers in low flow periods. 

As they participate in these planning activities, WUAs begin taking a holistic approach to harnessing water resources. In this way, the social capital that was created for irrigation management is used to a larger effect and kept going. The shift from participatory irrigation management (PIM) to local integrated water resource management (IWRM) suggests that it is useful not to confine water user associations to a single purpose. In North Bengal, single-purpose irrigation associations would have been likely to diminish to basic and functional local pump utilities.

By

S. Nandi
S.B. Roy. IBRAD
kgpibrad@cal2.vsnl.net.in

F. van Steenbergen
Arcadis Euroconsult
fvansteenbergen@compuserve.com