Nepal - Participatory Approach

By Ram P. Satyal, Project Coordinator of Irrigation Management Transfer Project (IMTP)

[Editor's note: IMTP is a joint venture project between the Asian Development Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Government of Nepal and farmers. The Asian Development Bank is financing a loan for rehabilitation, while USAID provides technical assistance to enhance the WUAs' capabilities to fully manage these systems.]

One of the objectives of Nepal's 1992 Irrigation Policy is to decrease the government's involvement in the construction, maintenance and operation of irrigation scheme by gradually increasing participation of organized users. The eighth plan (1992-1997) underscores the importance of participation, but the precise definition of participation within the irrigation sector remains unclear.

There seem to be two participants: irrigation agency personnel, and beneficiary farmers. But can we expect a program to be truly participatory in nature when just two actors participate in it? Furthermore, the policy does not clarify how a project becomes participatory. Is it just by contributing labor, cash or kind by the beneficiary groups? The irrigation policy states that beneficiary farmers will be involved from project inception, survey, design, estimate, construction and in operation and management. Is it enough to derive participation from the beneficiaries alone? Let us take a case of new headworks in the Sunsari-Morang Irrigation Project. In this case, from the beneficiary side who will participate and in what way? Or is participation not required in this case because it is a massive complicated engineering structure and beneficiaries cannot contribute monetarily? If so, will it not be necessary to define the scope and limitation of participation? Should not the designers involve the farmers in collective decision making in the type of structures to be erected and consider it as their participation?

For a project to be participatory in the true sense the participants should include the concerned agency personnel and beneficiaries, policy framers, planners, technical personnel, managers, funding agencies, the contractors and builders, media persons, service and materials delivery groups, politicians, government departments apart from concerned agency, etc. It is not meant that all actors/participants have an equal role to play in any particular project but it is certainly expected that all have something to share and contribute.

Similarly, participation is required to be defined and quantified in a clear tone to be understood by one and all. Contributing cash, kind and labor, one or all combined just to cover the part of project cost alone is not to be treated as participation. In various works from inception/identification of a project to its completion and management, there certainly are activities that one and all can contribute in one way or the other. Let us take a case of fixing the outlets along the canal length. An experienced old village person spends days with the technicians to determine the points and positions of outlets and it proves to be more practical and easily manageable. Is this not participation? If so, how much has the experienced man contributed in comparison to one young beneficiary who contributed his labor in digging the canal? Things like this and many more need to be determined, decided, quantified, clarified and put into a simple booklet that tells about participation. Then only can we achieve a true and genuinely participatory development approach.