PIM in Srilanka

Present Status of Participatory Irrigation
Management in Sri Lanka

by Jeffrey D. Brewer, International Irrigation Management Institute

Introduction

The government of Sri Lanka is attempting to transform the way irrigation schemes are operated, maintained, and financed. The goals are to improve the productivity of irrigated agriculture and to reduce government expenditures on irrigation operations and maintenance. The core of this effort is a policy to transfer irrigation management responsibilities to farmer organizations. In Sri Lanka, this policy is called "participatory management."

This paper describes the key concepts underlying participatory management and then indicates progress made and remaining problems.

In 1984, the government began the Integrated Management of Major Irrigation Schemes (INMAS) program to improve the productivity of irrigated agriculture. Key elements of the program included the creation of Farmer Organizations and of Project Management Committees. Farmer Organizations were meant to help improve water distribution and maintenance at the tertiary level and to provide representatives that could speak for the farmers to the government agencies. The Project Management Committees included both representatives of the Farmer Organizations and officers from the key government agencies. The role of the committee was to coordinate government agency inputs and help solve farmers' problems.

In 1984 the Government of Sri Lanka also instituted an irrigation fee for the first time. To make this change palatable to farmers, the government promised that irrigation service would improve and that the funds collected within a scheme would be spent in that scheme. However, neither promise was kept. Irrigation service did not significantly improve for most farmers. Nor were the fees spent primarily within the scheme they were collected from. For these reasons and because of civil disturbances between 1987 and 1989, the irrigation fee collection rate declined from above 60% for 1984 to less than 10% for 1988.

Because of difficulties in fee collection and in view of the success of the INMAS Program and other experiments in farmer participation, in December 1988 the government approved the "Participatory Management Policy" for major schemes. Under this policy, farmers would be exempted from the obligation to pay the irrigation fee if they organized themselves and took over full responsibility for operations and maintenance of distributary and field channels (secondary and tertiary systems). Handing these responsibilities over to farmers was expected to reduce the government operations and maintenance expenditures by half.

The INMAS program was limited to 35 major irrigation schemes. Two other programs have been created to implement participatory management in the remaining major schemes. The Management of Irrigation Systems (MANIS) Program covers 160 smaller major schemes, while the Mahaweli Economic Agency began creating Farmer Organizations in four major schemes. The INMAS, MANIS, and Mahaweli programs cover 199 of the 270 major schemes in the country. The remainder lie in areas strongly affected by the civil war that has been going on since 1983.

Progress of Participatory Management in Sri Lanka

Participatory management in Sri Lanka has three components:

Farmer Organizations
Farmers are organized into legally recognized autonomous organizations. Normally, Farmer Organizations are made up of field channel groups, each of which selects a Farmer Representative to lead the group and to represent them to outsiders. The Farmer Representatives within a Farmer Organization form the Farmer Organization Committee that manages the Organization. The President and other office bearers of the Farmer Organization are selected from among the Farmer Representatives. In some schemes, the Farmer Organizations have created a system-level federation called a "system level farmer organization."

Joint Management Committees
Each scheme has a Project Management Committee consisting of representatives of the Farmer Organizations and of the government agencies concerned with irrigated agriculture. These committees are generally chaired by a government official, but farmers make up a majority of the members. The Project Management Committee is responsible for preparing seasonal plans, including making water allocations to different parts of the schemes, and for solving irrigation and other problems. Some larger schemes have lower level joint management committees that focus on solving irrigation and agricultural problems.

Handing Over
Once the Farmer Organizations are created and have sufficiently matured, full responsibility for operations and maintenance of distributary and field channels is handed over to them via formal agreements between the Farmer Organizations and the relevant agency: the Irrigation Department or the Mahaweli Economic Agency.

Participatory management in Sri Lanka has made great progress since adoption of the policy in 1988. The figures given below are from a survey carried out in the latter part of 1994 (IIMI/ARTI 1995):

Farmer Organizations have been created in about 85% of all major schemes including all Mahaweli and INMAS schemes. There are about 1800 Farmer Organizations in all. The average Farmer Organization area covers about 120 hectares and includes about 135 farmers, of whom 52% are official members of the Farmer Organization. System level federations of Farmer Organizations exist in about 30 INMAS schemes.

Joint management committees have been established in about 49% of all major schemes. All Mahaweli and INMAS schemes have joint management committees.

About 20% of the Farmer Organizations have signed formal handing over agreements, most of them in INMAS schemes. However, O&M responsibilities have been informally handed over to a large majority of Farmer Organizations, particularly in INMAS schemes. Since that time, a number of additional handing over agreements have been signed, mostly within the Mahaweli program.

The same study (IIMI/ARTI 1995) indicated that participatory management:

Has improved water distribution in most schemes.

Has elicited greater contribution of farmers toward maintenance but may not have improved overall maintenance.

Has had no significant effect on agricultural production.

Has been accompanied by reduced government allocations (in real terms) for O&M of major irrigation schemes.

The impacts of participatory management are controversial. No one seriously questions the overall improvement in water distribution. However, some Irrigation Department officials have claimed that channels taken over by farmers are deteriorating at a very fast rate, particularly following rehabilitation. One study (Brewer et al 1996) concluded that there is no evidence that handing over has affected the rate of deterioration of channels but that there are clear problems with understandings of responsibilities handed over.

The lack of discernible impact on total agricultural production should not be surprising. Agricultural production is affected by a number of factors in addition to irrigation water supply. Between 1989 and 1996, most paddy farmers were squeezed between rising input costs and static rice prices. Given the reported improvements in water distribution, a long term improvement in agricultural production should be seen.

Finally, the fall in O&M budgets since the mid 1980's has been driven by the Treasury rather than by participatory management. The fall has meant that an ever growing portion of maintenance funds go to salaries and other establishment costs; in one system, over 80% of maintenance funds were used for establishment costs in 1993. The reduction in O&M funds has been partly compensated by an increase in farmer contributions. These farmer contributions have meant that while government O&M resources have been falling, water distribution has improved and maintenance seems about the same. Participatory management has allowed the government to cut resources without cutting irrigation service.

Present Issues and Problems

There is presently grave concern over the future of participatory management. Some farmers complain that they are taking on new expenses and responsibilities and not getting much in return. Farmers that have not taken over irrigation management responsibilities continue to get services from the government. Also, some government officials are publicly saying that the Farmer Organizations are falling apart and not carrying out their responsibilities.

IIMI's 1994 (IIMI/ARTI 1995) study showed that Farmer Organizations vary widely in their performance. Many of the problems result from incomplete and unclear handing over of responsibilities. Although handing over is supposed to mean that Farmer Organizations have full O&M responsibility for their channels, both the Irrigation Department and the Mahaweli Economic Agency provide government funds to the Farmer Organizations. The message to farmers is unclear; are they responsible or not?

Many government officers and farmers argue vehemently for continuation of government subsidies to the Farmer Organizations. Such subsidies serve the interests of both; farmers get additional resources from the government and the officers retain an important role among the farmers as dispensers of government resources. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the agencies have not yet redefined the jobs of their field officers to reflect their changed powers and responsibilities under participatory management. Thus many field officers retain the attitudes and try to claim the same decision making powers. Since they are accountable only to the government hierarchy right up to the top officials in the capital, they are often able to usurp some Farmer Organization decisions. In other cases, officers use the government resources as an argument for making decisions their way. These practices discourage farmers. There is a need to make field officers of the government agencies formally accountable to the farmers through the Project Management Committees.

References

Brewer, JD, SMKB Nandaratne, KA Haq, and R Sakthivadivel 1996 Assessing Maintenance Performance by Farmer Organizations, mimeo, International Irrigation Management Institute, Colombo.

IIMI/ARTI 1995 Monitoring and Evaluation of the Participatory Irrigation System Management Policy: Final Report, (draft), International Irrigation Management Institute, Colombo.