Ineffective efforts to shift from large scale planning to decentralized planning

The first three Five Year Plans (1951-1966) of India eloquently focused on decentralized planning after the Planning Commission was constituted in 1950. The first Five Year Plan (1951-1956) suggested that the planning process in India ought to be broken into national, state, district and community level (PRIA, 2009, p. 4). The Planning Commission for the first time in 1969 issued guidelines for district planning. In 1977, the Planning Commission formed a working group chaired by Prof. M. L. Dantewala to draw guidelines for block level planning (Rao, 1989). This idea was concretized with establishment of the District Development Councils (DDC) that were envisaged to consolidate plans prepared at the village level through a participatory process (PRIA, 2009, p. 4).

However, this focus ebbed off in some of the later plans, as the emphasis was not that explicit. The raison d’être for the idea of decentralized planning not taking roots was not only due to resistance from local elites, and lack of political will (Kohli, 2001; Rao, 1989), but also because the initial stages of development planning in India favoured centralized decisions at higher levels as discussed in the previous section.^liii

Additionally, the idea of decentralized planning that Planning Commission envisaged through its Five Year Plans in its initial years had little enforcement capacity and thus did not find salience at the state level. Nehruvian ideas -and its faith in planning- necessitated that Planning Commission had the wherewithal to ensure/discipline state governments in order to implement planning decisions taken at the national level. However, Planning Commission was bestowed with responsibilities but was not given enforcement authority to ensure implementation of policy ideas like setting up DDCs. Here, the causal link between state structure and quality of policy idea and its implementation is evident.

Furthermore, though Planning Commission was responsible for designing plans, it did not have any instruments to implement or monitor these plans for instance, budget, which was under the purview of respective ministries (Chibber, 2006, pp. 162, 168).

To elaborate further on causality of state structuring during this period, the DDCs were aimed to provide a link between the state functionaries and the people by consolidating plans prepared at the village level. Funds were channelled to district without vesting any power with district related to land and water (Misra, Sundaram, & Prakasa Rao, 1974). However, the task of formulation of these councils was ultimately entrusted to state governments who were functioning autonomously and thus did not give any political significance to the formulations made by the Planning Commission (Chibber, 2006, p. 181). Thus, the onus of implementing decentralization was on willing bureaucrats.

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(Re)introduction of the idea of farmer participation in irrigation management The ideology for (irrigation) planning at the national level changed slightly with the end of Nehruvian era with Nehru’s death in 1964, when there were calls by political elites as well as bureaucracy to overhaul. During this period, a large section of bureaucracy acknowledged that large surface water schemes were problematic, and there was need to rethink strategy for water management in the country. Thus, a counter idea (against centrist state policy) that started to gain prominence in policy circles was the need to (re)think strategy for water management given the huge socio-economic and environmental costs associated with large-scale water management projects as evident from experiences worldwide (Dhawan, 1990; Patwardhan, 2000; Singh, 2004; WCD, 2000). Consequently, a discussion on merits of small-scale community based natural resource management gained salience (B. Agarwal, 2001; Agrawal & Gibson, 2001; Chambers, 1988; Wade, 1987 inter alia). In this context, Ostrom’s (1990) work on common pool resource management need a mention as it established merits of collective action for sustainable management of resources by local communities.

In India, however, the irrigation department (engineers) resisted to any change in thinking on large-scale water management schemes. This is not surprising, as the rent seeking behaviour and the nexus between irrigation engineers, powerful farmers and politicians was well known in policy circles and was also gaining academic inquiry (c.f. Wade, 1982). The irrigation engineers resisted changing, as any shift in focus at national level would have curtailed their resource access and make them accountable. The department during the 1970s and early 1980s alleged that the problem in water management was due to inefficient use of irrigation water by farmers. Thereby arguing that in large surface water schemes, management was an issue below the outlet (Chambers, 1988, p. 86).^liv The above discussion makes evident that irrigation engineers were not ready to rethink their outlook towards irrigation management, as it would have also entailed a change in their ideational role of harbingers of growth and progress thereby curtailing their access to resources. Rather the blame was shifted to farmers, to explicate poor achievements in irrigation sector.

To substantiate the above-mentioned proposition further: the second irrigation commission report of 1972 recommended On-Farm Development (OFD), on-farm management and formation of farmer organizations for water management. Additionally in sync with the idea of economic nationalism emphasis was on revisiting and resetting the water rates so that irrigation works do not become a liability for the state exchequer (Parthasarthy, 2008, p. 125). Subsequently, Command Area Development Programme (CADP) was started in 1974 to implement the irrigation commission’s recommendations i.e. OFD, farmer organizations and water management (Chambers, 1988, p. 86).

However, given the resistance of irrigation engineers, CADP did not tackle the vital issue of system

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design and management practice, and focused only on outlet level issues (Bottrall, 1992, p. 237;

Chambers, 1988, p. 86). Interestingly, this focus on outlet level was buttressed by international organizations like the World Bank, as it was easier for them to disburse large sums swiftly for infrastructure development. As it was more visible and had tangible results, rather for instance outputs of management funding (Chambers, 2013, p. 153).

Thus, not surprisingly, Command Area Development Authority (CADA) that was set up to implement CADP outlined and identified the problem of major and medium irrigation projects primarily in terms of physical works.^lv Additionally Plan reports elucidate emphasis on farmer participation in scientific management of soil and water resources of their area during this period (Pant, 1987, p. 49). Overall, the question of main system management was ignored and focus was solely on construction-oriented approach according to functions enlisted for CADA in the sixth Five Year Plan. Interestingly, in its report the irrigation commission emphasized that CADA’s ought to be abolished after ayacuts (irrigable area) were fully developed (Chambers, 1988, p. 88). Thus, prevalent policy idea that the irrigation engineers furthered during this time period premised that once ayacut development was done, and farmers were disciplined (i.e. the warabandi roster enforced) then CADAs could be dissolved, as its functions would no longer be required. The assumption here that farmers are homogenous entity that can be disciplined insinuates colonial hangover.

Similarly, the seventh Five Year Plan (1985-90) noting the increasing gap between irrigation potential created and utilized (refer to Appendix II) underscored farmer participation as an area that required special attention (Pant, 1987, p. 49). Subsequently, there was substantial debate on formation of water user organizations for irrigation management, the principal proponents of this debate were bureaucrats of the irrigation department, academics, and sector experts and international organizations like the World Bank, and the USAID (Satish & Sunder, 1990, p. 1). There are numerous reports, workshop proceedings that discuss the issue of farmer participation in irrigation management, practicing warabandi in irrigated agriculture, and several other issues that concern management of public irrigation systems (GIMS, 1987; GoI, 1981; Maloney & Raju, 1991; Sundar, 1990). In policy and programmatic discussions (which becomes evident from papers of senior bureaucrats, representatives from the World Bank, in these workshops and from documents of CAD, national water management programme, etc.) prescriptive model for irrigation management gained prominence and the dominant meta-narrative echoed benefits of initiating Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM). To substantiate:

“Management is the only way of getting the best out of whatever resources, good or small. (…) Warabandi (rotational method with fixation of time and date/day for supply of

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water to farmers) is only partial engineering in the conventional sense of the term. It is more a social engineering project. So, technological engineering and social engineering will have to be blended in appropriate portions” (Swaminathan, 1981, p. 5).

Thus, in 1980s, a predominant idea that gained salience was that enforcing warabandi could lead to desired change in irrigation management.^lvi Additionally, the above citation also reflects the dominant narrative of the (post-Nehruvian) period wherein engineers and planners were still in high demand and considered part of an important vocation.

Furthermore, the reasons for discussion on irrigation reform that aims at better irrigation management has had varied perspectives. For instance, the senior bureaucrats argued for financial benefits that would accrue to state exchequer by reducing operating costs of canals by transferring this responsibility to farmer organizations. The bureaucracy argued that this would result in equity in pricing and greater irrigation efficiency (Satish & Sunder, 1990, pp. 2-3). These policy ideas were a sign of neoliberal development ideology that was beginning to emerge in the national policy narrative (discussed in detail in the following sections) with the aim of reducing the financial and management burden of state actors. Another prominent ideology that was emerging was of critiques that were concerned about the role and representation of these farmer organizations. For instance, communitarianism that premised that these organizations would develop as a power base at the grass roots level and therefore provide appropriate checks and balances mechanisms for democratic decentralization. The idea of communitarianism has emerged from the work of common property theorists like Ostrom (1992) who emphasize the role of local institutions and crafting rules for local community cooperate with each other. The literature on community based natural resource management portrays community as one homogenous group which has a common culture (M.

Leach, Mearns, & Scoones, 1999).

To sum up, this section discusses events and discussions on farmer participation in 1970s and 1980s at the national level. From the above discussion it is clear that not all actors considered participation of farmers in irrigation management practical. However, the Indian state through its policies was swaying towards this idea, given the financial and managerial concerns that irrigation bureaucracies were mired with. These discussions for including farmers in irrigation management were not solely endogenous. Rather there were few exogenous factors that also influenced and introduced new policy ideas for irrigation management. The next section elucidates the role of international organizations (which are connoted as ideational brokers in this research) for pushing the idea of farmer participation in irrigation management.

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Role of international organizations as ideational brokers in introducing the idea of farmer participation in irrigation management

Recognizing the need to increase agricultural production United States Agency for International Development (USAID) proposed to the Indian government a project on irrigation management and training in order to have a more integrated and coordinated approach by all the state government departments initially for period of seven years from 1983-1990. This project was initiated with focus on on-farm management, however, after an internal review between Central Water Commission (CWC) and USAID in 1986, the project’s scope was widened to main systems management and the project name changed to Water Resource Management and Training (WRMT) project (Wall, Sundar, Das Gupta, & Elmore, 1992, p. 3). The WRMT project was designed to enhance the institutional capacity of government of India and the select state governments’; to ‘plan, design, construct, operate, manage, and maintain efficient and productive irrigation systems; and to conduct river basin planning for water resources development’ (ibid., p. vii).^lvii The idea behind USAID funding for WRMT project succinctly comes out from the following paragraph of the project completion report that was submitted to USAID by Irrigation Support Project for Asia and the Near East (ISPAN), Arlington:

“By 1980, Indian engineers had sufficient expertise to plan, design, and construct hydraulic structures for storing and conveying water. They did not, however, have all the necessary expertise to plan, design, and manage distribution systems at the outlet level, considering farmers’ needs, nor the expertise to develop plans for integrated river basin development. The WRM&T Project sought to enable engineers to become experts in delivering water to farmers' fields and systematically plan development of river basins. It provides an in-service training capability to the state irrigation departments through the Water and Land Management Institutes (WALMIs) and selected agricultural universities and engineering colleges. Likewise, their needs for training in river basin planning are served through the central training unit” (Wall et al., p. vii).

It can be concluded from the about citation that the core idea behind initiating WRMT project was that Indian engineers lacked expertise, to plan, design and manage distribution systems at the outlet level and hence they had to be made experts in delivering water to farmer fields. There is clear focus in the text to enable engineers to move away from ‘construction oriented mind-set’ to ‘management mind-set’.^lviii Overall, salience of exogenous aspects for changing perceptions becomes evident. In the colonial era the British raised the engineering profession to its helm, a tradition the Indian state continued with. However, in the 1980s, the international organizations through their funding programmes were pushing a move away from the mind-set of colonial era where irrigation engineer’s work was mostly restricted to construction aspects to more managerial concerns. This was a consequence of the neoliberal development approach that was starting to gain salience in the

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international arena and envisaged greater role of market forces in management of resources.

Initiation and pursuance of this approach by international organizations in the late 1980s explains the insistence to change in focus from construction to management for engineers through their funding programmes, as this ideology envisaged lesser role of the state. Notably, the other prominent ideology community based natural resource management also gained prominence in response to the poor results from large-scale infrastructure projects like big dams and envisaged greater role of community.

Furthermore, during 1980s, in several states WALMI/Indian Management Training Institutes (IMTI) were established through technical and financial collaboration between the concerned states’ and USAID. These WALMIs/IMTIs were set up with the objective that they will help irrigation departments to train irrigation system managers and improve the efficiency of water use in canal command areas (GoI, 2002a, p. 49). Also in the late-1980s, the World Bank supported National Water Management Programme (NWMP) was initiated to maintain system facilities and improve water management in order to improve efficiency (Vaidyanathan, 2006, p. 25).^lix NWMP emphasized farmer participation in irrigation management and through this programme efforts were made to build capacities of engineers and change their behavioural pattern for better irrigation management.

NWMP was initiated as the gap between irrigation potential created and utilized (refer to Appendix II) was alarming and was recognized that irrigation bureaucracy was bleeding with the diagnosis that part of the problem was technical but there were problems also because of socio-organizational issues that were at stake both within the farmer community and the irrigation department. Further, elite discussion in policy circles recognized the problems with irrigation sector in India was due to mismatch between field realities i.e. centres of decision-making – bureaucrats/engineers – were far removed from field realities. Moreover, water for irrigation is a sensitive political issue and NWMP was not able to address the core problems that the irrigation sector faced and the irrigation department was oblivious to change (See Berkoff, 1990, p. 26; Bottrall, 1992, p. 237; IDP, 1993, pp. 5-6). Evaluation studies of NWMP projects like Bhadrak reservoir in Karnataka elucidate that projects undertaken under NWMP were not able to achieve/implement the idea of farmer participation in irrigation management, though there were some positive signs in terms of water distribution along the distributaries and increase in agricultural output (Sakthivadivel et al., 1999). By the World Bank’s own admission, this project failed to achieve its objective in terms of increasing the incremental irrigated area, greater cropping intensity, etc. The Bank’s evaluation report elucidates that there was little awareness amongst state level bureaucrats for better water management. Though short term training programmes were conducted, but they had little impact on project design or implementation (World Bank, 1997, p. vi). As a future course of action, the Bank came out with

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several recommendations viz. first, the need for equity in irrigation by ensuring volumetric water supply. Second, the Bank pushed for the idea of high-level farmer participation (mostly nominal) in irrigation management to change the status quo, thus, advocating for not only technical change but also social change. Third, the Bank argued for strengthening capabilities of irrigation department staff, and the need for institutional restructuring to provide emphasis and staff resources to these activities (World Bank, 1997, pp. vii-viii).

Interestingly around this time, (1980s), the Philippines model (discussed in chapter two) influenced the way irrigation reforms were undertaken in India. This reform process was promoted by Ford Foundation, which in turn supported few NGOs [Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, Samaj Parivartan Kendra] in the state of Maharashtra, and Gujarat for undertaking pilot experiments (Mollinga & Bolding, 2004b, p. 293). Under the Ford Foundation programme, few piecemeal efforts were made by NGOs in western India in the state of Gujarat and Maharashtra to explore, motivate, and organize farmers of irrigation systems into user groups for water management (Narain, 2008). Based on experience from these pilot experiments undertaken by NGOs there was considerable interest shown by senior bureaucrats for formation of water user organizations.

To sum it, from the above discussion it is evident that CADP is the earliest attempt to initiate irrigation sector reforms for participatory irrigation management by the post-colonial state in 1970s and 1980s to improve water use efficiency and increase irrigation potential by organizing farmers at the outlet level (Thomas & Ballabh, 2008). Thereafter, emphasis in the policy narrative for farmer participation continued to increase, what merits attention here, is that the 1987 national water policy puts emphasis on farmer participation in management of irrigation water and rationalization of water charges; seek assistance of voluntary agencies to educate farmers in efficient water use and management (GoI, 1987). So, by the late 1980s the essence of participation and farmer management was seeping in as strong ideas in policy language and was also reflected through various programmes that were initiated like CADP, watershed management.

Furthermore, the structural imperatives provided by the colonial state in form of rules, regulations, etc. provided the bureaucracy legitimacy to continue their old way of functioning. These structural imperatives –lack of devolution of power to districts (for instance, DDCs), structural characteristics of development cooperation which focused on micro and/or macro level (for instance WRMT and NWMP project resulted in perpetuation of bipolar structure due to strong counter force against decentralization by a section of bureaucrats/engineers as discussed in the previous sections. The bipolar structure has been explicated by Mollinga (2005) building on Kaviraj (1997) as centralist state

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dealing with villages, and there is nothing in between, which is explicated as ‘state-village dichotomy’. The centre/state (in the state-village dichotomy) relate to a centralistic state organization, and the water bureaucracy (ministry and department of water resources) that is populated by civil engineers who aim to make the water resource sector efficient. The state-village dichotomy has led to conundrum in the management of water resources, especially at the village level. Management of water resources, for instance, drinking water, irrigation, and watershed management is the responsibility of various ministries at the national and sub-national level.

Duplication and diffusion of roles and responsibilities is observed while managing water resources, as several ministries (and departments) -irrigation, agriculture, environment and forests, rural development, urban development, public health engineering- are responsible for one or more aspects of water governance. More often than not, these ministries (and departments) operate in the same geographical area and lack of synergies between these departments results in sub-optimal utilization of scarce resources, leading to creation of lop-sided water policies and schemes and also creating confusion at the receiver’s end, (farmer in a village, households in town/ city) (Singh &

Dasgupta, 2008). Perpetuation of this bipolar structure has resulted in lesser focus on the intermediate level, which has remained a vacuum in context of water resource management.

This section also elucidated how the international organizations through their funding -structural element of development cooperation- for various programmes introduced the idea of farmer involvement in irrigation management as a solution to maladies that the irrigation sector was facing.

Appendix III elucidates the accelerating investment and decelerating irrigation benefits at the national level. Moreover, the international organizations also brought into forefront the issue of capacity building of irrigation staff to ensure not only technical change but also social change. To initiate/foster this change, organizations like Ford Foundation also included NGOs and other experts in the discussion process, and thus widened the expanse of the debate of designing institutions for irrigation management. The irrigation reforms that were needed from the state during this period were to initiate more state intervention to ensure that the functionaries of the state (the irrigation bureaucracy) would fall in line, however, instead in the 1990s, the Indian state decided to change its intervention strategy from tighter intervention to lesser intervention with adoption of the tenets of neoliberalism; details of which are discussed in next section.

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4.3 Ideational realm post-nineties in India