The Human Side of the Organization and Operation

technical or physical perspectives, conceiving of the irrigation system as a human system, is examining it with a view to pinpointing the role of human side in irrigation. CHAMBERS (1980:28) refers to this human side as „the management of those who manage the water, the procedure for irrigation control, the processes of allocation of water groups or individuals, and the distribution of water within groups”. Within this area of interest and, considering the irrigation as a ‘happening’, asserts KELLER (1986:334) that „a traditional irrigation system does not irrigate... it is merely a network of channels feeding prepared fields. Human enterprise does the irrigation“. Furthermore, the control and allocation of the water to the field also requires continuous and direct human action. The human action is defined here as the ‘men‘ in organizations and communities; the labor and management.

Considering the human aspects is then not only essential to facilitate the management of irrigation, but also is a precondition for the efficiency of irrigation water utilization.

58 To elaborate on the above, he compares an irrigation system with free school. Merely putting the building in place and providing staff does not produce education. Education occur when students take the risks, the time, and the effort to attend the school and learn, in hopes that what they have learned will be of benefit to them in the future. Thus to get the students into a program, they must be attracted to it.

59 Some theorists conceive of communication as written versus oral channels or the transmission of messages (the mechanistic perspective). Others view organizational communication through the locus of message effects, filtered through cognitive processes of senders and receivers. Other theorists, although fewer in number, treat communication as the interpretation of information, the meaning of symbols, or the redundancy of message patterns.

This point is reinforced by CRIDDLE (1975:139): „ohne Berücksichtigung der jeweiligen Bewässerungsmethoden besteht ein enger Zusammenhang zwischen der menschlichen Komponente und der Bewässerungseffizienz. Je grösser der Spielraum für menschliche Entscheidungen und Aktivitäten ist, desto grösser ist die Gelegenheit zum Missbrauch des Wassers“. Therefore, disregard of this important component as many argue (CHAMBERS 1980; LOWDERMILK 1986; WEITZ 1986, and SINGH 1986), is considered as responsible for the failure of many projects in developing countries (e. g., India, Sri Lanka, and Israel).

In this context, NOBE and SAMPATH (1986:7), are confining their attention to the training of professionals and farmers which received little attention during the 1960s and 1970s⁶⁰. They have argued that the most economic resource for irrigation development today may not be financial capital for new schemes, but rather „require the abilities of people to do the job- their knowledge, skills and professional commitment„. In this regard, WIENER (1976:8), formerly the chairman of the famous Tahal National Water Program in Israel has also stated the importance of training farmers for operating successful irrigation systems:

„Engineering is not the fundamental problem underlying irrigation development in LDCs.

Engineering principles are known and can be adapted, but the major problem, however, is to discover ways to utilize farmer clients more effectively in operations and maintenance and development programs which create rural transformation. Rural transformation essentially requires changes in farmers’ behavior, motivations, and expectations, which is hardly possible until institutions exist to provide them with the improved production possibilities and incentives”.

In the concrete, one is able to say that among the general interest of the human side in irrigation systems, the role of farmers as final water users- their knowledge, motivations and initiatives have been more highlighted. This has been strengthened by, as CHAMBERS (1992:7) argues, „the growing recognition by development professionals of the painfully obvious fact that rural people were themselves knowledgeable on many subjects that touched their lives”. He refers here to what is known as Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK). CHAMBERS (1992:20-1) describes the villagers’ knowledge and capabilities by saying: „villagers have a greater capacity to map, model, quantify and estimate, rank, score and diagram than outsiders have generally supposed them capable of. To enable these capabilities to be expressed, the principle is to assume that the people can do something until proved otherwise“.

Besides the fact that the traditional irrigation systems themselves do not irrigate but the farmer, it is also increasingly recognized that irrigation is not a task that governments or agencies can or should do alone. As COREY (1981) has stated from his experience in India: „Government should not do the farmers’ business ... development experience worldwide indicates that field channel construction, operation and maintenance, on-farm improvements, and general management of the irrigation water conveyance system below the outlet can be accomplished but with direct farmer involvement.“ In general, as CHAMBERS (1983) suggested, government should unambiguously avoid doing that which

60 A recent survey of 63 world bank and USAID irrigation projects, they noted, found that only 1 per cent of the total project costs was developed to improving human capital. But, the situation in the 1980s is definitely improving.

communities can do for themselves in their own interest, but should intervene when exceptional problems are beyond a community’s power to overcome (LOWDERMILK 1986:434-5).

Irrigation agencies, as noted by WALKER/CLEVERINAGA (1989:M.IV.1/1), „cannot field enough personnel to guard every gate, clean every canal, settle every conflict that arises throughout an irrigation system”. This is not only against the scare available resources in the developing countries, but also, in the same time, it is simply against the wishes of farmers themselves which need to share an important part of these tasks.

Therefore, it is the task of the agency, to be effective, to know how to make the project’s clientele see themselves as partners in the effort and how to encourage the individual initiative dormant in the people. In other words, the project authority must be capable of discovering the active elements in the local population, to awaken their interests and mobilize their initiative. These elements may be found in the ‘educated middle class, in the rural leaders, in the political parties, or in other groups‘. Their successful activation requires first hand knowledge of the population, their customs and traditions and is often based more on perceptiveness and intuition than on direct rules and principles(SINGH 1986:353 ).

Within the scope of the evaluation of the irrigation project’s performance until the mid -1980s it has been found that the most underrated and misunderstood dimension of irrigation development is that of the individual and collective irrigation behavior of farmers. The situation was briefly like that what LOWDERMILK (1986:428) has pointed out: „while much is known about the different physical aspects, the social and organizational aspects of irrigation continue to be the Achilles’ heel in system development, improvement and operation”. The lack of effective farmer involvement in irrigation projects, he alleges, is considered responsible for the high costs of systems, the perennial problems of operation and maintenance, low irrigation efficiencies, and resulting low crop production.

On the other hand, although participation can not be regarded as a panacea for problems of irrigation projects, experiences shows that where farmers are organized and have a sense of ownership in the system, they will not only maintain the system, but also assure that structures and facilities are not damaged (Philippines, Korea, Taiwan and Japan). This lead, of course, to higher crop production and levels of living for rural families.

Although much of the literature on farmer participation is dominated by current efforts in south and southeast Asia, in some countries, such as Chile and Argentina, there are long-established practices whereby farmers participate actively and effectively in the organization and management of large-scale irrigation projects (LENTON 1986:58).

Furthermore, evidence from many African countries such as Algeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Senegal, Ivory coast, Nigeria (BLUNT and JONES 1992:167), Zimbabwe, Mali, The Gambia, and Cameroon (FAO 1994:37) suggests that the redistribution of power in organizations can lead to higher levels of effectiveness and improved quality of working life⁶¹.

For these and other reasons some (TANG 1993:20) argues that participation in management is not enough. In addition, farmers have an important role to play in the governance of these systems, „unless farmers have the freedom to participate in both the governance and

61 For more details on the Africans’ case, see for example the more recent studies of FAO in Malawi (1993), Zambia (1994), Zimbabwe (1994), and Tanzania (1994).

management processes of their irrigation system, they will have little incentive to participate in collective efforts in operation and maintenance”.

Finally, one is able to say that the literature on development has seldom known agreement among the development specialist, especially since the last decade, on specific theme like this concerning the importance of Participation. The extensive evaluation process for the development projects in developing countries that have been conducted in the 1980s by the development experts and donor organizations were, of course, behind this remark. To this extent some commentators (OAKLEY 1991) consider that we are currently, in terms of thinking and practice about development, in the age of participation.