Abstract

Prachanda Pradhan

Irrigated agriculture with innovative and revitalized irrigation systems hold future of food security. Revitalizing irrigation systems to meet the food demands of the future are to be considered in an integrated manner consisting infrastructure rehabilitation, investment to raise yield productivity from irrigated land and promotion of appropriate institutions and innovative management modes. A case study of an assistance program to farmer managed irrigation systems of Indrawati Watershed basin of Sindhupalchowk District of Nepal is presented here and the case study highlights the innovative measures and its results of longitudinal study over period of time. The systems which have assistance from Water and Energy Commission Secretariat (WECS) and International Irrigation Management Institute (IIMI) program have been the candidates for evaluation of impact of intervention in three time slices respectively in 1985, 1991 and 1999. The findings of the impact analysis of those systems indicated that intervention is not a one shot process of transferring resources to the farmers. It has an essential role to play in determining the relationship between input variables such as maintenance effort and agriculture potentiality and measurement of cropping intensity at the tail end. Intervention should enhance rather than replace the effort of the local farmers in irrigation management. One way to look at the sustainability effect is by looking at temporal dimension of farmers’ adaptation of change and to observe how the intervention effect has affected the adaptation process. It was proposed to measure the effect of intervention in short term by the change in performance from time slice I to II and longer term effect by the change from time slice II to III. The summation of the two impacts gives the result of net effect of intervention. Features of innovative approach are listed.