Farmer participation in planning, implementation and operation of small-scale irrigation projects

The key points are summarized in Table 1. These are discussed and expanded in the paper. The paper is an attempt to integrate my consultancy experience as an engineer in Asia, published accounts of experience elsewhere, and discussions with colleagues (for example in the UK working group on small-scale irrigation). The main ideas were formulated during work on tubewell irrigation in Indonesia in the mid 1980"s and more recently on hill irrigation in Bhutan. (Details of this work may be found in Smout, 1986 on the Madura Groundwater Irrigation project and van Bentum et al., 1989 on the Chirang Hill Irrigation project.) These projects are used as examples in the paper and their characteristics provide the focus of the discussion: both projects are implemented by government agencies and consist of numerous discrete irrigation schemes; on each scheme there are many households, and a water user association (WUA) provides a structure for participation. After introductory material on small-scale irrigation projects and participation, the recommendations for each stage of a project are discussed in rough chronological order in sections 2 to 5, starting with overall project organization and then dealing with the preparation, implementation, and operation of a particular scheme. (Author abstract)