Irrigation impacts on income inequality and poverty alleviation: policy issues and options for improved management of irrigation systems.

Abstract

This study explores the conceptual and policy issues relating to the impact that irrigation has on crop production, farm income, inequities in income distribution and poverty alleviation.It also focuses, specifically, on poverty issues associated with head-tail water distribution inequity in an irrigation system.Improved access to irrigation infrastructure will increase crop yield, agricultural production and farm income within a region.However, the nature and scale of feedback effects associated with irrigation access and their impacts on farm income and poverty reduction process are not yet clearly understood or reported in irrigation literature.The literature has focused more on the direct impacts of irrigation (increased crop yield and farm income), but not on indirect impacts like rural employment and economic multipliers associated with the provision of irrigation in a region.Likewise, a little explored topic is how exactly irrigation infrastructure affects inequalities in income distribution and the poverty status of a region (system).Equally, the feedback effects and the nature of secondary benefits associated with this process are also unexplored.In the context of decreasing real world market food prices over the last two decades, the secondary benefits of irrigation provision are increasingly receiving central focus in irrigation investment decisionmaking.In fact, these secondary benefits are now considered more important than the direct benefits of an irrigation project.From the synthesis of results presented in contemporary irrigation literature and the evidence provided in this paper, we conclude that improved irrigation access is a powerful instrument for reducing rural poverty in a given region.This is not so much through the direct impact of increased yield and farm returns per se, but more through indirect impacts like increased rural employment and the feedback and multiplier effects associated with the provision of irrigation infrastructures.The scale of multiplier effects generated in an irrigated agricultural society depends upon the level of backward and forward linkages operating in the particular regional economy, i.e., the nature and scale of interlinkage within and among rural enterprises and the interlinkage with market infrastructure.In other words, increased crop yield is a necessary condition but not the sufficient condition for poverty alleviation in a region.The impact of irrigation on poverty reduction depends upon the structure of a rural economy and on how the additional farm income generated by improved access to irrigation is actually spent within a rural economy, and its feedback impacts on rural employment and rural wage structures.Therefore, the level of economic multipliers operating in a regional economy is crucial in determining the impact of irrigation on the poverty status and the inequalities in income distribution within that particular economy.The focus of policy-makers in the irrigation sector has now shifted to issues like irrigation water management, participatory decision-making and institutional reform in the irrigation sector, environment management for system sustainability and more equitable distribution of benefits across irrigation systems and across agro-environments.All these changes are visible in efforts at reducing the level of governmental failures and market failures associated with managing irrigation commands.The underperformance of canal systems has further aggravated the income gap and the relative poverty level within irrigation systems, leading to an unequal distribution of irrigation benefits across sub-systems.In reality, the wealth creation and trickle down effect aimed at alleviating poverty in irrigated areas is not happening in the originally envisaged manner.Therefore, additional direct public policy interventions and more pro-poor institutional and policy reforms v are required.This will help minimize the differential distribution of benefits across sub-systems and farmers, and increase the social benefits and well-being provided by the provision of irrigation infrastructure.Ultimately, irrigation is a typical public good, either directly provided or largely subsidized by governments for overall social well-being.The restructuring of irrigation commands could be achieved through reforming of institutional, technical, managerial and operational factors.Some of the institutional reforms are: improved stakeholder participation in resource use decision-making, participatory irrigation management (PIM), irrigation management transfer (IMT), defining clear water rights and water entitlements and self-enforcement of efficient service fee collection mechanisms.Some of the technical factors for improving water allocation across sub-systems are better water control structures, laser leveling, lining of canals, improved water storage systems, conjunctive use of rain, canal and groundwater, etc.Likewise, some of the managerial and operational factors involved here are: better enforcement of existing rules and regulations to minimize the lawlessness seen in irrigation commands, improved operation of systems, tailoring the irrigation operation and maintenance costs based on incremental benefits generated and level of water uses in the system, targeted additional financial and credit interventions in the system considering the need of tail-end farmers for additional irrigation equipment, and improving field structures and water storage.vi