Farmer Management of Groundwater Irrigation in Asia: Case Study of Management of Three Deep Tubewells in Tangail, Bangladesh

THE OPERATION OF irrigation systems on three deep tubewells in Tangail District, Bangladesh, was monitored from 1989 to 1991. These systems used buried cement concrete pipe to distribute water from the tubewells, to irrigate diversified crops during the dry season. This paper focuses on the management of the deep tubewells and the irrigation systems. Each tubewell was installed by the government agency (the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation or BADC) following application from a cooperative of villagers (Krishak Samabay Sarnity or KSS), that took out a loan to purchase the tubewell. In principle the KSS owned and managed the tubewell, but in practice it was dominated by a few prominent individuals. The paper describes the membership of KSS on each tubewell, their participation in the management of the system, the management structure and KSS meetings. It also describes the financial arrangements made for operating the tubewell. Budgets were prepared each season, but not followed. Varying records of loan repayments of the three KSSs are also discussed. The utilization rates of all the tubewells were disappointing, averaging 3.88 hours per day at a discharge of about 35 lps compared to the design of 56 lps. The irrigated areas were typically less than half the design ( 40 ha), and irrigation intervals were high. The reasons for this poor performance were found to be a combination of social, managerial and agro-economic factors, and these are discussed in the paper. The management and operation procedures are compared with the recommendations of the Irrigation Management Programme (IMP) and possible improvements are discussed. These include moving to systematic irrigation of fields fed by the same branch, instead of the current erratic distribution of water under the farmers' fuel system. This case study illustrates some of the difficulties of Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems (FMIS) where farmers' resources are unevenly distributed, particularly in the complex technical and management environment of deep tubewell irrigation. The study was undertaken as part of a UK/Bangladesh research project on buried pipe distribution systems for surface irrigation which. was funded by the Overseas Development Administration, UK.