Equity issues and their socio-economic impact in a tribal dominated irrigation project of India

Irrigation equity leads to overall socio economic development in an irrigation project. Uneven distribution of water among farmers caused social unsets as well as agriculture migration. The situation becomes more acute when no scientific water distribution policy adopted by the irrigation officials viz.warabandi (Roster system of water distribution as per the owned landholding). The same case was studied in tribal dominated Jakham irrigation project where more than 82.12 percent farmers were tribals. At tail end of RMC, parel miner was selected purposely where most of the farmers were suffered from scarcity of water. At the parel miner socio economic status further studied as head, middle and tailend farmers. The farmers located at head of the miner were getting more water comparatively to other but they were misutilised the water and not use water rationally. Whereas middle farmers were getting water mordantly and tail enders suffered high scarcity. The data revealed that the socio economic conditions in terms of cropping pattern, cropping intensity, farm income, farm and family assets were better in case of middle farmers followed by headrech and tailand farmers. The tail end farmers even left the agriculture practices in such of gainful employment.