Abstract
Improving irrigation systems in Asian countries has been a high priority for the allocation of international aid. Substantial funds have been allocated to adopt the “best practices” of hiring external water engineers to construct modern systems to replace those that farmers built. These expensive investments have infrequently led to long-term improvement in the operation of irrigation systems in Asia. In this article, we examine the process and impact of an innovative irrigation assistance project that was initially undertaken in Nepal in the mid-1980s. We analyze data obtained over three time periods related to changes in system structure and performance over time. We trace the unfolding patterns of improved engineering infrastructure across time depending on the way it interacts with other factors to affect long-term irrigation performance. We examine some of the key variables that are likely to affect the diverse and complex patterns of change. We also undertake analysis of the configural impact of core variables using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). We find that the initial and later investments in system infrastructure are only one factor that helps to generate short-term improvement. Unless farmers encourage local entrepreneurs and organize themselves, create their own rules or use sanctions, and augment their rules through collective action, infrastructure investment alone is not sufficient to achieve sustainable higher performance.
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Notes
The full cost of the project averaged only 3,286 Nepali rupees per hectare (the exchange rate on 1/1/85 was 18 Nepali rupees per U.S. dollar).
This section draws on Lam and Shivakoti (2002, Chap. 8).
During the initial period of project development and our first revisit in 1991, the Maoist insurgency had not yet erupted in Nepal. During the later visits, the region was divided between those villages near the road that were under the control of the Nepali army and relatively peaceful. The systems located in remote areas were under Maoist control and were also relatively peaceful. The villages served by one of the systems in the middle—Majh Baguwa—did face considerable challenge as villagers were divided in their loyalty and faced army patrol during the day and Maoist patrols at night. While very disruptive of social relationships since the villagers were themselves divided, this disruption did not adversely affect the overall performance of this system due in part to its setting and the relative ease of obtaining water and needing only a minimum level of repair and maintenance. Only modest “out migration” from this rural setting occurred during the time of our study, and thus few external remittances were introduced.
The qualitative interviews aimed at capturing the process of institutional change as well as major developments that had occurred in the systems since the intervention in 1985. In order to provide a coherent framework for collecting and recording the interview information, the NIIS team designed a set of questions that focused on the governance and operation of the systems. Colleagues who conducted the interviews were required to write up each interview following the checklist format, which allowed the first author of this article to code the interview information systematically for QCA analysis.
The values of the four-point scale are (1) abundance, (2) limited, (3) scarce, (4) nonexistence.
In terms of the average tail-end intensity, there was a slight increase from 244.22% to 246.16% during the period, but the difference is not statistically significant. The average cropping intensity dropped from 246.16% in Time Slice 2 to 241.76% in Time Slice 3; the drop is statistically significant at the 0.1 level. It suggests that, generally speaking, the intervention effect on agricultural productivity could not be sustained.
While theories could help identify broad mechanisms of how contextual variables affect human choices, theories usually cannot predict the direction of these mechanisms, as well as how different mechanisms interact with one another to result in particular outcomes.
The Time Slice 2 data show a similar pattern as the data for Time Slice 1. The ethnic composition for Time Slice 3 has missing values that prevent us from drawing conclusive patterns. Despite that, the data of Time Slices 1 and 2 are sufficient to support the argument that ethnic issues were not a confounding factor affecting irrigation performance.
The dichotomized nature of the causal conditions is not a function of the QCA method but of the researcher. QCA can also handle continuous variables.
For Eq. 2, both the solution coverage and the solution consistency are 1.
For Eq. 4, the solution coverage is 0.86 and the solution consistency is 1.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Marty Anderies, Eduardo Araral, Xavier Basurto, Sue Crawford, Marco Janssen, Edella Schlager, Ganesh Shivakoti, and Rick Wilson for comments on earlier versions of this paper, and Charles Ragin for offering helpful suggestions for the QCA analysis in this study. Patty Lezotte provided excellent editing for which we are most grateful. The research is supported by a grant (HKU7233/03H) from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and by the National Science Foundation grant (BCS–0527744) to Arizona State University and Indiana University.
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Lam, W.F., Ostrom, E. Analyzing the dynamic complexity of development interventions: lessons from an irrigation experiment in Nepal. Policy Sci 43, 1–25 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-009-9082-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-009-9082-6