Author(s):

Veeresh S Wali, Rajendra Poddar, SM Mundinamani and BS Yenagi

Abstract: The farmers in the command areas play a vital role in water management in the command areas. The system of water distribution, cropping pattern and quantity of water allocated depends on the farmers living in the region. The opinion of all the stakeholders assumes a prime importance in deciding the policies at macro levels. Stakeholders in agriculture and water issues have different perceptions about productivity of water. Both primary and secondary data were used for the study. The secondary data on area coverage of different crops grown in both the project command areas was obtained from the Agriculture Offices of the project zones. Primary data was collected from 120 respondents from head and tail regions of Almatti Left Bank Canal (ALBC), Indi Branch Canal (IBC), Malaprabha Left Bank Canal (MLBC) and Ghataprabha Right Bank Canal of both Upper Krishna Project (UKP) and Malaprabha Ghataprabha Project (MGP) command areas. The perceptions of stakeholders was documented by collecting the perceptions from both farmers and officers/staff of the Command Area Development Authority (CADA) and Irrigation Departments (ID).The socio-economic characteristics were analyzed using the simple tabular analysis. The perceptions of the farmers and staff of different offices of Irrigation department and CADA are documented. They were analyzed using Garrette ranking method. It was observed that the farmers are of the opinion for formation of Water Users’ Association (WUAs) in the command areas should be encouraged and attention needs to be given to strengthen Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) to ensure efficient water management in command areas.

Pages: 2087-2091  |  827 Views  211 Downloads

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