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Ch. Prashanth Reddy

While 50 per cent of these schemes had become defunct, the remaining operated at sub-optimal levels. Moreover, the huge costs involved in maintaining LIS had become a big problem for the Government, the study said.

HYDERABAD, April 17

DURING the last three-and-a-half decades, the Andhra Pradesh Government has constructed 1,068 lift irrigation schemes (LIS) investing about Rs 123 crore. However, despite the huge investment, the performance of LIS in the State has been dismal, according to a study conducted by Dr C. Srinivas, Dr K. Venugopal Rao, Dr Davuluri Venkateswarlu and Mr Abdul Thaha of Global Research and Consultancy Services.

While 50 per cent of these schemes had become defunct, the remaining operated at sub-optimal levels. Moreover, the huge costs involved in maintaining LIS had become a big problem for the Government, the study said.

The study was commissioned by Prerana, a society committed to rural development. With a view to improving the performance of these schemes, the State Government, in 1995, had decided to hand over LIS to the beneficiary farmers. It was assumed that the farmers would be happy to take over the LIS. But, contrary to expectations, in some places the farmers did not come forward to take over the schemes. In other places where the schemes were handed over, the LIS had become either completely defunct or worked at less than optimal levels.

The study pointed out that a number of complex and inter-related factors had contributed to the failure of the scheme. These factors are broadly categorised as institutional, financial and technical.

Institutional failures such as lack of effective farmers' committees, strong leadership, cooperation and participation of the farmers, procedural systems and lack of general awareness about participatory methods in running the schemes had contributed to the failure of the schemes.

The main problem, the study stated, began with the way the schemes were transferred to the farmers and the manner in which the committees were originally constituted. Proper efforts were not made to motivate and convince the farmers and strengthen the farmers' committees in running the schemes.

This led to the poor performance of these committees in maintaining the schemes. As a result, there were conflicts over water sharing and shortfalls in water tax recoveries. On account of non-recovery of water tax, the committees could not clear electricity bills and solve technical problems in time, leading to the closing down of the LIS.

In a few cases, technical problems such as faulty design of the scheme, frequent motor repairs, low voltage and breakdown of intake and feeder channels had contributed to the failure of the schemes. In a majority of cases, lack of funds led to the failure of the LIS.

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