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Managing Water Management Research
An analysis of 40 years of water management research and outreach in India using data from 34 centres and 5,000 field trials across 23 states shows that of the 502 technologies released, only 110 technologies (22%) have been transferred successfully to farmers. The returns to water management technologies range from 15% to 25% (average 21%) at the research station level, compared to 9% to 14% at the farm level (average 10.8%). Given the current rate of adoption and rate of return, the success rate of the water management technologies is only about 12%. There is therefore an urgent need to address the gaps in technology transfer and performance.
The authors wish to thank all the coordinating scientists involved in the All India Coordinated Research Programme on Water Management and Groundwater Utilization in different states; the Farmers Participatory Action Research Programme team from the Ministry of Water Resources; M S Swaminathan, who served as an adviser to the FPARP; Ashwani Kumar, director, ICAR-Indian Institute of Water Management, Bhubaneswar, for facilitating data collection from the centres, and G B Singh, chairman, and Jaswant Singh, member of the ICAR quinquennial review team, who encouraged the analysis of water management technologies. Thanks are also due to Ian Makin, Theme Leader IWMI, and Mark Giordano, former Theme Leader IWMI, for their useful comments and suggestions. The authors also thank EPW for useful suggestions that helped to improve the quality of this paper. The views expressed in this paper are of the authors and do not necessarily refl ect those of the organisations they belong to.
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