India’s irrigation reforms still exclude those who rely on and need water the most, and the M-CADWM, or Modernisation of Command Area Development and Water Management—that focuses on upgrading irrigation infrastructure and was approved by the Union Cabinet earlier this month—risks repeating this failure.
Across rural India, access to irrigation is rarely as simple as owning land.
Fields are cultivated by tenant farmers, sharecroppers and women who do not hold formal land titles. Livelihoods depend on water, but control over it does not.
Yet, irrigation policies continue to treat landowners as the primary stakeholders.
System built on land, not users
The M-CADWM is a Rs 1,600 crore sub-scheme under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) to improve irrigation efficiency in regions primarily irrigated by canals. The command areas receive water from a specific irrigation system or project, like a dam or a canal network. Command Area Development refers to efforts to ensure that this water is distributed efficiently and equitably, from the head to the tail end of the prevailing irrigation system.
The scheme places renewed focus on Water Users Associations (WUAs) as the backbone of participatory irrigation management. In theory, it makes sense. WUAs provide decentralised management of water distribution and infrastructure, and farmer participation in local-level decision-making within a region.
Theoretically, decentralisation should produce improved outcomes. In practice, however, the WUA model has proven to be one that has struggled for multiple decades due to deficiencies in its design and operations.
Membership is limited to registered landowners, who constitute the basis of the WUA and thus tend to exclude many stakeholders, such as landless farmers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers, female farmers and pastoralists.
They all rely heavily on irrigation for their livelihood and currently have no formal mechanisms to participate in decision-making processes regarding water use.
A hierarchy
The exclusion shapes how power operates within WUAs. Evidence from states such as Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh shows that even where most members are smallholders, decision-making often remains concentrated among a few larger landowners. Women farmers, despite their active involvement in agriculture, are frequently excluded altogether.
Hence, rather than strengthening an inclusive environment for participatory governance, many WUAs create a hierarchy within the WUA based on the members’ social and economic status, affecting the unrepresented and the quality and functioning of WUAs.
A 2017 Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) audit of multiple command area development programmes revealed that the majority of WUAs were inactive or had shut down due to funding shortages, lacked administrative resources to be effective and held little authority to allocate water.
With no incentives to participate and no autonomy, participation reduces, losing its relevance and support. When that support weakens, so do the institutions themselves.
Lessons from the ground
Cases from different states offer different ways forward.
In Sukhomajri (Haryana), farmers collectively established and administered water-harvesting mechanisms using structures that involved every family in the community, regardless of their land ownership status. The use of this water was guided by collectively formulated regulations, and the resulting benefits were shared among all responsible parties.
In Mandalgarh (Rajasthan), the Ora system is an example of how communities can manage their shared water resources, using rotational access to the water source; members of the community, including those without land, can come together to form this type of system.
Despite their diverse contexts, the examples share similarities. All of the communities treat their water resource as a shared resource rather than individually-owned; they establish organisations based on all the people within the community who use its water, not solely on those with title to land; and they place an emphasis on being accountable to one another collectively rather than through a formal system of government.
What needs to change
For M-CADWM to succeed, it must move beyond a landowner-centric approach.
Expanding WUA membership to include all categories of water users is a necessary first step. But inclusion is not enough. Institutional design needs to shift from a narrow focus on canal management to a broader approach to water governance, one that recognises all forms of livelihoods, from landowners to the landless farmers, ecological sustainability of water, land and related natural resources, and social equity of farmers from the head to the tail-end of the irrigation system.
Stronger integration with local governance structures, like panchayats, self-help groups, and village-level committees, is needed. Without these linkages, WUAs risk remaining isolated and ineffective.
India’s irrigation challenges are not just technical. They are deeply social. Continuing with models that exclude large sections of water users will only deepen existing inequalities.
M-CADWM offers an opportunity to correct this course. Whether it does so will depend on the willingness to recognise a simple reality: water is shared, even if land is not.
Anubhav Sen is a student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Views are personal.
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