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Performance of Small-scale Water Projects: an Evaluation of Lged’s Participatory Interventions

K M Nabiul Islam
Senior Research Fellow
Bangladesh institute of Development Studies, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

The LGED model for small-scale water resources development with the WMCA as the cornerstone is innovative. Besides, WMCAs have, to some extent, developed facilities towards community development at local levels, through the provision of microcredit, training and other activities. However, the sustainability of the projects is largely dependent on the performance of the WMCAs through satisfactory operation and maintenance. Nevertheless, O&M has not developed up to its desired level of performance due to many reasons. In general, lack of motivation on the part of local beneficiaries and lack of commitment on the part of the WMCAs can be singled out as the main reasons for the underperformance of the projects. Some of the projects were found to be dysfunctional reportedly due to flawed design or construction, and due to lack of maintenance. Almost all the projects encountered some maintenance problems, most of which could have been addressed by the WMCAs. Within a few years of its implementation, the siltation problem became most common in khals and canals, which remained largely unaddressed. The problem had worsened over time. Frequent breaches of embankments and the non-operation of sluice gates were among other pressing problems for the FCD projects. Even then, the situation in the post-project periods with respect to inundation, flood levels and irrigation appeared to have improved substantially. The drainage system also generally improved even though there has been the persistent problem of siltation. Surprisingly though, despite many limitations of the WMCAs (e.g., malfunction of WMCAs, lack of O&M activities, inadequate funds and participation), an overwhelming proportion of the respondents perceived the water management facilities to have largely improved. The formation of Labour Contracting Society (LCS) was somewhat faulty and there were conflicts of interest among leaders on their formation. In some cases, the WMCA leaders and traditional Sardars (Labour leaders) formed LCS with their own people depriving some genuine destitute labourers. Despite that, considerable benefits appeared to have accrued to the marginal and small farmers in the form of increased agricultural production. Besides, a larger part of the indirect employment was perceived to have gone to the hired agricultural labourers through increased cropping activities. Obviously, this is likely to have contributed to the reduction of poverty. As already mentioned, one should not rely too much on the absolute figures relating to the performance of the projects and WMCAs. Nevertheless, subject to limitations of the survey and survey data, described in Appendix A, it can be concluded that the SSWRDSP-I projects have had substantial positive impacts on income and assets for the beneficiary households, although the non-poor households have benefited more. Moreover, not all the incremental benefits can be attributed directly to the project interventions; some autonomous growth such as the switch to HYV varieties and increased use of inputs due to lower perceived risk of crop failure or reduced losses due to flooding may also have contributed to these incremental benefits. The significant positive rank correlation of the performance between the projects and the WMCAs leads to the conclusion that the performance of the SPs is highly dependent on the performance of the WMCAs. Hence, efforts should be made to improve the performance of the WMCAs through improved operation and maintenance in order to ensure the sustainability of the projects and avoid their costly rehabilitation in the future.

Keywords: Socioeconomic, Agriculture, Water management, Fisheries, Gender aspects

Location: In Bangladesh

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Crop-Soil-Water Management

Commodity: Water management, Fishing

Objectives:

To assess impacts of the subprojects on socioeconomic, agriculture, water management, fisheries, and gender aspects.

Methodology:

The study, on which this report is based, is an impact study, which encountered a number of data problems. A major problem was related to the benchmark study conducted nearly six years ago by a private firm. The major limitation of the benchmark study was that it did not adopt any control area approach. But the ideal methodology for this study could be to carry out some comparisons between the “before and after” situations for both the project and the control areas (“with-without”) to (a) dissociate autonomous changes that occurred over time and (b) identify possible differences between the project and control areas before the intervention. Consequentially, there was no alternative but to assess the effects of the project by comparing the two sets of areas during the time of evaluation at one point of time. In each subproject, one “control” village was, thus, picked up from around the adjacent locations but outside the command areas, such that they were maximally similar to the sample project villages, in terms of, among others, socio-economic, hydrological and environmental characteristics. The selection of the control villages was finalized in consultation with the local LGED and WMCA officials. In consultation with the WMCA officials and other key informants, two villages were purposively selected from the “project” area and one village was selected from the “control” area for each of the ten subprojects. The selection of villages from the project areas was made such that one from the high impact and one from the medium impact areas were included. The sample consisted of 40 households from the project villages and 30 from control villages for each subproject. Using a pre-tested structured questionnaire, the selected households were interviewed to generate data on the impact indicators. This gave a total of 700 households for interviews in 10 SPs. The Study Households and Landholding Stratum The survey was carried out by categorizing the households according to the following land-holding groups (according to land ownership): LL = Landless (owning 0 - 49 decimal of cultivated land) MRF = Marginal Farmer (owning 50 - 99 decimal of cultivated land) SF = Small Farmer (owning 100 - 249 decimal of cultivated land) MF = Medium Farmer (owning 250 - 749 decimal of cultivated land) LF = Large Farmer (owning 750 decimal of cultivated land and above) Econometric Modeling of Household Incomes The provision of water management facilities in rural areas was one of the major features of LGED’s water management infrastructure development. Finally, therefore, econometric analysis was carried out to determine the likely impact of water management interventions on household incomes, assets and poverty, by using the information available from the household surveys. The multivariate regression model was also estimated to determine what could be the impact of the subprojects on different groups of households, classified by poverty levels. Finally, multi-criteria analysis was carried out to assess the overall performance of both the subprojects and WMCAs, which also allowed to test whether the performance of the former depended on that of the latter.

Source of Information: BIDS Research Report No.186, May 2104

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