72 Ethics and Systems Thinking
- Groundwater Development and Management.
- Impact on Environment.
- Canal Scheduling and Water Course Alignment.
- On-farm Development.
- Ancillary Resources and Infrastructure.
- Irrigation Cooperatives.
- Crop Planning and Irrigation Management.
- Water Resources Utilization and Management.
Disciplinary specialization, quantitative methods and the presentation of statistics
are marked in most chapters. The focus on water is strong, with descriptions of the
physical irrigation system, the official norms for system management and opera-
tion, annual water balance calculations and analysis of groundwater conditions.
Groundwater was found to be rising at about a metre a year during 1976–1980,
threatening waterlogging and salinity. A final chapter by P. B. S. Sarma, N. H. Rao
and A. M. Michael on ‘Water Resources Utilisation and Management’ examines
the water resources assessed as available, and the original plans for the system,
which did not include extensive use of groundwater. Sarma and his colleagues
propose conjunctive use of groundwater. With conjunctive use, they calculate that
the intensity of irrigation, based on a Culturable Command Area of 213,000ha,
could be raised from the 55 per cent reported achieved in 1980–1981, and beyond
the 131 per cent proposed by the Government of Gujarat, to 180 per cent (WTC,
1978, p356). This would simultaneously help to arrest the rise in the groundwater
table and increase the intensity of irrigation.
The third study, Diagnostic Analysis of Farm Irrigation Systems in the Mahi-Ka-
dana Irrigation Project, Gujarat, India (WMSP, 1983), was an outcome or by-product
of a five-week professional development diagnostic analysis workshop held in early
1981 as part of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
supported Water Management Synthesis Project (WMSP), the main objective of
which was training. Studies were carried out by trainers and participants in the dis-
ciplines of agronomy, economics, irrigation engineering, agricultural engineering,
and extension and sociology. The objectives of the workshop were:
1 to provide the participants with the skills required to monitor and evaluate
irrigation projects, thus enhancing the capacity and the capability of the gov-
ernment to improve irrigation facilities and management throughout
Gujarat;
2 to describe the actual operation of an irrigation system in relation to its design
specifications, and to identify the positive and negative aspects of the system
through an interdisciplinary analysis. (WSMP, 1983, p3)
The authors of the report note that the training objective deliberately restricted the
amount of data collected, so that the report simply indicated areas of constraints
in the system.