Learning and Mislearning 73The method included interviews with staff and farmers and detailed interdis-
ciplinary field investigations at the on-farm level including measurements of water
flows. The main system was included but the principal focus was below the outlet.
The report is unusual for the attention given to the problems and views of both
officials at different levels, and farmers. This emphasis is reflected in the sequence
of sections in the report, starting with extension, and then with economics, engi-
neering and agronomy in that order.
Three findings deserve remark. First, most farmers were found willing to pay
seven to nine times more for private tubewell water than for public canal water.
This was because tubewell water was predictable and controllable (WSMP, 1983,
p52). Second, flows through outlets, far from being constant, were highly variable
during both day and night as they were also in the canals (WSMP, 1983, pp87, 89,
99, 102, 136). And third, conveyance losses below the outlet were estimated to be
50 per cent (WSMP, 1983, p110).
Analysing and comparing these three studies, three points stand out.
Partial views and complementarities: Each study reflects the interests and meth-
ods of the investigators, covers a different range of topics, and leaves much out. If
the proper names were excluded, one might not know that the three texts referred
to the same system. However, when taken together, the three studies are comple-
mentary, and qualify and correct each other. For example, the WTC study includes
a water balance analysis which is not based on empirical measurements of trans-
mission losses, and assumes losses of 30 per cent below the outlets. The WMSP
study found empirically that losses averaged about 50 per cent below three outlets.
If 50 per cent is representative, then the WTC estimates of water availability and
potential intensities for the whole system should be much lower.
Mutual ignorance: Asopa and Tripathy reported in 1978, yet I have been unable
to find any reference to their work in the WMSP and WTC reports published in
- T. K. Jayaraman (1982) wrote prolificly on Mahi-Kadana (on cropping pat-
terns, farmers’ organization, on-farm development, rotational water supplies, the
attitudes of the irrigation bureaucracy etc.), but the only mention of his work I can
find in the WTC report is a paper on malaria (Jayaraman, 1982). Most striking of
all, the WMSP and WTC teams appear to have worked in ignorance of one
another. The complementarities which might have been exploited to mutual ben-
efit were not realized.
Missing links: The three studies sometimes touch upon, but do not investigate
in detail, key linkages and gaps in knowledge. In a common sense view of Mahi-
Kadana as a system, missing links likely to be significant might include:
- Labour shortages at peak periods.
- Actual flows and regulation of the main system.
- Irrigation flows at night.
- Farmers’ activities above the outlet.
- Farmers’ costs (in payments, hassle, time, uncertainty) in obtaining a water
indent.