Learning and Mislearning 79yields as one passed from head through middle to tail along canals, distributaries,
and minors, and within outlets (WAPCOs, 1980; Lenton, 1983) and indicated
location on the main system as a powerful explanation of differences in yield and
other indicators of performance. When similar but rigorous research on subdivi-
sion and rotation was conducted by Wickham and others in the Philippines in the
early 1970s (Wickham et al, 1974; Lazaro and Wickham, 1976; Wickham and
Valera, 1978) the yield differences with subdivision and rotation were not signifi-
cant compared with the control. The researchers went straight on to infer that
location on the main system and water deliveries were more important. Through
painstaking, good research, they identified main system management, and not
subdivision and rotation, as the priority. It was tragic that India was not equally
well served, and that, in contrast, the Government of India and the World Bank
were pointed, at great expense, in a direction which the research did not justify,
and away from main system management as the priority.
The research, it seems, was so focused on subdivision and rotation between
subchaks that other explanations or findings were largely excluded. Interesting
suggestions about water use efficiency were largely overlooked. The investigation
seems to have set out from the start not to learn but to ‘succeed’; not, that is, to
conduct a scientific investigation of causality, but to show that the chosen inter-
vention made things better. Perhaps it would be fairer to describe it as a privileged
pilot project rather than a research study. As a research study, it failed by succeed-
ing.
Islands of Salvation
The ‘pilot project syndrome’ is well known in rural development. A small area is
chosen for its favourable conditions, and an experiment or trial undertaken with
special inputs, management, care and attention. It ‘succeeds’; lessons are believed
to have been learnt; and directives are issued for the approach to be replicated. But
the special conditions which enabled the experiment or trial to do well are not
reproduced, nor indeed reproducable, and the innovation fails to spread. As with
the Koliary chak above, an island of salvation is created which cannot be multi-
plied into an archipelago, let alone a land mass.
To try to understand this phenomenon, let us examine two other examples:
the Mohini Water Cooperative Society near Surat in Gujarat; and the Naurangde-
shar Canal System of the Rajasthan Canal Project.
Mohini^2
Water cooperatives which purchase water in bulk and then distribute it among
their members are widely regarded as a promising development deserving support
and spread. The India’s Sixth Five-Year Plan had this to say: