Learning and Mislearning 85to seize on and push, but all too often these are based on and support self-sustain-
ing myths.
Truth is elusive, and as Oscar Wilde said, never pure and rarely simple. To get
closer to it requires awareness of these traps, and commitment to good research.
Reflections on Research
Good research is difficult. It is easiest to do professionally acceptable research by
sticking to narrow topics. Those who branch out into more complex investigations
like action research face methodological problems and will be open to criticism
from colleagues. Yet these risks have to be accepted if gap and linkage subjects are
to be opened up and if fuller and more balanced understanding is to help improve
performance.
Two sets of considerations appear important here. First, what determines what
research will be done, and in particular what deters research on gaps and linkages.
Second, what approaches and qualities are required from those who undertake it.
Determinants of research
The many determinants of research include fashions and funding, who is available,
and researchability.
Worldwide, rural research tends to follow the latest fashions and priorities of
funding agencies, and these often follow the latest programmes of government.
Canal irrigation in India is no exception. Thus, on Mahi-Kadana, Asopa and Tripa-
thy studied the Command Area Development programme soon after it had come in;
the WMSP team operated mainly below the outlet, which was also where govern-
ment programmes (OFD, farmers’ organization and warabandi) had concentrated;
and the WTC research, in its objective, was concerned with total resource use, mov-
ing in the direction of mounting official concern with poor canal irrigation system
performance. The WAPCOS research was even more directly linked with policy,
intended as it was to test the benefits of a proposed large-scale programme.
But good research does not necessarily have to be linked to immediate policy
or innovation. Investigations which simply (or not so simply) show what is hap-
pening to water, crops and people, have much to contribute. Those organizations,
whether government or private, which fund research, do well to achieve a balance
between studies which monitor and assess current performance and programmes,
those which more directly investigate future opportunities, and those which open
up gaps and linkages. The tendency is for current programmes to be studied, and
for gaps and linkages to remain unresearched, as blind spots.
What research is undertaken is also determined by who is available. Research
is often thought to be led by demand. Government, public corporations, universi-
ties and foundations determine priorities and then fund researchers to follow them.