SANGAM

Ground water irrigation boon to Chitwan farmers
By Sangam Prasain

Chitwan, Nov.22,2008;
Ground water appears a boon to Chitwan farmers when it comes to irrigating their fields. A new scheme, called Community Groundwater Irrigation Sector Project (CGISP), is becoming popular among local farmers in 19 Chitwan villages, where farmers earlier relied on other sources of water.
CGISP is providing a sense of ownership and ability to the farmers, who are expecting a higher productivity in their agricultural sector compared to their earlier production, which depended on farmer-managed irrigation.
Chet Bahadur Neupane, a farmer from Jagatpur-7, Chitwan said that CGISP had become a boon to him as he had witnessed a tremendous increase in his vegetables and grains productions.
He said he was in a big dilemma before as to whether his small unproductive land was too big a burden to eke out the livelihoods for his 9-family members. "We had to either wait for Narayani irrigation or Khagari irrigation project, which only occasionally become operational, for water or we waited for the rainfall," he said. "Now I use ground water."
Neupane said, " I am making a net income of Rs.50, 000 per Kattha annually." He produces cauliflower, pumpkins, tomato, and cucumber twice a year as seasonal crops, including other grains items in between.
Kanchha Malla, another farmer, said that despite having 16-family members, he was comfortably feeding them. "After the CGISP came to our village our crop productivity has immensely increased," he said.
He said that he owns a five Bigaha land and earns Rs. 300,000 profits annually through cultivating seasonal vegetables and grains. "Earlier we used to consider our land as a barren land but CGISP has provided us a possibility for commercial farming," he added.
Apart from males, who are continuing to migrate out of rural areas in search of more lucrative employment, women are making a substantial contribution in agriculture thanks to the new irrigation scheme.
Sita KC, a member of Patyani Water Users Committee of Sivanagar, Chitwan said that the demand for labor in the agricultural sector was increasing and it was becoming common to see women assisting their male counterparts in this village in the farms. This was improving chances for women to make gainful employment rather than sitting idle at homes.
She said that CGISP provided Rs. 67,500 loans to each family for irrigation purpose, which had increased the crop productivity, but still procedural framework for modernizing numerous farmers with the know-how and technical assistantship both from the donors and the government was lacking.
The project has been operated in 18 VDCs of Chitwan. It has been benefiting 2,780 houses covering 503 Bighha land installing 614 boring and 388 motors for the ground water irrigation.
However, some Water Users Committee claimed that a number of farmers were unaware of the project when it started, and the project did not transfer the skills necessary to maintain new structures or enable the farmers in regard to commercial farming system.
They said that still there was a need to encourage the farmers by increasing the loan amounts and subsidizing the existing interest rate, which was high in the rural contexts.
They said that adequate time should be given to the real users to learn about the programmes, to become familiar with the objectives and the conditions of support of their systems.
Ram Krishna Pandey, secretary of Sivanagar Village Deveopment Committee at Chitwan, said that there were two irrigation projects installed to irrigate large land portion in Chitwan district but they were not operating properly and large swathes of farmlands were deprived of the facilities.
He said that at a time when government had given adequate emphasis to commercial agricultural, such irrigation projects would be vital in boosting the farmers and improving productivity of land.
CGISP was approved by Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 1998 with the objective to increase agricultural productivity and incomes of farmers through participatory and integrated group shallow tube-wells and developing capacity of water users’ group and water users’ association.
The project completed on 31 July 2007. The total loan amount was US$10.16 million.
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