Irrigation and cooperation: An empirical analysis of 48 irrigation communities in South India

In this article, I concentrate on a quantitative analysis of the physical, institutional, and socioeconomic determinants of cooperation in irrigation communities. The data are based on the results of a large survey conducted in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In Section II, I describe the variables, the data, and the expected effects that the independent variables may have on cooperation; and in Section III, I report the actual results of the statistical analysis. Data were collected from 48 villages spread over six districts in Tamil Nadu, with a selected unit (called ayacut) of irrigation system in each village (either a tank or a branch of a canal with a command area of roughly 50 hectares). Half of the irrigation units belonged to canal systems, and the other half to more traditional tank systems. All of the canal systems were under the general administration of the government (usually the Public Works Department [PWD]). Among the tank systems, half belonged to what are called 'isolated' or 'chain-tank' systems, and the other half belonged to 'system tanks' (where, unlike in the former case, the tanks were linked to larger irrigation units). Within each system the villages were randomly chosen. A stratified sample of 10 farmers (stratified by land-size classes) was chosen from each village. However, most of the analysis in this article is based on data for the irrigation unit or the ayacut as a whole; in some cases I derived data from individual farmers' responses. In general, in matters of cooperation, differences across villages were much more prominent than intravillage differences among the 10 farmers.