Deepak Kumar Das - Associate Professor in Engineering Faculty, Water and Land Management Institute, Pratapnagari, Cuttack, Orissa. India - ۷۵۳۰۵۱, India

The necessity of devolution of certain management responsibility of irrigation system to the farmers' organization is now widely accepted as an effective tool for sustainable irrigated agriculture. In India during 1990s systematic institutional and organizational changes have been undertaken to increase farmers’ participation in irrigation management through formation of Water Users’ Association (WUA) or Pani Panchayats under different externally assisted economic restructuring and irrigation infrastructure development programmes of World Bank, European Commission, Japan Bank for International Cooperation etc. or through Central or State government initiative. Today, Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) or Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) at various levels is being implemented in different types of irrigation systems. For this programme, appropriate institutional arrangements and mechanisms to bring about efficient utilization, equitable distribution and sustainable irrigation service are framed by different states of India. Further steps are being taken continuously for improvement in the strategies to achieve the goals of PIM. This paper, apart from highlighting some lessons from PIM experiences in Orissa, the poorest state in the dominion of republic of India, narrates a strategic micro level planning along with identified entry point implementation programme that are undertaken for sustainable irrigated agriculture simultaneously aiming at upliftment of livelihood of small and marginal poor farmers. The study concludes that the objective of poverty reduction by way of promoting schemes for agricultural productivity improvement through irrigation can be achieved by adopting community based participatory approaches that support agricultural development like improving irrigation performance, the use of new production technologies, enhancing access to markets, promoting environmentally sustainable production activities, having gender perspective, measures to improve income and livelihood through micro-finance, rural infrastructure up-gradation, participatory processes to empower the rural poor with core skills to process agri-products for value addition.