Fekri Ershad - Tehran University- IDRO-Valieasr Building-Jam e Jam Str. Valiasr ave

Experiences of 1950’s and 1960's revealed the importance of public participation in success of development programs of developing countries. Based on new visions, a prerequisite of rural sustainable development is active, conscious and voluntary participation of farmer in the process of decision-making, planning and management of all programs. This sort of participation in decision making and handling of social affairs is both an effective factor on development and a product of development process. Promoting farmers participation in management of irrigation networks merely consist a part of social interaction between different social groups, i.e. government and villagers. Therefore, before dealing with participation issue, one should first deal with social interaction of a given society. Since these interactions and their historical changes differ among different societies, applying the successful models for participation of a given country, would not necessarily lead to success in another country. Throughout the history, Iran has had always a despotic government, and all social rights were exclusively determined by the government, and therefore all responsibilities and public issues were to be dealt by the government. Since people had no objective social rights, they felt no responsibility in front of the government. The result is a distorted view of government-nation relationship in which the nation considered itself as the servant of the government. This distorted attitude is still vastly spread among our people-specially farmers, and its perpetuation is the main obstacle in front of their active participation in management of rural issues. The prerequisite of farmer’s active participation including participation in management of irrigation network is the change in this distorted attitude of state-nation relationship. Achieving such a change requires education and promotion of a new attitude towards participation, which is a long patience-demanding process.

Farmers participation, despotism, absolutism, social interaction, private ownership, democracy, social status