A challenge to re-examine beliefs, biases and actions is presented through the exposure of misleading research and faulty diagnosis in the current policies and pratices of canal irrigation.

This Book Attempts An Account Of The Status Of Water Distribution, Issues Associated With Irrigation Projects, Socio-Economic And Environmental Consquences Of Maldistribution And People`S Participation In Irrigation Projects.

Contributed articles presented at the Workshop.

A growing body of evidence on the impacts of irrigation management transfer (IMT) shows that IMT risks aggravating rural poverty. For governments that aim to continue irrigation management while ensuring that it contributes to poverty alleviation, a "pro-poor" mode of IMT needs to be designed and implemented. That is, a mode of IMT that benefits poor farmers while benefiting non-poor farmers equally, or perhaps to a lesser degree. The present research explores the scope for pro-poor modes of IMT in canal irrigation, focusing on large-scale canal irrigation schemes in India.

This book tells the story of development studies in practice over the last fifty years through the work of one remarkable individual, Robert Chambers. His work has taken him from being a colonial officer in Kenya through training and managing large rural development projects to a fundamental critique of top-down development and the championing of participatory approaches. The contributors eloquently demonstrate how he has been at the centre of major shifts in development thinking and practice over this period, popularising terms that are now at the centre of the development lexicon such as vulnerability, multi-dimensional poverty, sustainable livelihoods and 'farmer first'. Robert Chambers played a major role in the massive growth in participatory approaches to development, and particularly the application of participatory methods in development research and appraisal. This has led to fundamental challenges to development practice, ranging from approaches to monitoring and evaluation to institutional learning and professional training. There is probably no-one who has had more influence on approaches to development in the past decades. Revolutionizing Development offers a unique overview of these contributions in thirty-two concise chapters from authors who have been intimately involved as collaborators, critics and colleagues of Robert Chambers.