Nabakrushna Choudhary Centre for Development Studies, Orissa, Bhubaneswar, India
A major thrust of the irrigation sector reforms in recent years is to recover the cost of provision of irrigation service from water users. Due to financial crisis faced by the government it is stressed that the irrigation agency should internally generate resources to provide better service to the farmers instead of depending on budgetary allocation. In this context the existing highly subsidised water rates need to be revised upward. In this paper an attempt has been made to evaluate the existing waler rate structure in major and medium irrigation projects in Orissa and provide some insights to fix up it in a rationalised manner.
