Irrigated Agriculture and Farmer Behaviour in the Indus Basin – Analysis of Scale Fitness

Abstract

Policies for water governance are often designed to operate along administrative boundaries while intended policy outcomes are expected at larger, often basin scale, thus creating an inherent scale mismatch between policy design and implementation. The question of which scale of policy is important is often evaded given the potential for complexity brought on by political boundaries that either compete with resource boundaries or totally disregard them. We argue that the underlying structural problems between policy design and successful implementation are due to the lack of scale-based thinking of behaviours of a range of actors – from farmers as water users to irrigation managers at subnational to policy makers in the national capital. Such scale mismatch generates inefficiencies and inequities that must be recognized and resolved for meaningful policy impact. Using the Scale-Descale-Rescale (SDR) analysis, we unpack policies across multiple governance and resource use scales to show how scale mismatch interplays using primary data from farmers. We establish that ignoring scale mismatch in critical assumptions of policy design and implementation arrangements is hindering full realization of policy outcomes. We identify specific areas of adjustment for an improved outcome of policy objectives.