Development Project and Local Institution: An Irrigation Project in Philippines

Abstract

The planning of irrigation development projects requires the consideration of the organizational and institutional aspects because without them the projects cannot fit the local institution of the project target area, and it will create problems on irrigation system management.

This paper tries to consider how the irrigation system which development project introduces and the local institution conflict with each other based on the case of a National Irrigation System (NIS) of NIA (National Irrigation Administration) in the Philippines.

In the Philippine human relation network, each person relates with the other personally based on his/her favoritism. This relation is reciprocal one called ‘debt of gratitude’. When one person relates with his/her superior, their relation can be seen as a patron-client relationship formed by a leader and a follower. Many of these human relation networks exist within a Baranguay (village). When there is no leader who can mediate two persons in the equal level, those two act individually, and become isolated and decentralized.

These features of human relation network reflect on the management of an irrigation system. For example, if the Irrigators' Association (IA) President has this patron-client relationship with the IA members, it is easy for him to manage the irrigation system as the members cooperate with his direction. However, if the irrigation system is too big as it covers many Baranguays, it is not easy for him to control the all IA members because the boundary of IA service area is bigger than the boundary of his personal network. Moreover, when the top Project Manager of the NIS is weak to mediate each IA and TSA (IA's substructure), they become to work individually. TSA has to solve water distribution problem within itself though the volume of water in which each TSA receives is not same. It is NIA itself who avoids a strong top management in this NIS as NIA does not want the corruption or the intervention of politics to NISs. However, this NIA's policy prevents a strong leader from employing his mediative function, and it reduces the efficiency of irrigation system management as a result.