Who gets water? Designing irrigation service under groundwater scarcity
Farmers positioned later in irrigation sequences receive less water and earn lower returns, creating persistent inequality shaped by institutional rules. Policies should focus on improving irrigation service design, as behaviour responds to constraints rather than learning, and institutions influence resilience as well as allocation.
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Zaman-Jeuland-Rabbani-Pattanayak-Policy-Brief-March-2026.pdf
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- Relative position in an irrigation sequence shapes outcomes: Farmers extracting later receive less water and earn lower returns because less water remains by the time their turn arrives, creating systematic welfare differences in sequential irrigation schemes.
- Institutions reshape inequality through different channels: Crop-based water quotas act as an ex-ante planning tool that limits over-extraction but does not prevent downstream shortfalls. Rotation and monitoring act as ex-post enforcement, improving fairness across irrigation cycles by rotating access, but later farmers still receive less water within each cycle.
- Institutions shape resilience, not just allocation: Different rules lead to different welfare paths--quota systems support faster recovery, while rotation and enforcement help stabilise losses over time.
- Behaviour responds to incentives, not learning: Farmers show little evidence of gradual learning or adaptation to past scarcity or peer behaviour. Instead, behaviour is persistent and reacts primarily to current constraints on water availability and institutional rules, with norm-sensitive (high-trust) farmers adjusting most strongly.
- Policy should prioritise irrigation service delivery: Improving irrigation outcomes requires better service design, considering how access is sequenced, scheduled, and guaranteed across farmers.