Performance of small-scale participatory water projects - An econometric analysis of impact on income and assets

The small-scale water resources development projects, constructed by Local Government Engineering Department in Bangladesh are designed as participatory at all stages of planning, designing, implementation and maintenance. An econometric modeling exercise is carried out to assess the economic effects of such interventions, to ascertain how far the beneficiaries were able to reap benefits. The results show that such interventions had substantial positive impacts on income and asset for the beneficiary households, although the nonpoor households have benefited more. However, some autonomous growth resulting from factors such as switch to HYV varieties and increased use of inputs due to lower perceived risk of crop failure or reduced losses due to flooding may also have some contribution to these incremental benefits. One is also tempted to suggest that beneficiary participation in all project cycles might have positively contributed to performance of the projects. The performances of the ten subprojects and the ten water management cooperative associations (WMCAs) under study were evaluated through multi-criteria analysis. The significant positive rank correlation of the performance between the subprojects and the WMCAs leads to the conclusion that the performance of the SPs is highly dependent on the performance of the WMCAs. Hence, efforts should be made to improve the performance of the WMCAs through improved operation and maintenance in order to ensure the sustainability of the projects and also avoid their costly rehabilitation in the future.