Abstract:
Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) was introduced in the 1990s as a problem-solving
mechanism for addressing poor irrigation system performance in many agricultural areas of the
world. However, there is some uncertainty as to whether this policy has achieved successful
overall irrigation scheme performance in those places where it has been implemented. The
emergence of head-tail differences in the water supply along the canal network has frequently
resulted in irrigation system failure, causing this issue to become a subject of heated debate
among scholars. Sri Lanka is one of the countries that adopted the PIM policy, where it was
implemented in 1992. Therefore, this provides the opportunity to find out if head-tail disparity
exists in the irrigation schemes of Sri Lanka too, as in other countries. For that reason, this article
conducts a review to assess whether a head-tail difference is present or not in Sri Lanka, by
determining if the problems and challenges faced by the tail-end farmers are significantly greater
compared to those of the farmers in the head reaches. Of the 32 empirical studies on irrigation
management done in Sri Lanka, the results of 10 studies suggest a head-tail asymmetry from the
socio-economic and technical perspective. This paper identifies the knowledge gap and then
provides insights that would help to overcome the existing problems and challenges of head-tail
disparity in irrigation management in Sri Lanka.
