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Water User Associations (WUAs)

West Bengal Accelerated Development of Minor Irrigation Project (WBADMIP)

All the water user farmers of the irrigation command area are organised in the form of Water User Association (WUA). WUAs are registered under Societies registration act 1961. WUAs take active part in the project planning, implementation and effective functioning of Minor irrigation schemes. WUAs distributing water, operation & maintenance, resolving conflicts and collecting water charges for the water services provided to its beneficiaries on agriculture, horticulture & fishery purposes. Women & tribal dominated WUAs showing better performance especially in fisheries, cultivable private wasteland into mix fruit plantation orchards related economic activities. WUA size varies across the agro-climatic regions with 40-50 average members. Minimum 15 members in the hills to max 120 members in the Coastal Saline zone.

WUAs emerging as sustainable institution- A single window delivery system for all project interventions

  1. • Operations & Maintenance of Irrigation structure
  2. • Better Water Management to cover more members & area
  3. • Resource creation- Corpus, convergence, asset creation, services etc
  4. • Enterprising activities eg fishery, poly house, floriculture etc
  5. • Maximizing the use of available resources & maintain transparency
  6. • Facilitating adoption of good practices & technologies by the farmers
  7. • Institution of social change- care, welfare & development
  8. • Becoming Implementing partners to Project
  9. • Becoming the Light house for neighboring areas

More than 2444 WUAs formed and strengthened under WB ADMI Project. 2028 WUAs have started providing paid irrigation water services to more than 123339 farmers in the approximately 75000 Ha irrigation potential area. 64% WUAs are rated grade A/B are effectively functioning and are able to meet their operating expenses. WUAs having the Corpus funds of about INR 4 Crore and spent about 22 Lakhs to help needy peoples during corona & others pandemic situations, It includes aproximately INR 2 Lakh donation to gove rnment Relief funds. WUA corpus used as revolving fund to meet the development needs during corona crises.

Project promoted WUAs received all the three awards under Best WUA category of National Water Award by Ministry of Jalshakti, Government of India for 2020 declared in January 2022. Serial number 51, 52 & 53 in the complete list of Award winners may be seen on the link https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1788293 . One of the WUA received National Water Award third prize for 2019.

WBADMIP is a World Bank supported Project (2012-19). Currently functioning with State government funds. WBADMIP Phase-II is expected to be approved soon.