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Pedaling out of poverty: social impact of a manual irrigation technology in South Asia
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2000 |
| Authors | Shah, T,; Alam, M,; Kumar, D,; Nagar, R, K.; Singh M, |
| Journal Title | 6th International Micro-irrigation Congress (Micro 2000), Cape Town, South Africa, 22-27 October 2000 |
| Pagination | 1-20 |
| Key Words | conferences; economics; irrigation; poverty; socioeconomics |
| Abstract | The paper reviews evidence from a variety of studies to test whether treadle pump technology has social benefits. It concludes that: (1) the treadle pump technology does 'self-select' the poor, although the first generation adopters tended to be less poor. (2) It does raise net annual incomes of adopter households by about US$100, in North Bengal and Bangladesh, adopters turn to vegetable cultivation and marketing. (3) It results in increased land use intensity as well as priority cultivation and marketing. (4) Average crop yields on 'priority plots' tend to be much higher than obtained by farmers using diesel pumps or other irrigation devices. (5) Income impact varies across households and regions, but $100 per year seems to be a conservative estimate of the average annual increase in annual net income. Less enterprising adopters achieve fuller employment at implicit wage rate that is 1.5 to 2.5 times the market rate. The more enterprising take to intelligent commercial farming and earn substantially more. The challenge is identified as putting treadle pumps in the hands of millions of rural poor. In Bangladesh, where this has become possible, over a million pumps are in use but do not yet account for a large proportion of the irrigated area. In eastern India and Nepal Terai, treadle pump deployments need to cross the 100,000 per year barrier to achieve significant rural benefit. |
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