K. SRINIVASA RAJU Department of Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani 333 031, Rajasthan, India. Email: ksraju@bits-pilani.ac.in D. NAGESH KUMAR* Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560 012, India. Email: nagesh@civil.iisc.ernet.in *Corresponding author
Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) is gaining importance as it enables the involvement of farmers for selecting and improving chosen irrigation systems, which will reduce the gap between irrigation potential created and utilised. Fuzzy logic based Multicriterion Decision Making (MCDM) has emerged as effective methodology due to its ability to integrate quantitative and qualitative criteria for selection of the best alternative among available alternatives. A case study of Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP), Andhra Pradesh, India is analysed with reference to the concept of PIM in the form of farmers' response survey in four irrigation subsystems (canal distributories) of the project to assess their opinion on various facets of irrigation management. Based on the above analysis 6 performance criteria (indicators), namely, (1) environmental impact (2) conjunctive use of surface and ground water resources (3) participation of farmers (4) social impact (5) productivity (6) economic impact, are identified. These criteria are evaluated for four irrigation subsystems of the project to select the best among them. It is concluded that integration of fuzzy logic with real world irrigation planning