Small Scale Water Resources Development Project in Rural Bangladesh: People's Participation in Subproject Development

Bangladesh is inhabited by about 125 million people in an area of about 147,000 square kilometer and is located within the floodplains of three great rivers of the world: the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. About 93% of the catchments of the country's river system lie outside in the upper region of Bangladesh, but drain the system over its floodplains to the Bay of Bengal. Because of this unique geographic location, the country suffers heavily due to flooding almost every year. Conservative estimates put the damage due to floods in Bangladesh to about 200 million US dollars every year on an average in terms of damages to crops and properties. As a result large number of flood control and drainage (FCD) schemes have been built in Bangladesh in the past. These schemes were built by "top down" management that neglected the poor. People were not consulted during identification, planning and implementation of these projects and were operated and maintained by public initiatives without considering needs and aspiration of the people. The water control systems were operated as desired by landlords of the project area, and the marginal and small farmers were not consulted. The maintenance of the completed system with public revenue budget could not be continued for long due to resource constraints, and as a result many of the infrastructure deteriorated and lost their functional ability. In fact a good number of FCD schemes have been out of operation for long, created negative impact on aquatic environment and people wanted their demolition to restore natural condition.