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     The reasons that reasonable observers view management transfer as necessary has to do with both empirical assessments and institutional theory. On the empirical side, irrigation infrastructure in many countries is deteriorating due to the proximate causes of budget constraints in the administering agency, demoralized staff, corruption which leads to inferior quality construction, and inappropriate initial designs. Theory suggests that it could hardly be otherwise. The incentives facing irrigation agency staff as well as aid professionals in international donor agencies, are perverse (Ostrom 1995).

     Partly this situation is due to the nature of the goods which government agencies are trying to control. Local resources -- including water and the associated infrastructure -- are common pool goods that are best managed through community cooperation. Even one level upstream, in the conveyance system of secondary canals feeding the smaller irrigation communities, some kind of hybrid public organization that can harness market forces (e.g., a public utility) is likely to be preferable to a conventional governmental line agency (Picciotto 1995). But the other part of the problem with government agencies is that they are often "sick institutions" (Klitgaard 1995) suffering from both structural and cultural maladies over and above their inappropriate mandates.

     Organizational problems of institutions can be addressed through training, management restructuring, etc. But the problem of agencies stretched beyond their realm of competence needs to be addressed by transferring part of their management functions. The process by which irrigation water users take control from the state is generally called, “irrigation management transfer” and refers to a formal, legal handing over of management functions from a state irrigation authority to associations of water users. Widespread management transfer from state authorities to local user associations is a recent phenomenon in the so-called developing world, where centralized government control has been the norm.

     This paper looks at management transfer in the framework of transferring rights to property. What is being transferred from government to local water user associations is the right to control the natural resource (water) and the built resource that conveys the water (the irrigation infrastructure). However, the real world is not so cleanly arranged. Instead of rights to property, governments are trying to transfer responsibility for the property, while retaining the fundamental ownership rights. The discourse of aid professionals and government bureaucrats is of instilling in farmers a "sense of ownership" so they will take over management responsibility of the irrigation network (viz. operating and maintaining the infrastructure). Often the language is of transferring the "management burden" to farmers, thus allowing the government irrigation agency to focus on the dams and main canals.

     In the process of transferring responsibilities, some rights invariably get transferred as well. This paper seeks to explore those rights and suggests that as a general rule, explicitly transferring rights to irrigation property is preferable as a development strategy, than the current focus on transferring responsibilities.

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