Canal irrigation provides livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. In parts of South Asia, where it has been a massive thrust in rural and national development, extensive irrigation networks co-exist with the greatest concentration of rural poverty in the world. Production and livelihoods are linked, but, for poverty alleviation in the mid 1980s, partly because of food surpluses, the generation and support of livelihoods is a higher priority than production per se. Key questions concern who gains and who losses from irrigation. Generally, the poor stand to gain from better managed canal irrigation-in employment and income, in security against impoverishment, in less out migration, and in quality of life. In South Asia about 68 percent of the irrigation is in India and 26 percent in Pakistan and over half the irrigation in the subcontinent is from dual managed canal systems, controlled by official irrigation staff in their upper parts and by farmers lower down.  Performance in these systems has often been disappointing in areas irrigated, in water logging, in the multiple deprivations of tail ends, and in yields. Evidence suggests that ground water generally produces about twice as much per net irrigated hectare as canal irrigation. The potential for better livelihoods for the poor from improved management of canal irrigation systems appears high.

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