Primarily concerned with resource management institutions, the research revealed that heterogeneity of community groups, as measured by household endowment indicators (i.e. average land irrigated, size of land owned, number of livestock and family size), was a key factor in the success or failure of HRMS and IWRM.
Successful regions had clearly defined social roles, be it patron-client or caste-based, and often used a private contractor to allocate water resources and collect user-fees. Therefore a heterogeneous mix of household endowments, combined with interested stakeholders, is a positive precondition.
By examining the existing social institutions and physical conditions of an area, the possibility of IWRM success may be assessed. For example, participation and rule-compliance were affected by access to irrigation alternatives, e.g. tubewells; the distribution of land-holdings, i.e. at the head or tail of irrigation networks; and the share of household income from non-agricultural sources.
Once community resource strategies are in place, managers must be aware of the potential impacts that larger national policies (e.g. import reforms altering commodity prices and in turn, village income profiles) and changing internal dynamics (e.g. increased workload for women without participation in management decisions) can have on long-term success.