Informal groundwater based pump irrigation services markets are an all-pervasive agrarian institution in south Asia but have been criticised for bringing about less than equitable outcomes and causing groundwater over-exploitation. In view of these drawbacks of private water markets, many scholars have advocated "alternative institutional arrangements" in water sharing. The alternatives refer to those water sharing arrangements that violate either of the three basic conditions of private water market transactions, viz, private, individual ownership of irrigation assets and rights of the owners of means of irrigation to decide the terms and conditions of water sale. In this paper two alternative institutional arrangements in water sharing from West Bengal have been compared from the perspective of the impact they have on the water buyers - in most cases small and marginal farmers.
