Within the last few decades, Indonesia had achieved remarkable progress in water resources development until the beginning of the year 2000'through intensive implementation of government-initiated water resources development projects. Nevertheless, the institutional and organizational issue for sustaining the developed infrastructures has been lagging behind due to insufficient attention. From the underlined practices, a number of lessons were learning till the country suffered from a multidimensional crisis. In fact, it has been recognized that the severe crisis had been due to the chronic neglect of the farmers 'participation in the routine operation and maintenance process of the developed water resources and irrigation infrastructures.

In an attempt to resolve the dilemmatic situation, while keeping pace with the productivity level with the increasing population growth, an emphasis has been given to irrigation development and management based on the participatory approach. The program had been set up to reduce the central government's burden on O&Mcosts aiming for sustainable irrigated agricultural productivity through the PIM approach.

For the materialization of the said program, a number of policy reforms have been enacted on water resources and irrigated agricultural programs. In line with this policy reform, the PIM approach has also been significantly implemented. These include among others, turning over the small scale irrigation schemes with small landholding to the Water User Association - WUA; Encouragement of irrigation service fee (ISF); Small schemes Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT); Participatory design and construction implementation program; "Field laboratories" for the visual process of "learning by doing" and other such government initiatives. However, it was experienced that the above attempts have been going very slowly and as yet least sustainable. This matter has been suspected, among others, due to the low economic potential of the farmers and farming conditions under the small scale land ownership. The land ownerships, as a matter of fact, are already too small and that has been marginalizing the already marginal farmers 'incomes.

To facilitate resolving the problems, the program was supported by Water Law No. 7/2004, together with the Government Regulation No. 20/2006 about "irrigation" (that prescribe that the O & M responsibility for primary and secondary canals belongs to the Central Government, Provincial as well as Local Autonomous Government with certain role sharing criteria settled down by the Government Regulation on irrigation Management. (The Laws and Regulations have been reformulated within the last few years for reducing the burden of the farmers by assisting to operate and maintain the tertiary canals and infrastructure which were previously under the responsibility of the Water User's Associations (WUA).

This paper will discuss the series of the procedure and empirical processes, as well as problem-solving from the past experiences on PIM under the small landholding condition. These Include technical institutional, and financial, as well as regulatory instruments, and other such measures toward the future enhancement and sustainability of PIM under the small landholding irrigated agriculture.

After 1900 governments assumed a lot of influence over irrigation because:

* Water was more and more thought of government property attributable to the increasing demand permanently quality water and also the reducing convenience

* Governments kicked off giant scale irrigation comes as they were thought of a lot of economical

* The development of recent irrigation schemes became technically, financially and organizationally thus difficult that they fell outside the capabilities of the smaller communities

* The import and export policies of governments needed the cultivation of business money crops while, by dominant the water management, the farmers might be a lot of simply target-hunting to plant these reasonably crops.

The water management meaning an outsized grant on irrigation schemes. From 1980 the operation and maintenance of the many irrigation comes was step by step bimanual over to water user organizations (WUA's) World Health Organization were to assume these tasks and an outsized a part of the prices, whereby the water rights of the members had to be revered.

The exploitation of water resources via giant storage dams - that always provided wattage similarly - and diversion weirs commonly remained the responsibility of the government, principally as a result of environmental protection and questions of safety were at stake.

In the past, the utility style of water management witnessed a lot of conflicts and disturbances then the opposite sorts.