Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) reforms were introduced to mitigate the inept management of the traditional irrigation bureaucracy. It was hypothesized that these reforms would positively impact crop productivity and enhance the distributional equity of water among its users. The present study compared the PIM and Non-PIM irrigation schemes under almost the same cropping systems in Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab provinces—linking it to farm sizes, management practices, institutional arrangements, and governance structures. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used for studying different aspects of irrigation management and the reform process. The study concludes that economic inequity is a consequence of canal water distributional inequity. Spatially, users along the canal tail signi icantly underperform compared to the actual potential. PIM reforms were unable to generate hydro-solidarity between head and tail sections of the canal and, thus, farmer-managed institutions—FOs and AWBs–were unable to check the rent-seeking behaviour of irrigation bureaucracy. The level of participation in WUAs activities does not have a signi icant impact on the farm level productivity, but the Institutional Performance of AWBs (IPAWB) has a signi icant positive impact on the Composite Irrigation Management Performance (CIMP). Community cooperation and WUAs’ maturity have a signi icant positive impact on community participation in WUAs’ activities. Moreover, land asymmetry has a signi icant negative relationship with land productivity, CIMP, IPAWB, and the level of participation in WUAs activities. It has also …