Title:
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Contexts, ideologies and practices of small-scale irrigation development in east India
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The development of small-scale surface-water irrigation facilities in rainfed agricultural regions is
a necessary but problematic task. Whilst some academic literature recognises that water control
problems are the locally specific outcomes of social and political histories and processes, this is
yet to be adequately comprehended and internalised in irrigation policy discourse and its
manifestations in state and NGO intervention practices, which too often seek standardised and
generally applicable solutions to such problems. This thesis, through a detailed study of smallscale
surface-water irrigation systems - three recent NGO-led, state-sanctioned lift irrigation
interventions and four indigenous storage works - and historical and present-day social relations
amongst three adivasi (tribal) communities in south-east Jharkhand State, examines this insight
and its significance for policy.
Present-day international irrigation policy discourse has shifted since the 1980s and 1990s from
one which recognised the necessity of group-based small-scale irrigation development and thus
sought to provide support to the resource poor, towards one which promotes smaller, noncommunal
technologies, expects greater financial contributions from farmers, and thus implicitly
favours relatively wealthier farmers. This ideological policy shift, promoted internationally and
nationally under neo-liberalism, is legitimised by the perceived poor outcomes of irrigation
development investments. In Jharkhand, blame is placed upon water-users whose organisation for
irrigation system management is often lacking, yet such outcomes have been aided by the state -
which has in innumerable ways failed to support farmers, and by NGOs' inability to monitor and
self-critically analyse their own interventions. This thesis, by conceptualising irrigation and
society as mutually constitutive rather than autonomous, demonstrates the potential viability of
small-scale irrigation technologies and argues for the development of irrigation centred upon
improving irrigation water access and system management for the resource poor majority, not just
a minority.
This thesis takes an anthropological and sociological approach to the study of irrigation and
society, which provides balance to the otherwise dominant technocratic engineering and common
property resources and new institutional economics approaches in contemporary irrigation
management thinking. Emphasis is placed on the historical processes that determine irrigation
resource access and rights, and on the formal and informal rules that create and reinforce unequal
access to irrigation systems. Methodologically it favours a sociological-historical method;
research was conducted combining ethnographic methods with physical field measurements and
archival research. The sociotechnical approach to irrigation, utilised by Boelens and Mollinga,
places centrally the concepts of control and power, allowing an exploration of the political
dimensions of water control - normative (discourse), technical (infrastructure), organisational
(management), socio-legal and socio-economic (access), whilst allowing consideration of
irrigation systems' social dimensions - as social constructions, having social requirements for use,
and having social effects. Such a perspective indicates the necessity of inclusive, group-based
irrigation development interventions, focussed on communities in their entirety, integrating with
their socio-productive systems, and striving for equitable outcomes. In the medium and long term
this may aid system sustainability thus increasing total food production.
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