David Gilmartin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520285293
- eISBN:
- 9780520960831
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520285293.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
Questions about the relationship between environment and community have preoccupied a good deal of writing on the history of water in South Asia. The chapter puts forward the argument that the Indus ...
More
Questions about the relationship between environment and community have preoccupied a good deal of writing on the history of water in South Asia. The chapter puts forward the argument that the Indus basin water development under the British was fundamentally shaped by a structure of British colonial statecraft distinguishing two forms of overlapping community, defined by different relationships to nature: productive and nonproductive. This distinction, a product of nineteenth-century political economy, lay at the heart ofBritish water-development policy. Yet, as a review of Indus basin water development in the centuries before the British arrival suggests, this was a distinction with little meaning before the colonial era.Less
Questions about the relationship between environment and community have preoccupied a good deal of writing on the history of water in South Asia. The chapter puts forward the argument that the Indus basin water development under the British was fundamentally shaped by a structure of British colonial statecraft distinguishing two forms of overlapping community, defined by different relationships to nature: productive and nonproductive. This distinction, a product of nineteenth-century political economy, lay at the heart ofBritish water-development policy. Yet, as a review of Indus basin water development in the centuries before the British arrival suggests, this was a distinction with little meaning before the colonial era.
Barton H. Thompson, Jr
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199354054
- eISBN:
- 9780199398959
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199354054.003.0011
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, International
The chapter focuses on nations that suffer from a “difficult” hydrology, involving
combinations of inter-annual and intra-annual variability in surface flows, as well as
geographic variability within ...
More
The chapter focuses on nations that suffer from a “difficult” hydrology, involving
combinations of inter-annual and intra-annual variability in surface flows, as well as
geographic variability within their borders. These are the nations where irrigation
matters the most. Some of these nations remain in a “low-level equilibrium trap,” in
which poor water endowments prevent the country from making investments needed to
escape water insecurity and poverty. Other nations, however, adapt at least in part to
their poor water conditions through storage and inter-basin transfers of surface
water, groundwater extraction, or both. Effective water institutions have been crucial
to the success of such adaptations. This chapter examines broad trends in water
institutions over time, and the relationship of those institutions to agriculture to
reveal lessons that are particularly important for developing nations still in the
early stages of the evolution of their water institutions.Less
The chapter focuses on nations that suffer from a “difficult” hydrology, involving
combinations of inter-annual and intra-annual variability in surface flows, as well as
geographic variability within their borders. These are the nations where irrigation
matters the most. Some of these nations remain in a “low-level equilibrium trap,” in
which poor water endowments prevent the country from making investments needed to
escape water insecurity and poverty. Other nations, however, adapt at least in part to
their poor water conditions through storage and inter-basin transfers of surface
water, groundwater extraction, or both. Effective water institutions have been crucial
to the success of such adaptations. This chapter examines broad trends in water
institutions over time, and the relationship of those institutions to agriculture to
reveal lessons that are particularly important for developing nations still in the
early stages of the evolution of their water institutions.
David Gilmartin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520285293
- eISBN:
- 9780520960831
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520285293.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
Blood and Water is a history of the political and environmental transformation of the Indus basin as a result of the modern construction in the region of the world’s largest integrated irrigation ...
More
Blood and Water is a history of the political and environmental transformation of the Indus basin as a result of the modern construction in the region of the world’s largest integrated irrigation system. The system was begununder British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, and the resulting transformation continued after the region was divided between two new states, India and Pakistan, in 1947. It was a process deeply shaped, from the beginning, by colonial statecraft-and by the fissures within colonial policies and ideologies. The book traces the critical intersection between competing visions of community that shaped the environmental transformation. On the one hand, forms of political mobilization and productive incentives were developed to facilitate the extension of coordinated, productive control of the region’s environment. At the same time, the state mobilized countervailing visions of community based on genealogy and blood to stabilize its political authority. The tensions between these competing visions were deeply embedded in the politics of irrigation development, and they have continued to frame the ways that irrigators have been mobilized within the system.Less
Blood and Water is a history of the political and environmental transformation of the Indus basin as a result of the modern construction in the region of the world’s largest integrated irrigation system. The system was begununder British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, and the resulting transformation continued after the region was divided between two new states, India and Pakistan, in 1947. It was a process deeply shaped, from the beginning, by colonial statecraft-and by the fissures within colonial policies and ideologies. The book traces the critical intersection between competing visions of community that shaped the environmental transformation. On the one hand, forms of political mobilization and productive incentives were developed to facilitate the extension of coordinated, productive control of the region’s environment. At the same time, the state mobilized countervailing visions of community based on genealogy and blood to stabilize its political authority. The tensions between these competing visions were deeply embedded in the politics of irrigation development, and they have continued to frame the ways that irrigators have been mobilized within the system.
