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Harnessing the State: Social Transformation, Infrastructural Development, and the Changing Governance of Water Systems in the Kangra District of the Indian Himalayas
Abstract
Despite a proliferation of programs and policies aimed at promoting local resource management, we still have limited knowledge of the conditions under which state interventions can be a supportive force in everyday aspects of common pool resource governance. This article explores growing state involvement in community- managed irrigation systems of the Kangra District of Himachal Pradesh, India. Here, agriculture is dependent on water channeled from glacial streams through networks of irrigation canals that have been sustained by local traditions of collective action for centuries. In recent years, however, growing off-farm employment has shifted the center of the agrarian economy and undermined shared norms of collective resource governance, just as state institutions have increasingly identified water systems as an object of development intervention. In this article, I document how irrigation management has been incrementally reinvented through changing institutional arrangements and new infrastructural forms over the past three decades, as existing patterns of collective action have increasingly found expression by leveraging development resources of the state. To the extent that socioeconomic changes associated with broader processes of development are likely to strain commons governance systems in mountain and other regions in the coming years, such collaborative engagements between local collective management and state support systems could become increasingly prevalent. This case suggests the need for new theoretical tools to guide analysis of evolving relationship between communities and state institutions in common pool resource governance.
... Through case studies of three local governments in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, it is observed that by offering a relational and processual understanding of how local governance evolves, the public domain lends new insight into the ways that decentralization is redefining citizenship through new articulations of the 'public' in local democracy (Fischer and Alid 2019). The study of water Systems in the Kangra District describes how irrigation management has been incrementally reinvented through changing institutional arrangements and new infrastructural forms over the past three decades, as existing patterns of collective action have increasingly found expression by leveraging development resources of the state (Fischer 2017b). While the devolution of resources under the MGNREGA has improved access to state resources and increased participation in development planning overall, the intensity, equity, and extent of influence varies according to the character of local political relationships (Fischer 2019a). ...
The meaning, concept, and uses of the notion of culture vary in the world's different languages; however, everyone agrees that culture allows people to reflect on themselves in dialogue with others and understands human interconnectedness. The culture makes us human, rational beings endowed with critical judgment and a sense of moral and civil commitment to the Earth. This notion of 'cultural whole' is systemically and systematically represented in India on the line of its long historical-cultural background that maintained continuity, and prospects for sustainability. We strongly believe that there's almost nothing in this wide, wonderful, and worthy world of ours that can't be thought about and studied geographically-the way/s in which the same phenomena are conceptualized, conceived, cognized, correlated, and exposed differently in varied contexts within the envelope of cultural geography. Let a variety of cultural flowers bloom in different gardens [space, time, and function], but there should also be a soothing fragrance to be shared by all-the sanātsna dharma has well preserved and manifested this.
Under the umbrella of The INSA (Indian National Science Academy), in 2000 it was decided by the Committee on Geography that the review appraisal report on ‘Cultural Geography’ be added it its IGU publication, Progress in Geography that has been presented in the International Geographical Congress, ever four years. Thus, the first such report on Cultural Geography (2000-2004) was included in the report and was presented at the 31st IGU Congress Glasgow: 15-20 August 2004. This is followed by succeeding IGU Congresses, i.e., 32nd Tunis (12-15 August 2008), 33rd Cologne (26-30 August 2012), 34th Beijing (21-25 August 2016), and 35th Paris (18-22 July 2022). All seven review-appraisal reports [2000-2022] on the Progress in Cultural-Historical Geography in India are presented here. # To be noted that reports on Historical Geography were only for the two periods, i.e., 2000-2004 (5, pp. 94-109), and 2004-2012 (7, pp. 120-129), and in the following period (2012-2016) it was merged into Cultural Geography. Therefore, the major issues of historical geography are referred under Cultural Geography.
... Through case studies of three local governments in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, it is observed that by offering a relational and processual understanding of how local governance evolves, the public domain lends new insight into the ways that decentralization is redefining citizenship through new articulations of the 'public' in local democracy (Fischer and Alid 2019). The study of water Systems in the Kangra District describes how irrigation management has been incrementally reinvented through changing institutional arrangements and new infrastructural forms over the past three decades, as existing patterns of collective action have increasingly found expression by leveraging development resources of the state (Fischer 2017b). While the devolution of resources under the MGNREGA has improved access to state resources and increased participation in development planning overall, the intensity, equity, and extent of influence varies according to the character of local political relationships (Fischer 2019a). ...
... Through case studies of three local governments in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, it is observed that by offering a relational and processual understanding of how local governance evolves, the public domain lends new insight into the ways that decentralization is redefining citizenship through new articulations of the 'public' in local democracy (Fischer and Alid 2019). The study of water Systems in the Kangra District describes how irrigation management has been incrementally reinvented through changing institutional arrangements and new infrastructural forms over the past three decades, as existing patterns of collective action have increasingly found expression by leveraging development resources of the state (Fischer 2017b). While the devolution of resources under the MGNREGA has improved access to state resources and increased participation in development planning overall, the intensity, equity, and extent of influence varies according to the character of local political relationships (Fischer 2019a). ...
The meaning, concept, and uses of the notion of culture vary in the different languages of the world; however, everyone agrees that culture gives people the ability to reflect on themselves in dialogue with others and understands human interconnectedness. It is the culture that makes us human, rational beings, endowed with critical judgment and a sense of moral and civil commitment to the Earth. This notion of 'cultural whole' is systemically and systematically represented in India on the line of its long historical-cultural background that maintained continuity, and prospects for sustainability. We strongly believe that there's almost nothing in this wide, wonderful, and worthy world of ours that can't be thought about and studied geographically-the way/s in which the same phenomena are conceptualized, conceived, cognized, correlated, and exposed differently in varied contexts within the envelope of cultural geography. Let a variety of cultural flowers bloom in different gardens [space, time, and function], but there should also be a soothing fragrance to be shared by all-the sanātana dharma has well preserved and manifested this.
... Such migration is important for young SC men, not only in enhancing opportunities for cash income, but also escaping the indignities of caste oppression that characterize village settings (Carswell and De Neve 2018). Migration for purposes of wage labor also accords with local constructions of masculinity, in which agricultureassociated with subsistence, rather than cash income-has become a feminized activity (Fischer 2017). Although life in Delhi was challenging, it was necessary for Arjun to move away from farming, which his family associated with the poverty they sought to escape. ...
Under what conditions might the acquisition of new skills challenge discriminatory social norms? We interrogate this question through reference to a study on the social impacts of an agricultural skill development scheme in rural India. We present detailed vignettes drawn from this study, which illustrate the social consequences of acquiring and utilizing skills that transgress local gender and caste norms. Engaging with themes from capabilities theory, we highlight how, although not all skills are transgressive, for some, acquiring “transgressive skills” not only enhanced life opportunities for themselves, but also did so for others within their communities. The form of their transgressions and their social consequences varied, however, based on their relative privilege and the operation of place-specific social norms and systems of oppression. We argue that transgressive skills might drive progressive social change, but distinguish between two types of transgression. Individual, brash, heroic transgressions against the status quo are more accessible to the relatively privileged, whereas marginalized people are more likely to engage in nested transgressions, which form part of long-term, collective struggles for empowerment. The latter, although often overlooked, might offer sustainable pathways to progressive change that reflect local aspirations.
... Some are deeply and justifiably pessimistic about state actors' capacities to act in any helpful move in the direction of, for example, environmental justice (see Pulido 2017). Yet, state actors might not at specific times and places demonstrate a monolithic commitment to sustaining capitalist environmental governance but often retain multiple and contradictory commitments, especially when given the relative independence to engage citizens directly on a regular basis (Corbridge et al. 2005;Fischer 2017). Our research reveals that state power is both a result and effect of social and ecological relations that are constantly in flux, and in the case of river restoration, opportunities exist for coalitions of state and nonstate agents to promote a progressive ecopolitics. ...
Dam removal in the United States is an increasingly attractive option for advocates of river restoration. We argue that dam removal in New England (United States) is a useful lens for examining state actors’ capabilities to govern environmental processes. Our analytical framework builds off and integrates strategic-relational approaches (SRAs) to state power and those approaches more concerned with “peopling” the state through state agents’ everyday encounters with civil society. The complex suite of issues—ranging from safety and the environmental benefits of free-flowing rivers to historical preservation and cultural heritage—characterizing dam removal and similar restoration efforts challenge state agents to become more multidimensional in environmental governance. Our research reveals that some state agencies in New England have been more effective than others at adopting these novel roles and managing environmental conflicts. Our research also suggests we view the “state” as a complex collective of relations and actors that exerts power over nature–society relations in strategic and often contradictory ways. Our empirical findings, coupled to more nuanced theories of state–nature relations, direct attention to how state power is unevenly distributed within environmental governance arrangements. These findings also suggest that consideration of environmental interventions directed by state agents has the potential to contribute to a progressive and ecologically mindful set of political commitments.
... At present, two broad trends are reshaping exposure to climate risk. First, growing economic opportunities and the declining importance of farm-based livelihoods has made it increasingly hard to sustain existing systems of irrigation management (Fischer, 2017). Earthen canals require regularized, laborintensive maintenance-shoveling out sediment, repairing damaged walls, and trimming vegetation. ...
Decentralized, “community-based” approaches to climate adaptation are now viewed as a key strategy to assist vulnerable populations confront global climate change. While these efforts are premised on the belief that citizen participation will lead to more effective climate responses, there remains limited empirical evidence of the relationship between local democracy and climate risk reduction. This paper asks: How, and through which processes, do local institutions emerge as more substantively democratic arenas to coordinate responses to climate risk and change? And how does the character of local democratic practice, in turn, influence the effectiveness of adaptive responses? To answer these questions, the paper analyzes the implementation of India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)—a substantial devolution of development resources to rural local governments in India—and its effects on climate risk reduction in the state of Himachal Pradesh. A primary dataset of 798 small-scale development projects in 35 villages shows that a majority of water-related interventions are helping to improve water access in the face of water stress, while benefits skew towards poorer and historically marginalized social groups. Drawing on intensive qualitative enquiry, the paper argues that these outcomes were made possible as the result of long-term political transformations in the region, which have paved the way for more inclusive — if often contested — participation in local decision-making processes. The analysis underscores the need to move beyond a narrow focus on institutional building to undertake longer-term investments in supporting more robust subnational democratic systems. The growing flow of resources dedicated to climate assistance has the potential to help drive such processes where the nascent conditions for democratic deepening are in place.
... The ethnic communities living in different geo-hydrological and environmental settings across the world have evolved and adopted different traditional systems of water management, such as Subak in Bali island, Muang Fai in Northern Thailand, Zanjeria in the north-west of the Philippines, Mirab irrigation in Afghanistan, Kuhls in Western Himalaya, Johad and Khadin in Rajasthan, Ahar-pyne in south Bihar, Phad irrigation in Maharashtra, bamboo drip irrigation in Meghalaya, Zabo in Nagaland and Bogo in Apatani Valley of Arunachal Pradesh (Baker 2007;Fischer 2017;McTaggart 1989;Negi and Kandpal 2003;Sarma and Goswami 2015;Singh and Gupta 2002;Watson et al. 1998). They have evolved these systems to sustain their agriculture and associated livelihoods applying community efforts and their traditional understanding of the geological, physiographic and agro-climatic conditions of the respective area (Strauch and Almedom 2011). ...
This volume uses an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to assess various issues resulting from human-environment interactions in relation to sustainable development. The book encompasses theoretical and applied aspects, using both thematic and regional case studies from India, to highlight the impact of human-environment interactions at various spatio-temporal scales, with each study focusing on a particular anthropogenic issue, particularly in an Indian context. The book's three focal themes (e.g. habitat linkages, ekistics and social ecology, hazard and environmental management) elaborate the essential components of human-environment interactions with nature, its impact on the surrounding natural and social environments, and management techniques through research innovations. Readers will learn how maladjustments, disturbances and disasters are often inevitable byproducts of human-environment systems, and what conceptual and practical strategies can be applied towards sustainable coexistence. The book will be of interest to students, academics and policymakers engaged in environmental management, human-environment interactions and sustainable development.
... The ethnic communities living in different geo-hydrological and environmental settings across the world have evolved and adopted different traditional systems of water management, such as Subak in Bali island, Muang Fai in Northern Thailand, Zanjeria in the north-west of the Philippines, Mirab irrigation in Afghanistan, Kuhls in Western Himalaya, Johad and Khadin in Rajasthan, Ahar-pyne in south Bihar, Phad irrigation in Maharashtra, bamboo drip irrigation in Meghalaya, Zabo in Nagaland and Bogo in Apatani Valley of Arunachal Pradesh (Baker 2007;Fischer 2017;McTaggart 1989;Negi and Kandpal 2003;Sarma and Goswami 2015;Singh and Gupta 2002;Watson et al. 1998). They have evolved these systems to sustain their agriculture and associated livelihoods applying community efforts and their traditional understanding of the geological, physiographic and agro-climatic conditions of the respective area (Strauch and Almedom 2011). ...
The Himalayan foothill zone in Assam with a unique natural setting manifests a distinctive human-environment relationship. Formed basically of unconsolidated geologic structure and drained by numerous streams joining ultimately the river Brahmaputra, this zone till recently continued to have a thick forest cover ranging from tall grasses to large evergreen trees. But during the recent period, the rapid population growth and urbanisation in the valley areas have forced people to settle down even in the marginal areas like the Himalayan foothills. Presently, most of the areas of the foothill zone have been brought under human use causing loss of forest cover and other environmental problems rendering the existing human-environment system almost unsustainable. Importantly, some social groups living in the area have developed certain production systems for their sustenance, which are not only unique but also important from the perspective of ecological and economic sustainability. One of the very useful systems developed by these people is the traditional water management system which proved to be ecologically and economically sustainable in the context of the peculiar environmental settings of the area. This study attempts to investigate the evolution of the indigenous water management system and the processes and patterns of water use in agriculture and other productive sectors. The study is based on field works done in a village called Chaulkara located in the district of Baksa, Assam. The water management system followed traditionally by the people of the locality has been investigated to generate required data and information and to examine the situation in the context of indigenous knowledge system and sustainable development.
... The ethnic communities living in different geo-hydrological and environmental settings across the world have evolved and adopted different traditional systems of water management, such as Subak in Bali island, Muang Fai in Northern Thailand, Zanjeria in the north-west of the Philippines, Mirab irrigation in Afghanistan, Kuhls in Western Himalaya, Johad and Khadin in Rajasthan, Ahar-pyne in south Bihar, Phad irrigation in Maharashtra, bamboo drip irrigation in Meghalaya, Zabo in Nagaland and Bogo in Apatani Valley of Arunachal Pradesh (Baker 2007;Fischer 2017;McTaggart 1989;Negi and Kandpal 2003;Sarma and Goswami 2015;Singh and Gupta 2002;Watson et al. 1998). They have evolved these systems to sustain their agriculture and associated livelihoods applying community efforts and their traditional understanding of the geological, physiographic and agro-climatic conditions of the respective area (Strauch and Almedom 2011). ...
The contemporary issues of environmental degradation, population growth, human settlements and growing need for livelihood security pose ever increasing risks and vulnerability to human development. The chapter intends to focus on such major themes to include: (a) habitat and environmental issues of human concerns, (b) ekistics and ecology of social environment and (c) hazards and environmental management for sustainable development. Management of environment, food security and poverty alleviation are the primary factors contributing to the complexity of natural resource management, which is very important for achieving sustainable development goals. The rural poor depend on agriculture or are otherwise dependent on natural resources for their basic life support systems. The livelihood and well-being of rural and urban people depend fundamentally on the opportunities available to them, and these opportunities are shaped substantially by their access to resources, which in turn depends on numerous underlying political, social and macro-economic factors, those are transforming with the current trends of globalization, migration, market integration, democratization and decentralization.
... These traditional irrigation systems, which were evolved by the local communities through generations based on their knowledge and skills, have proved successful and thus gained attention of the policymakers and planners worldwide. However, the growing population pressure, changing socioeconomic conditions, growth of non-farm sectors and irrational political interventions have adversely affected these age-old traditional water management techniques during the last few decades (Baghel, Stepan and Hill 2017;Baker 2007;Fischer 2017;MacRae and Arthawiguna 2011;Roth 2011). Very recently, different international organisations, agencies and NGOs have started focusing on the revival of the traditional technologies for sustainable management of the water resource (Dutta 2015). ...
Participatory water resource management assumes great significance in the changing context of fresh water availability and use. The forces of market economy, in most cases, have transformed the rural social scenario in such a way that community participation in resource management has become almost a far cry. But the Himalayan foothill area in Assam sets a good example of management and sharing of water resources by the communities living in the area in eco-friendly and socially just ways. This study is an attempt to analyse the traditional management practices called dong-bandh system evolved by the local people to harvest and share the stream water for agricultural and domestic purposes.
Based on data collected from secondary sources and generated through primary survey, the study focuses on the organizational set-up of the community participation, water distribution policies, conflict resolution and perception of the people on dong–bandh governance. The challenges faced by this traditional system during the recent period have also been discussed.
A significant challenge of skill development in the Global South is providing meaningful opportunities for practical learning. While previous studies have explored this as a pedagogical challenge, in this paper, I take a geographical perspective, arguing the barriers to practical learning extend beyond pedagogy and often relate to socio-economic conditions. I draw on a study of a new agricultural skill development scheme in the states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh in north India. Trainees enrolled in the scheme expressed strong desires for opportunities to ‘learn by hand’ (hāth se sīkhna), which training rarely provided and which were often availed in informal settings. The extent to which trainees found useful practical learning opportunities varied based on gender, caste and locality. Drawing on theories of communities of practice, I argue that the desired practical learning was marred not only by the inability or unwillingness of trainers to provide practical classes, but also by regionally specific factors, such as administrative constraints, local agrarian structure and regional patriarchies. This suggests that coordinating effective forms of practical learning requires regional-level strategies that are attentive to social and economic context.
The concept of ‘skill ecosystems’ considers how contextual and institutional factors shape the acquisition and utilisation of skills. Although initially developed in the global North, there is value in applying this concept in the global South, where large-scale skill development and vocational education reforms are underway, many of which struggle with post-training skill underutilisation. The concept requires modification, however, if it is to be meaningfully applied in the global South. To date, skill ecosystem research has focused on skill utilisation in contexts of formal employment and the institutional actors who support it. In the global South, where most people are employed in the informal sector, a different approach is required, more sensitive to regional power structures and social inequalities. Geographical research on skills can help develop a more dynamic, relational, and power-inflected version of the skill ecosystem concept. Drawing on a short-term longitudinal study of agricultural skills trainings in India, this paper argues a geographically sensitive skill ecosystems perspective helps identify how context shapes the outcomes of skill development programs. To be meaningfully deployed in relation to informal sector work in the global South, however, it must be extended in at least three ways: (1) a different set of institutions and actors must be recognized as comprising the ‘ecosystem,’ particularly those supporting entrepreneurship; (2) the community and family settings in which informal sector work takes place must be recognized; and (3) social inequalities must be considered to promote greater skill utilisation and more equitable outcomes.
Commons projects, such as community-based natural resource
management, have widespread appeal, which has enabled them to shrug off a mixed
performance in practice. This paper discusses how the theoretical assumptions
of common pool resource (CPR) theory may have inadvertently contributed
to the unfulfilled expectations of commons projects. The paper argues that the
individual ‘rational resource user’, encapsulated in the CPR design principles,
struggles to provide clear direction for meaningful consideration of local norms,
values and interests in commons projects. The focus of CPR theory on efficiency
and functionality results in a tendency in commons projects to overlook how local
conditions are forged through relations at multiple scales. Commonly politically
complex and changing relations are reduced to institutional design problems
based on deriving the incentives and disincentives of ‘rational resource users. The
corollary is that CPR theory oversimplifies the project context that it is seeking to
change because it offers little or no direction to deal with the social embeddedness
of resource use or implications of different stratifications.
In recent years, water governance has emerged as a conflictive political issue in Bolivia, leading to major protests and the rise of influential social movements. Although conflicts over urban water services have received more attention, rural water issues have been an important if underexamined contributor to processes by which water governance is being reinstitutionalized in Bolivia. Rural water conflicts have given rise to a well-organized and influential peasant irrigators' movement, rooted in the department of Cochabamba but with national membership. The irrigators' movement has successfully promoted a vision of water governance based on traditional customary practices of water management, or usos y costumbres. In addition to being material practices associated with agricultural production, usos y costumbres are symbolic of livelihood strategies specific to Quechua- and Aymara-speaking peoples in the Bolivian Andes. This article examines the material and symbolic importance of these usos y costumbres for the livelihoods and political claims of Bolivia's peasant irrigators. Irrigators have successfully mobilized a politicized and symbolic discourse of usos y costumbres, as well as dense associational networks that have together allowed them to renegotiate the institutionalization of rural water governance in Bolivia: who makes resource decisions, for the benefit of whom, at whose expense, at what sociospatial scales, and through what institutional arrangements. The reinstitutionalization of Bolivian water governance is reflective of historically rooted cultural systems that seek to reconfigure long-standing power asymmetries.
From Page 1 "In the early part of this century, 1916 and 1921 were especially dry years in the Kumaon region of the Indian Himalaya. In each of these years, forest fires racked the countryside, burning beyond the power of the colonial British government to control or extinguish. It was not just the dry weather that was to blame. Villagers in Kumaon set the forest on fire; the dry weather merely helped their efforts along. The containment of this 'planned incendiarism' was one of the main planks of the scientific forestry that the colonial state had begun to introduce in the hills in the last quarter of the 19th century, and especially from around 1910."
In the past two decades, scholarship on resource use and management has emphasized the key role of institutions, communities, and socio-economic factors. Although much of this writing acknowledges the importance of a large number of different causal variables and processes, knowledge about the magnitude, relative contribution, and even direction of influence of different causal processes on resource management outcomes is still poor at best. This paper addresses existing gaps in theory and knowledge by conducting a context-sensitive statistical analysis of 95 cases of decentralized, community-based, forest governance in Himachal Pradesh, and showing how a range of causal influences shape forest conditions in diverse ecological and institutional settings in the Indian Himalaya. In focusing attention on a large number of cases, but drawing on findings from case studies to motivate our analysis and choice of causal influences, our study seeks to combine the strengths of single case-oriented approaches and larger-N studies, and thereby contributes to a more thorough understanding of effective resource governance.
"New institutions created through decentralisation policies around the world, notwithstanding the rhetoric, are often lacking in substantive democratic content. New policies for decentralised natural resource management have transferred powers to a range of local authorities, including private associations, customary authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Scholars see such transfers as detrimental to the legitimacy of local democratic institutions, leading to a fragmentation of local authority and dampening prospects for democratic consolidation. In much of this critique, however, there is limited attention to the wider democratic context (or lack thereof) and its effect on local governments. This article develops the concept of political articulation to characterise the relationship between citizens and elected representatives, and argues that accountability in decentralisation cannot be conceptualised or analysed separately from the accountability of higher institutions of representation and governance. The empirical analysis of the article uses the experience of a World Bank-funded Ecodevelopment Project in Himachal Pradesh, India, to generate insights into the role of political articulation in analysing decentralisation reforms."
"What are the democracy effects of decentralisation reforms and projects? Most developing countries have launched decentralisation reforms for the purpose of improving service delivery, local development and management. In these reforms and projects, however, governments, international development agencies and large non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are transferring power to a wide range of local institutions, including private bodies, customary authorities and NGOs. Recognition of these other local institutions means that fledgling local governments are receiving few public powers and face competition for legitimacy. Under what conditions is the new plurality of approaches and local interlocutors fostering local democratic consolidation or resulting in fragmented forms of authority and belonging? Through case studies in Benin, Guatemala, India, Malawi, Russia, Senegal and South Africa, this issue explores the effects of institutional choices and recognition by governments, international development agencies and large NGOs on three dimensions of democracy: 1) representation, 2) citizenship and 3) the public domain. This article outlines an approach to the politics of institutional choice and recognition while drawing out findings from the articles in this issue."
Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state? This book considers the Indian example where people's accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by encounters staged at the local level, and are also informed by ideas circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on fieldwork conducted in eastern India, the authors review a series of key debates in development studies on participation, good governance, and the structuring of political society in South Asia. © Stuart Corbridge, Glyn Williams, René Véron and Manoj Srivastav a 2005 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
This article introduces a collection of papers that provide empirical studies of the impacts that result from changes to established modes of governance: in particular, decentralizing the scale at which state institutions operate or the privatization of service delivery. We critically assess the claims made for “good governance” reforms in the light of these studies. Altering the scale, and the style, of governance has inevitable consequences for power structures, institutions, livelihoods, and physical landscapes. We offer a framework for analyzing these consequences, focusing on the temporal and scale dimensions of political and environmental decentralization and changes to established modes of governance.
Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state, and how are these engagements conducted? This book considers the Indian case where people's accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by a series of encounters that are staged at the local level, and which are also informed by ideas that are circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on fieldwork conducted in eastern India and their broad range of expertise, the authors review a series of key debates in development studies on participation, good governance, and the structuring of political society. They do so with particular reference to the Employment Assurance Scheme and primary education provision. Seeing the State engages with the work of James Scott, James Ferguson and Partha Chatterjee, and offers a new interpretation of the formation of citizenship in South Asia.
In the Kangra Valley of India's western Himalaya, farmers have for centuries relied on community-managed kuhl systems - intricate networks of collectively built and maintained irrigation channels - for their rice and wheat farming. Over the years, earthquakes and floods have repeatedly destroyed villagers' kuhls. More recently, increasing nonfarm employment has drawn labor away from kuhl maintenance and from farming itself. Prevailing theories of common property resource management suggest that such conditions should cause the kuhls to die out; instead, most have beentransformed and remain alive and well. In this book, Mark Baker offers a comprehensive explanation for the durability of the kuhls of Kangra in the face of recurring environmental shocks and socioeconomic change. In addition to describing how farmers use and organize the kuhls, he employs varied lines of theory and empirical data to account for the persistence of most kuhls (and the demise of a few) in the late twentieth century. Into his explanatory framework he incorporates the history of regional politics and economics as they affected kuhls during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods; the role of state involvement in kuhl construction and management; the benefits of exchanges of labor and water among members of networked kuhls; and the ways in which kuhl systems are embedded in and reproduce core cultural beliefs and practices. Scholars interested in common property resource regimes have long focused on self-organizing, community-based irrigation systems. Yet their theories cannot entirely account for the durability of common property regimes under the extreme conditions of ecological stress, economic change, and social differentiation that exist in Kangra. Baker adds new dimensions to such theories by reaching beyond them to incorporate "exogenous" factors such as the roles statemaking practices play in common property resource regimes, the importance of networks in buffering individual resource regimes from environmental stress, and the ways in which regimes are sites for reproducing and occasionally contesting the relations that constitute place and region. In doing so, he advances a new way of thinking about community-based systems of resource management--a timely subject given recent trends in many countries toward the devolution of authority over natural resource management from government to rural communities. © 2005 by the University of Washington Press. AIl rights reserved.
In a Karakorum-Himalaya valley, women go to high pastures with the livestock. They possess detailed knowledge, wisdom, and skills relating to their environment. They know how to manage the resources of animals and plants which they process for subsistence, sale, and barter. They also make trips down to the village: tending their crops and caring for their household. It appears that small children, young women, and grandparents inhabit one world, while the younger men and boys live in another. This is because the men of this valley are turning to the outside world for more lucrative opportunities, abandoning their share of subsistence work. They migrate to the plains for work, or find positions as porters with visiting mountaineering expeditions. This has produced a sad state of affairs for people who still believe in family values rather than individual rights, and for whom arranged marriage is an economic alliance between clans. It creates a situation in which the husband depends on his wife for sustenance, while regarding her as 'backward' and 'inferior.' This is the problem of women: their subservient position and forced inclusion into the capitalist system of labor-first by their own men due to the patriarchal division of labor, which turns partners and co-workers into master and servant; then by the male elite of the village, who maintain and confirm this division; then by bureaucrats and corporate power-holders of the global market economy into which the women are inserted, without their knowledge, consent, or control.
In this article, I propose five ways to move beyond the analytical scheme of James Scott's Seeing Like a State (1998). I question the spatial optic that posits an “up there,” all-seeing state operating as a preformed repository of power, spread progressively outward to “nonstate” spaces beyond its reach. I highlight the role of parties beyond “the state” that attempt to govern—social reformers, scientists, and the so-called nongovernmental agencies, among others. I look beyond authoritarian high modernism to the more general problematic of “improvement” emerging from a governmental rationality focused on the welfare of populations. I explore the recourse to mētis (contextualized, local knowledge and practice) situated beyond the purview of planning. Finally, I reframe the question posed by Scott—why have certain schemes designed to improve the human condition failed?—to examine the question posed so provocatively by James Ferguson: What do these schemes do? What are their messy, contradictory, conjunctural effects?
This article examines the role of water infrastructure in the production of state power, and advances an understanding of nonhumans as power brokers. While state power is increasingly understood as the effect of material practices and processes, I draw on the idea that objects are ‘force-full’ to argue that infrastructure helped cement federal state power in Tijuana over the twentieth century, and simultaneously limited the spaces of stateness in surprising ways. To support my argument, I examine three sets of water infrastructure in Tijuana, Mexico. First, I examine the key constitutional edicts, laws, and treaties that enabled bureaucratic development and staked territorial claims on water during Mexico’s liberal era (1876–1911) and post-revolutionary period. Second, I trace the development of Tijuana’s flood control and potable water conveyance networks, designed and built between the 1960s and the 1980s, which enabled rapid urban growth but ultimately cultivated dependency on a distant, state engineered water source. Finally, I show how the ordinary infrastructures of water supply—such as barrels, cisterns, and buckets, common tools in Tijuana homes—both coexist with and limit state power, resulting in variegated geographies of institutional authority, punctuated by alternative spaces of rule. Together, these infrastructures form the ‘hydrosocial cycle’ of Tijuana, which I use to illustrate the uneven spatiality of state power. In conclusion, I draw on insights from object-oriented philosophy and science and technology studies to move past the anthropocentric notion of infrastructure as ‘power tools’—handy implements used by humans to exercise dominion—toward tool-power: the idea that objects-in-themselves are wellsprings of power.
Vibrant protests against restrictions imposed by the Dhauladhar Wildlife Sanctuary (DWLS) in Himachal Pradesh, India have galvanized area residents to protect local forests. In this paper, we examine how local opposition has become entangled with environmental values and practice, culminating in the decision of a women’s group to embark on a local management system for forests inside the sanctuary. We use this case to highlight two key themes that will likely transform the practice of conservation in the coming years. First, greater enfranchisement of marginal groups, especially women, within democratic politics will activate new channels to agitate against restrictive conservation regimes and, in some instances, may engender space to envision more democratic forms of resource management. Second, the increasing valence of environmental values within society is generating new forms of environmental awareness among resource users. Together, these two factors will give rise to a new conservation politics through the production and performance of environmental citizenship. In the case of DWLS, political action against restrictive conservation has harnessed local agency toward a collective decision to protect and manage forest resources.
Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional-scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40-kilometre link-road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility-related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide-induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link-road's completion.
Participatory conservation and development initiatives have proliferated all over the world as the 1990s became the decade for restructuring states and celebrating civil society. Examining one such major effort, called joint forest management, I propose several new directions for the anthropology of modernity, development, and environment. I scrutinize processes of local statemaking in the forests of southern West Bengal, India, to reveal key tensions between development and democratization through an ethnography of political action. [bureaucracy, democracy, development, ethnicity, forest conservation, identity politics, science and technology, the state, India]
Historically, local rural governments in India have enjoyed very limited powers and citizens have been afforded very few opportunities to shape local development. In 1996, the state government of Kerala initiated the “People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning” devolving new authority and resources to panchayats and mandating structures and processes designed to maximize the direct involvement of citizens in planning and budgeting. In both its scope and design, these reforms represent the most ambitious effort to build local institutions of participatory democratic governance ever undertaken in the subcontinent. This paper provides a detailed evaluation and analysis of the formative period of the reforms based on extensive survey data collected in 2002 from a sample of 72 randomly selected panchayats.
Abstract
Despite long-standing calls to rethink the state ‘as a social relation’, reified understandings that view the state as a differentiated institutional realm separate from civil society are notably persistent in academic and political debate. By contrast, this paper focuses on the myriad ways in which everyday life is permeated by the social relations of stateness, and vice versa. The paper reviews the conceptual difficulties in defining ‘the state’ and suggests that these can be addressed in part through a focus on the mundane practices that give rise to ‘state effects’. It considers how the concept of prosaics, based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, might provide a fruitful approach for studying such practices, their geographies and the geographies of state effects. A case study of the governance of anti-social behaviour in the UK is used to show the potential application of this approach in empirical research. The paper concludes with some reflections on possible future avenues of research.
The rule of water: Statecraft, ecology, and collective action in South India
- D Mosse
Mosse, D. 2003. The rule of water: Statecraft, ecology, and collective action in South India. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.