The politics of groundwater scarcity: technology, institutions, and governance in Rajasthani irrigation
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: This dissertation examines the conditions under which tubewell groundwater lifting technology in Rajasthan, India is adopted and adapted by producers, technicians, and bureaucrats, and how these adoptions later feed back into the landscape and political ecological processes.By examining the links between environmental knowledge, technology adoption, capital accumulation and ecological change, I demonstrate the ways that these processes operate recursively to produce new social institutions, alter social power relationships (including environmental knowledge) and ecologies, while informing the future creation of equitable groundwater governance strategies.My research contributes a new approach to the fields of political ecology, critical development studies, and science and technology studies (STS) through fresh exploration of the effects that agrarian technologies have on political ecological processes.First, findings include that tubewells, as one example of a scarcity-reducing technology, actually create scarcity for particular communities, alter existing relationships of power, and condition the production of new institutions and new kinds of modern ecological people (or subjects).For instance, tubewell adoption has led to the proliferation of new informal (e.g.sharing of tubewells and/or electricity for pumping iii between farms) and formal (e.g.Central and State Groundwater Boards and irrigation departments) institutions.Moreover, their use alters ecological conditions, including soil and groundwater quality, which undermines both their continued use and the continued production of highyielding crops.Ironically, farmers are returning to the production of traditional crops as soils become sodic due to increasingly poor quality groundwater.Tubewell use has, therefore, undermined the original conditions under which it proliferated in a recursive process of ecological change, leading to further political ecological differentiation.Consequently, tubewells have capacity to motivate human and non-human processes, and are both cause and consequence of ecological change and social institution formation.Second, findings from the work also suggest that groundwater knowledge systems are a hybrid drawing on diverse sources including tubewell drilling firms, groundwater departments, and Hindu spiritual leaders.Third, tensions exist between these various knowledges and institutions, in particular those between farmers and the state, which impede the future creation and implementation of groundwater governance strategies.I examine this example of a scarcity-reducing technology to illustrate the complex interaction of traditional and technical knowledge and technologies with environmental change, local and state forms of power, and development policies.This project demonstrates the contradictory effects of ecological modernization around the world.In preparing for, researching, and writing this dissertation, I owe a great debt to many people, institutions and non-humans in both the US and in India.The list is too long to record here and for those that go unmentioned, please accept my apologies and gratitude.First, I would like to thank the people of Rajasthan named and unnamed, who generously gave me their time and made available many resources, and without whom this investigation would not have been possible.This includes the hundreds of farmers who (mostly) patiently sat with me until I got it.They gave me keen insights into the perpetually changing conditions of their livelihood strategies.It also includes all of the government engineers and tubewell drillers who, in between teaching me colorful Hindi phrases, imparted more than they realized.I enjoyed my time with them.Of the help in Rajasthan that I received while conducting this research, I owe special thanks to many people.Specifically, I want to mention Jaywant Mehta, Ranju Mehta, and the rest of the Mehta family for their warmth and friendship; Dr. Surjit Singh, Dr. Varsha Joshi and Prem Prakash of the Institute for Development Studies in Jaipur for their contributions to the survey; and Dr. S.M Mohnot, Kuldip Singh, Rakhi Biswas and the Khejarli field staff in Jodhpur for their support and guidance.v Second, Ohio State has been very good to
Author: Trevor Birkenholtz
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Ohio State University
OpenAlex ID: W2507650398