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Keywords:
Irrigation
Hydrosocial cycle
Morphogenesis
Technology
Space
Time
India
a b s t r a c t
Using South Indian large-scale surface irrigation as a case, this paper combines emerging interdisciplinary
conceptualisation in resource geography of the hydrological cycle as a hydrosocial cycle with Archers theorisation of societys structure-agency dynamics as a morphogenetic cycle. Characteristic of large scale
canal irrigation are a pronounced spatiality of social process, and a strongly cyclical nature of social interaction around water through seasonality and rotational supply, framed by irrigation infrastructure that is
both grid and subject of water resources management practices. This allows an investigation of how
human agency as the animator of structural elaboration reproduces and transforms a hybrid and
multi-scale water control system, thus establishing a hydromorphogenetic cycle of unequal irrigation
water distribution. The detailed account of irrigation practice provides caution against simplied interpretations of dam + canals based irrigation as abodes of green revolution capitalist farming, and of the
objectives of neoliberal irrigation reform policy. It is, lastly, suggested that the hydrosocial relations focus
produces new insights and questions for irrigation studies, but that complexity and emergence rather
than hybridity are the key analytical challenges.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
infrastructure go hand in hand with the (transformation of the) social relations: they co-evolve and are each others expression as
hydraulic property (Coward, 1990).
Theorisation of the socio-technical nature of irrigation processes received a boost with the advent of the social construction
of technology (SCOT) perspective (Pinch and Bijker, 1984). Theorisations from this SCOT, and later ANT (Actor-Network Theory) literature, mostly focusing on western societies, and without specic
interest in irrigation or water resources, could be usefully transposed to the study of irrigation infrastructure. The social construction of irrigation artefacts, notably division structures,2 the devices
connecting Uphoffs levels and embodying Cowards hydraulic property rights, has been a central theme (Mollinga, 2013). The concept
of water control has posited that technical/physical, organisational/managerial and socio-economic/political control of water are
internally related (Bolding et al., 1995). Methodologically, this
2
In irrigation science structures is the generic technical term for built devices in
water control systems (like discharge measurement structures, division structures,
outlet structures, escape structures, etc.). It needs to be distinguished from structure
as used in structure-agency, and the more general use of structure as enduring
composition and pattern of organisation of objects and processes (having structure, or
being structured). All three meanings are used in this paper.
0016-7185/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.05.011
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
current of work has articulated technography as a method for interdisciplinary irrigation studies (Bolding, 2004).
Conceiving the hydrological cycle as a hydrosocial cycle is an effort to avoid the pitfalls of reductionist and depoliticised water resources management analysis.
In a sustained attempt to transcend the modernist nature
society binaries, hydro-social research envisions the circulation
of water as a combined physical and social process, as a hybridized socio-natural ow that fuses together nature and society in
inseparable manners (...). It calls for revisiting traditional fragmented and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of water
by insisting on the inseparability of the social and the physical
in the production of particular hydro-social congurations (...).
(Swyngedouw, 2009: 56)
In water studies binarism is clearly visible in early conceptions
of the hydrosocial cycle like that of Falkenmark (1997), where the
social and the material appear in conceptual models as separate
boxes, linked with arrows.3 What such modelling is unable to capture is exactly hybridity. In contrast, hydrosocial analysis conceives
of the relation as internal and infested with social power (Swyngedouw, 2009). The hydrosocial perspective also suggests that scalar
politics is a key element; scale is not given but politically constructed (Swyngedouw, 2007).
The programmatic announcement of hydrosocial research as a
new perspective focusing on analysis of the intricate and multidimensional relationships between the socio-technical organization
of the hydro-social cycle, the associated power geometries that
choreograph access to and exclusion from water, as well as the uneven political power relations that affect ows of water (Swyngedouw, 2009: 59) for many a critical irrigation scholar may sound
like sticking a new label on already existing research. However,
much critical irrigation research has remained irrigation system
conned, taking the boundaries of the infrastructural systems
and the communities using and managing them as dening the object of research.4 The emerging hydrosocial research perspective can
be used to bring together in a single framework the different scales
and dimensions of the socio-technicality and hydrosociality of irrigation. It resonates with the increased (largely policy-driven) interest
in irrigation studies to scale up analysis from the system level to
the level of the basin (Wester et al., 2003), and is able to provide a
political economy and political ecology infusion into that research
(cf. Lebel et al., 2005 on scalar politics in the Mekong basin). Simultaneously the detailed socio-technical analysis of irrigation studies
can help to elaborate the general notion of hydrosocial relations.
By unravelling the contestations ongoing within irrigation projects,
it can add to the space and landscape focus of hydrosocial analysis
an emphasis on time and technology. The latter is virtually absent
in political ecology.5 It can also nuance all too sweeping analyses
of the role of dams + canals for irrigation in the project of state
and/or market-led modernisation and assessments of neoliberal irrigation reform.
This paper, thus, seeks to combine hydrosocial analysis and
the socio-technical study of irrigation. It does so in three steps,
and by investigating one particular case, unequal water distribution in the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal irrigation system in
South India (Mollinga, 2003). First it discusses in general theoretical terms how Archers (1995) morphogenetic approach resonates with the endeavour of hydrosocial analysis, providing the
3
I thank Susanne Mauren for collecting conceptual models of the hydrosocial cycle.
Theorisation of irrigation as a large technological system in SCOT/ANT mode (cf.
Hughes, 1987) has, to the knowledge of this author, not been undertaken.
5
Political ecology has focused on knowledge rather than technology, while water
has not been a particularly popular topic in such research (Budds, 2009; also see
Linton, 2008; Shah, 2008; Trottier and Fernandez, 2010).
4
6
The Tungabhadra irrigation system exhibits the classical head-tail pattern of
water distribution, in which those located upstream along a canal (at its head)
appropriate water beyond their entitlement, depriving those located further downstream along the canal (towards its tail). In the perspective of this paper locational
advantage (implying queuing for access) is an emergent property, constituted by a
complex hydrosocial structure, that needs to be explained, rather than a geographical
given.
7
And morphostasis in case of reproduction.
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
Independence. The contradiction of the imperial pursuit of economic gain while maintaining political control and stability, in irrigation translated in the articulation of two types of canal irrigation
in the second half of the 19th century. Productive irrigation systems were systems that generated sufcient revenue (expressed
as a percentage of total nancial outlay for construction), while
protective irrigation systems stayed below the revenue threshold
but were still considered, and occasionally constructed, for protection against crop failure, to avoid the social unrest and misery associated with famines, and to reduce the costs of famine relief (for
detailed discussion, see Mollinga, 2003, chapter 3). In the colonial
period few protective systems were built; the revenue consideration tended to get preference. The terminology survived independence (GOI/MOIP, 1972); the logic of protective systems was now
argued on rural development and poverty alleviation grounds.
Many protective irrigation systems were built in the rst decades
after independence, the Tungabhadra irrigation system was one
of them.
The productive/protective distinction was not only nancial. It
also translated into specic agricultural and infrastructural characteristics. Productive systems mainly aimed at the cultivation of
commercial crops which is what made them remunerative. Protective systems mostly aimed at irrigation of subsistence food
crops, notably, in South India, sorghum and millet. Productive systems were often designed for intensive irrigation, i.e. aimed at the
supply of full water requirements to crops, in South India often
rice. Protective systems were often designed for supplementary
irrigation, i.e. for only a part of the full crop water requirements,
of low-water consuming crops. Protective irrigation also aimed to
spread water thinly over as large an area/number of villages, in
tune with its famine, social stability and poverty alleviation objectives. In protective irrigation systems water is scarce by design
(Jurrins and Mollinga, 1996), with low water allowances (or in Indian terms high irrigation duties13) for the planned irrigated area.
In protective irrigation systems like the Tungabhadra LBC attempts at commodication of and accumulation through irrigated
agriculture have a contradictory history. In several ways water has
been an uncooperative commodity to transplant Bakkers (2003)
phrase from UK urban water to Indian agricultural water.14 Well
documented, notably for the Nira Left Bank Canal in present Maharashtra and the Kurnool-Cuddapah Canal in present Andhra Pradesh,
is the lack of interest of South Indian farmers in utilising the irrigation services provided by the British rulers and engineers in the second half of the 19th century to secure local food production
(Attwood, 1987; Bolding et al., 1995). The reasons were located in
the character of the soils (highly water-retentive vertisols that become waterlogged when irrigation is followed by rainfall, suffocating
crops), and the response of local crop varieties to irrigation (mainly
vegetative growth without increased grain production). This issue
presented itself also in the early years of Tungabhadra LBC operation.
Local farmers were hesitant to irrigate their sorghum, millet and cotton crops fearing they would lose them through over-watering, and
destroy the quality of the soil in the process, even when they had the
nancial means to do the land preparation and levelling required for
effective irrigation. It took the immigration of experienced rice
farmers from coastal Andhra Pradesh (Upadhya, 1988) to show that
13
Water allowance is the amount of water envisaged for irrigating a piece of land,
usually expressed as the continuous ow (l/s ha) needed over the length of the
growing season. The South Asian term duty is the inverse of this, expressing the
extent of land to be irrigated with a unit ow (usually expressed as acres/cusec).
14
The earliest comprehensive statement on the inherent problems of commodication in irrigation as caused by the character of water and water infrastructure is
Moore (1989).
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
largest contribution to national development. It has also been argued that protective irrigation generates more agricultural working days, that is, employment (Dhawan, 1988, 1989; Mitra, 1986,
1987). Further, welfare/equity considerations have carried political
force in both colonial and post-independence periods, even with
that logic being partly utterly pragmatic, deriving from political
stability and constituency based politics considerations. However,
this differentially constituted spreading logic for the common good
contradicts the individual farmer logic of maximising of agricultural output per unit area, that is, his/her farm, which has equally
been carrying considerable political force in both the colonial and
post-independence period.
Different rationing approaches were followed in different regions of India, involving different institutional and infrastructural
arrangements (Wade, 1976; Attwood, 1987; Bolding et al., 1995).
The northern part of India adopted the warabandi system of areabased time-shares, with a semi-modular distribution technology,
the so called Crump outlet.18 In the present day Maharashtra part
of Western India the introduction of the so called block system
was attempted in the early 20th century. It involved permission to
grow sugarcane (a water intensive commercial crop) on one-third
of the land, with the other two-thirds protectively cultivated with
food crops like sorghum, the main subsistence food crop of interior
South India. The block system design involved this new cropping
pattern, packaged with institutional elements (bulk delivery of water
against volumetric payment to groups of users) and a technical innovation (a modular outlet structure that could measure the volumes
delivered and would be tamper proof), for which design competitions were held (for details see Bolding et al., 1995).
The present South Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh
and Tamil Nadu have harboured the strongest state attempt to regulate irrigation water use for maximising aggregate production in
the form of localisation. Localisation is a form of land use planning
avant la lettre. It was designed in the 1930s and 1940s as a mirror
of canal irrigation design practice, which has to assume cropping
patterns on certain extents of land to calculate necessary canal
capacities (and thereby construction costs). In reverse this becomes prescriptive land use planning.19 In the Tungabhadra LBC
this took the form of the publication in the State Gazette of lists of
survey numbers (cadastral units) with irrigation entitlements, dened as permission to irrigate in either the kharif (monsoon) or
the rabi (post-monsoon) season, with the type of crop allowed
specied.
The assumption, apparently, was that state agencies would be
able to implement this, and distribute water according to the localisation pattern in both space (survey number) and time (season).
Non-adherence to this prescribed pattern was made a violation,
with ne levels dened, under the Irrigation Act as Unauthorised
Irrigation (irrigating outside the prescribed area) and Violation of
Cropping Pattern (irrigation of other, notably more water consuming, crops than prescribed). When intensive irrigation (double rice
cropping) won the day, as explained above, many farmers went to
court till the early 1980s thousands of writ petitions were registered at the Karnataka High Court. After that the belief in the prospects of legal action seems to have waned.
Government of Karnataka committees deliberated on how to
better implement localisation well into the 1970s (GOMYS/DOA,
1968, GOKAR/PD, 1976). However, in the late 1970s/early 1980s
localisation practically became a dead letter for day-to-day
18
For modular outlet structures neither upstream nor downstream canal water
levels determine discharge; for semi-modular outlets only the upstream water level
does; for non-modular outlets both upstream and downstream do (for hydraulic
details see Mahbub and Gulhati, 1951).
19
For discussion see Mollinga, 2003, chapter 3; the 1956 Hyderabad State Rules for
localisation are reproduced there.
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
irrigation management, even when, till today, water release schedules (for different levels of canals) are calculated based on the ofcial localisation pattern, and unauthorised irrigation and violations
of cropping patterns continue to be administratively recorded, and
the ensuing nes calculated. Efforts to implement the spreading
logic of localisation shifted to other policy instruments.
The 1980s saw a shift to water management improvement by
organisation of water users in associations, rst through the Command Area Development (CAD) programme, later under the umbrella of Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM), including
piloting by Non-Governmental Organisations. These efforts have
been extensively researched (Joshi and Hooja, 2000), basically
showing their lack of effectiveness (for a summary statement, see
Mollinga et al., 2007). The two main sticking points are (a) the
unwillingness of government (including both the Irrigation
Department and elected parliamentarians) to devolve power over
budget allocation and water allocation to irrigator associations,
and (b) diverse interests in (un)equal water distribution among
the farming community. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the advent
of (neo)liberalisation seems to have brought new dynamism to
irrigation reform. Under the Chief Ministership of Chandra Babu
Naidu, seen and projected as a neoliberal champion (Mooij,
2007) Andhra Pradesh adopted and implemented the Andhra Pradesh Farmer Management of Irrigation Systems (APFMIS) Act in
19961997. This is the most far reaching effort in India so far at
legislating irrigation reform through devolution of power to irrigator organisations. It has served as a model Act for several other
states. Reforms aim at achieving nancial sustainability of the government irrigation management enterprise through cost recovery
as well as at more equitable water distribution, which would enhance the revenue base of the irrigation system and its nancial
sustainability. As another instance of neoliberal thinking, in recent
years the states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have been at
the forefront of establishing Regulatory Authorities for the water
sector, the concrete effects of which on irrigation management remain to become manifest.
The situation is thus more complex and contradictory than a
singular victory of the rich/larger farmers class power interpretation suggests. The post-construction story of Tungabhadra LBC economic and socio-political transformation harbours a complex
dynamic of capitalist accumulation in agriculture, with irrigation
management getting ensnarled in the post-independence Indian
politics of competitive populism, both underpinning a changing
role and image of large-scale surface irrigation systems as instruments of development. This is a story of the changing fortunes of
farmers and farming in the post green revolution area, including
the rise and decline of middle and large farmers class power
(Brass, 1995; Nadkarni, 1987), of a series of institutional interventions (partly internationally supported) attempts at enhancing irrigation system performance through water user participation, and
of the logic of their half-heartedness in Indias competitively populist democracy and system of political and administrative corruption characteristic of the public works bureaucracy and the polity
and administration in general (Wade, 1982), and a story of new efforts at institutional reform under neoliberalism. The story also includes elements such as the impacts of economic growth in the
region, and the contestation and partial renegotiation of the productive singularisation of the meaning of diverted water.
For the theoretical purposes of this paper a narrower focus than
this monograph-wide canvas sufces. By zooming in on the concrete water distribution dynamics in the Tungabhadra LBC, a specication of the hydrosocial conceptual apparatus is undertaken.
This more limited focus will turn out to be more than complex
and empirically rich enough to suggest how analysis of water resources management in terms of a hydrosocial cycle, and hydrosocial relations of power can be usefully linked with Archers
See footnote 2.
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
downstream side, from efforts to control excess abstraction by heavy, not easily damaged structures, to abandonment of damaged
structures, with the original standard design seen in Section 2.21
For South Indian protective irrigation I have not found evidence
that the technical design of the division structure was actively
thought about in relation to the rationing principle, unlike in the
other two regions referred to above. Non-modular outlets that do
not allow any measurement or assessment of actual water ows
were chosen, possibly as a South Indian path dependent choice
from the historically dominating rice irrigation schemes (in deltas
and otherwise) where there is water abundance by design, not
requiring rationing in the way the upland schemes designed as
protective irrigation schemes do. Moreover, in the 1930s/1940s
protective irrigation design was a relatively new concept for this
region, certainly for the Nizams Dominions in which the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal area then fell. For the right bank canals
of the Tungabhadra system, coming under the Madras Presidency
before independence, a melons on a vine (Nickum, 1977) system
was designed in which whole local units of irrigation were either
for kharif irrigation or for rabi irrigation, so that the government
could close units off for irrigation at a single point, the outlet structure by cementing these in the off season. In the Tungabhadra
Left Bank Canal the survey numbers are spread one irrigation
unit can have cadastral units permitting irrigation in both seasons.
It is unclear how the government anticipated technically managing
the season-wise distribution thus prescribed, a lack of clarity that
facilitates excess appropriation of water.
4.1.2. Absence of ow regulation structures and intermediate storage
Another relevant technical design feature is that the system has
no facilities for ow regulation and storage within the canal system. Once water has entered the canal system at the reservoir, it
has to ow through the system. It cannot be slowed down or
stored, it can only be directed to different places. The size of the
system and its spread over a very large area combined with this
21
The stability of this particular conguration has been documented for a period
exceeding 15 years. The structural elaboration from the original uniform design
happened before the rst eldwork in 1991.
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
the early years of the canals operation in the 1950s and 1960s
water was abundant for those willing and ready to irrigate, as
the canal system and land development for irrigation were ongoing. In the early years the main canal supplied water for eleven
out of twelve months, with one month closure for repairs in the
hot summer period. Availability of canal water allowed two consecutive crops on a piece of land, provided access to the canal
water could be obtained. Because in the 1960s India had high levels of food insecurity, maximum use of water was allowed and
intensive irrigation spread rapidly. The irrigation system created
a new seasonality, that of two consecutive irrigation seasons. A
complex mix ensued of the rainfed and canal seasons as many
crops grown had desirable planting dates in relation to other climate related factors (for example temperature inuencing yields).
The issue gained increasing importance with the completion of the
canal system and increasing acreages coming under irrigation. The
canal opening became delayed through upstream water use in
other systems and slower lling of the reservoir; the canal closure
came earlier and earlier in the year because of exhaustion of the
stored monsoon water. It became difcult to t two consecutive
seasons into the irrigation year.
This created at least three periods in the year with intense social
interaction around water distribution. The rst is irrigator lobby
for canal opening to allow timely planting. The release date was
partly a direct product of available water in the reservoir, but also
became related to the yearly maintenance cycle repairs to be
done in the closure period. As budget allocations for these often
came late, there was often not enough time to do repairs before
re-opening the canal; particularly the main canal regularly breached, which requires time consuming structural repairs in the off
season.
More intensive interaction is found in the other two periods.
The rst is the overlap of the end of the kharif/rst irrigation season
and the preparation and start of the rabi/second irrigation season,
which is a period of peak water demand. September and October
are usually months with high intensity of water distribution conicts. The second conict period is towards the end of the irrigation
year in FebruaryMarch. Temperatures start rising as summer is
approaching, and the canal closure is usually scheduled for somewhere in March. There is a scramble for water in this period and a
lot of irrigator pressure on the Irrigation Department to extend the
canal opening period to allow crops to mature. This need is unevenly spread over the system as upstream parts are able to plant
earlier than downstream parts through delays in the arrival of
water at the start of the season. In irrigation, time is clearly a resource that is scarce (Carlstein, 1982).
As a response to these constraints, managers and irrigators have
attempted more efcient management of the scarce time resource
by introducing and negotiating rotation schedules at the different
levels of the canal system. Rotation involves the concentration of
water ow and supplying areas in turns rather than continuously.
This increases the efciency of water use. At main system level
supply is rotated over secondary canals; particularly the shorter
ones with less planned irrigated area may get water only a few
days per week. Within secondary (distributary) canals detailed
rotation schedules exist. These are often formally announced and
introduced by the government managers, but in fact the result of
repeated negotiation processes between government managers
and irrigators, and among irrigators located along the same canal.
At the level of local irrigation units a wide variety of rotation
schedules established by irrigators was documented (Mollinga,
2003). The rotation schedules at the different levels are sleeping,
that is, not implemented when water is not scarce, and mobilised
when water does becomes scarce in the peak periods described.
The evolution of rotation schedules is a typical example of
Archers structural elaboration. The repeated seasonal and yearly
cycles of negotiating water distribution produce sets of rules varying with local physical conditions and social relationships. They
often consolidate, and stabilise to a considerable extent, but
sometimes they do not. In all cases their enactment in water scarce
periods signies high drama on the canals, including farmers
sleeping on outlet structures at night to avoid manipulation,
nightly and daily canal patrols by government managers, sometimes together with groups of farmers, the blocking of canals and
gates, if not their demolishment, the blocking of roads, demonstrations in front of Irrigation Department ofces, and the mobilisation
of local politicians to exert pressure on the administration to supply water. Though intense and seemingly chaotic to casual observers, the interactions are highly patterned, and their structures and
outcomes quite stable. Detailed discussion of the structure of these
water control relationships can be found in Mollinga (2003).
The institutional rhythms of water distribution in this canal system are thus shaped by the rainfall and surface ow patterns of the
hydrological cycle, the latter being inuenced by human interventions in the upstream part of the basin inuencing reservoir water
availability. These macro factors translate into opening and closure dates of the canal system, for which rules have been designed,
and release schedules based on estimated water availability. Within system elaborate sets of rules have been negotiated for rotational water supply at all levels. They all work on the principle of
time shares of concentrated ow, but how exactly varies greatly
with physical conditions and social relationships. Time is a continuously contested resource, the structure of its use denitive of canal irrigation management.
4.3. Water distribution, social differentiation and spatial relations
This section discusses how the social differentiation (of different categories of farmer-irrigators) associated with unequal water
distribution takes spatial form.
The Tungabhadra LBC is one of several South Indian upland protective irrigation systems with a history of migrant farmer settlement (Anjaneya Swamy, 1988). From the 1950s, farmers with
small holdings in the coastal deltas of the Krishna and Godavari
rivers sold their intensively used, mostly rice, land dearly and
bought much larger extents of unirrigated land in the new planned
irrigation area. These purchases sometimes took place before canals in the area were built. Settler farmers were interested to
buy land near canals and roads. Because irrigation canals are constructed on the ridges in the landscape, while the villages in this
semi-arid rainfed region were located in the lower parts of the
landscape the valleys where water could still be found in the
dry season settlers were able to buy land very cheaply: their preferred locations were far away from the villages around which
rainfed cultivation was concentrated, in the jungle as local farmers put it. Local farmers, inexperienced with irrigation, sold such
far-away land on a large scale.22
When canal water started owing, and the migrant farmers
started to develop the land for (rice) irrigation, it became clear that
this former jungle land could be very protably utilised. An inversion of the landscape took place. Water availability was now concentrated in the higher part of the landscape because of the canal
supply. This allowed much more intensive cultivation than rainfed
farming, and two crop seasons, meaning that the higher parts also
22
The force of the original localisation ruling shows in the settlement pattern of the
migrant farmers. In the 1950s and 1960s they preferentially settled in areas localised
for rice of which there was a small percentage of 9% in the ofcial, localised
cropping pattern. Rice areas were localised mostly in low lying, valley areas, on the
reasoning of clayey soil prevalence in such locations and better water availability.
This explains early migrant settlement in what are now tail-end areas. Later settlers,
observing the lack of force of the localisation policy, purchased land in upstream
locations directly.
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
became the core agricultural areas. This was even more so because
the canals constructed served as roads, and thus new commercialisation routes passed through the camps that the settler farmers
established, often at the crossroads of canals and main roads.
Moreover, intensive rice irrigation with the attendant seepage
losses could cause waterlogging problems for villages located in
the valleys, and make access to them more difcult. However, after
the initial surprise takeover local farmers also adopted the intensive irrigation practices and a less skewed irrigation development
pattern ensued. The migrant/local spatial distribution pattern of
landholding has, however, remained distinct.
To illustrate that binary head/tail descriptions as common in
irrigation studies can be too simplistic for capturing actual patterns, the canal depicted in Fig. 3 can be taken as an example. It
is the D93 secondary canal as indicated in Fig. 1. Fig. 3 shows that
the migrant camps are located along the canal, while local villages
are located along the natural drains. In contrast to many other
cases, there is no camp along the main road, but the settler habitations are at some distance from the main road. This has to do
with (a) the relatively late settlement of this canal area (from
1979 to 1980) and unwillingness of local large landowners owning
large tracts in the head end area, to part with their land having
seen its potential protability elsewhere, and (b) the brokerage
networks that facilitated the land deals were most accessible to
settler farmers for land located in the middle part of the canal,
where the main camps were thus established. During the 1991
1992 eldwork in this canal irrigation was concentrated in the
middle part, with the head part yet hardly developed for irrigation,
23
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
10
Fig. 4. Cropping pattern (A), categories of farmers (B) and year of land development (C) in a Tungabhadra LBC local irrigation unit (pipe outlet command area) kharif season
1991.
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
In these three maps, the canal water source is the secondary canal, with the settler camp located in the head end (with the outlet
structure right in between the houses) and the local village in the
tail end of this 64 ha unit. Rice and cotton are the most remunerative commercial crops, with rice being a water intensive crop. They
are grown mostly in the upstream part of the unit. Lighter crops
(notably sorghum and sunower) requiring less water are primarily grown in the downstream part of the unit.
A typology of farming household-enterprises was prepared
using a qualitative version of Patnaiks labour exploitation ratio.24
In the second map it can be clearly seen that the upstream rice and
cotton crops are mostly grown by rich and middle peasants, while
the downstream lighter crops are mostly grown by small and poor
peasants. Most of the upstream farmers are settler farmers; most
of the downstream farmers are local farmers. A glimpse of the process that produced this differentiation can be seen in the third
map, which gives the years in which the different plots were developed for irrigation (which involved land levelling and constructing of
eld bunds and eld channels). Land development in this unit began
with the arrival of settler farmers in 19791980, in the head end of
the unit, and gradually moved downstream, up to a point and moment that water availability in the tail end portion became too constrained to warrant land development investment. The rst and third
map also show that in places where water could be picked up from
neighbouring units or drainage channels, land development also
took place.
5. Conclusion
The analysis above has established, rstly, that large-scale surface irrigation processes are hydrosocial in character indeed, with
physical and human aspects internally related. By building largescale irrigation systems as part of state projects of economic development, governments attempt to singularise the meaning of river
water to its value for agricultural production, by storage in reservoirs and diversion in hierarchically ordered canals, thus rearranging the hydrological cycle in time and space, making it an explicit
hydrosocial cycle. Crucial in this attempt is the deployment of
technology, as dam and canal infrastructure. The paper has shown
how different infrastructural design characteristics of so called
protective irrigation in south India congure a pattern of water distribution that is equal in principle but unequal in practice. The
starkly unequal pattern of water distribution in protective irrigation systems is produced in social practices congured by the
rhythms of the climate and the agricultural seasons, while the social differentiation of peasant farmers associated with unequal
water distribution takes spatial forms, structured by the grid of
the different levels of canals. The different materialities of water
management involved in the production of unequal distribution
do not just constitute the stage and context of social process, but
they are the subject of social interaction and reshaping too: irrigation devices like outlets are remodelled in the episodic distribution
struggles between and among irrigators and government managers; the agricultural seasons of the rainfall cycle are recongured
by the denition of irrigation seasons through scheduled canal
water releases and the choice of crop varieties with different
lengths of their growing periods; the spatial grid of canals constituting locational advantage and hydraulically dened queues is reshaped by realigning canals, and re-use of water in drainage
channels by diversion or lifting. The general point for hydrosocial
analysis is that conceptualising hydrosocial relations not only
involves the materialities of water as substance and of the
24
The ratio is the balance between net labour hired in (labour hired in minus labour
hired out) and family in self-employment (see Patnaik, 1987, chapter 3)
11
Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011
12
distinctions in cultural notions of dominance, the (poorly documented and understood) new ecological dynamics constituted by
the embedding of the irrigation system in the river basin and ecosystem, and many more.
Understanding complexity and emergence requires a conceptual vocabulary that captures specic instances of hydrosociality,
or, in an older vocabulary, that captures the concentration of the
many determinations of the concrete (Marx, 1973). Without this,
analysis will not be able to move beyond the important but basic
point of showing that hydrosociality exists. It has been argued that
a combination of the emerging hydrosocial relations perspective
with Archers (1995) theorisation of structural elaboration in morphogenetic cycles and a social construction of technology approach, can form the basis of such specic and concrete analysis
of the dynamics of the hydrosocial cycle. Emphasis on morphogenesis/structural elaboration and mechanisms/emergent properties
in the theorisation of socio-technical/hydro-social irrigation processes as open, complex systems (or congurations) is a choice
for a critical realist deep ontology (cf. Sayer, 1992). Other theorisations of irrigation have chosen, inspired by actor-network theory,
the analysis of hydro-social networks as their entry point (cf.
Wester, 2008). The ANT understanding of network is in my view
a version of a at ontology, and therefore awed and not taken
up is this paper. However, the proof of such foundational puddings
lies in the practical adequacy of the concrete analyses they are able
to produce as part of the further development of hydrosocial
analysis.
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Please cite this article in press as: Mollinga, P.P. Canal irrigation and the hydrosocial cycle. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2013.05.011