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Abstract
This paper contributes to the collection on institutional form versus function by looking at the opposite side of the conceptual equation: clear and formal property rights coupled to low credibility. Since colonial times the formal property rights of the means of agricultural production are clear in South Asian large-scale canal irrigation. However, legal entitlements to water are routinely violated, while canal irrigation exhibits a series of ‘performance problems’. Legally clearly and securely defined entitlements to water co-exist with unequal distribution in the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal irrigation system in south India. Neither the formal institutions nor their insecurity or lack of clarity can explain the existing dynamics and functions of canal irrigation. This lack of analytical purchase derives both from the limitations of property-focused theory and from the inherent characteristics of canal irrigation. Critiques of reductionist approaches have provided a richer conceptual vocabulary, which emphasises the plurality of rights/entitlements as well as that of the causalities at work. Such critiques and the elaboration of alternative frameworks for analysis remain relevant as discourses and practices of ‘marketisation’ of water may be gaining relevance for canal irrigation (reform) in India.
Acknowledgements
A draft of this paper was presented at the annual European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy conference held in Cyprus, November 2014, session ‘Why insecure property rights should not concern us: importance of institutional function and credibility’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 In colonial times there was little focus on groundwater in state policy, and the reference is therefore to the ‘harnessing’ of surface water for that period. It is relevant to note that in India more than 90 percent of diverted surface water and extracted groundwater is used for agricultural purposes – that is, irrigation (data available at the AQUASTAT website of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, at http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/data/query/index.html?lang=en, accessed 10 August 2016).
2 For example through the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules 2010 passed under the Environment Protection Act, 1986.
3 For example, the 1972 Krishna river award (GOI/KWDT Citation1973) had a duration of 25 years. As revision is a lengthy, because contested, process, which can take decades, allocations remain stable for very long periods. The legal process for agreeing and reviewing such awards is the 1957 Water Disputes Tribunal Act.
4 Available water in rivers is calculated based on a ‘dependable flow’. For the Krishna River this was a 75 percent dependable flow, meaning that the allocation would on average be physically available in three out of four years.
5 The authority assumed not only speaks from the power to allocate water, but also from the power to acquire land for these construction purposes – that is, to dispossess citizens for the benefit of overall development (see the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, recently replaced by the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013).
6 Between 1990 and 2012, Government of India expenditure for major and medium irrigation varied between 4.4 and 5.2 percent (no trend) of total Plan expenditure. Between 1956 and 1990 it varied between 6.5 and 9.4 percent, the peak being the period 1974–1980 (calculated from Annexure 5.1; PC/GOI Citation2013, 181).
7 These figures refer to the category ‘major and medium irrigation’. Groundwater irrigation area stands at 41.82 million ha.
8 On the long-drawn 1860–1940s negotiation on the decision to construct and the technical design of the system, see Mollinga (Citation2003, chapter 4).
9 For the concepts of protective and productive irrigation, see Mollinga (Citation2003, chapter 3).
10 For the economics of this, see Mitra (Citation1986), Rath and Mitra (Citation1989) and Dhawan (Citation1988, Citation1989). The 1972 Irrigation Commission wrote: ‘In areas other than those with ample water resources [ … ] our policy should aim at securing the maximum crop production per unit of water. [ … ] the policy should be to benefit as large a section of the community as possible and at the same time enable farmers to obtain reasonable yields. Surface irrigation systems should be designed to irrigate compact blocks, the blocks being dispersed over a large area to benefit large numbers of farmers. The number of irrigations can be fewer than are required for high yields’ (GOI/MOIP Citation1972, 112–13).
11 An acre is 0.405 ha, with a hectare measuring 10,000 m2. A cubic foot is (0.305 m)3 or 0.0283 m3 (and a cusec therefore 28.3 l/sec). The Tungabhadra LBC yearly allocation of 100 TMCft thus equals 100 × 1000 × 106 × 0.0283 m3, or 2.83 km3.
12 Duty is the inverse of water allowance, which is usually expressed in litre/second·ha. Water allowance is the continuous flow (litre/second) to a unit size of land (hectare) over the length of the growing season. High allowance means a lot of water on the plot; low allowance means little water on the plot.
13 Details of the features of localisation and irrigation system design are discussed in Mollinga (Citation2003). The 1956 Localisation Rules under which the Tungabhadra localisation was done are reprinted there.
14 It is outside the scope of this paper to discuss in detail the way this appropriation of irrigation water for rice cultivation unfolded from the opening of the main canal in 1953. It was the result not only of individual farmer choice, but also of government policy in the early decades of the canal's existence to use available water for maximum food production, India being short of food in the 1960s–1970s. With the reservoir construction completed in 1953 but the canal system only completed in 1968, there was a long period of high water availability as against irrigable land, establishing a logic of allowing intensification for maximising food production.
15 Fieldwork in 2015 confirmed that these rotation schedules at the secondary level continue to be in place, with pamphlets printed. However, it was also found that the number of Irrigation Department staff posted at the canal level went down considerably over the preceding decade. This may mean that government patrolling and related activities have become less frequent and effective over time.
16 Note that in this case the ‘credibility’ of the actually existing rule system has no positive normative connotations (as the word's synonyms like trustworthiness, standing, sincerity and believability may suggest). The use of the rule system is pragmatic – many water users are still worse off than they should be according to formal rules, and this is a felt injustice.
17 It can also be noted that the coexistence of a formal, legal allocation plus a set of rules, and the rules of actually existing access, do not constitute a case of ‘legal pluralism’ in the classical sense of two rule systems that are alternatively mobilised depending on situations and actors at hand. The formal, legal system is rarely called upon (anymore) for solving water distribution problems (though reproduced for other reasons), while actually existing access relations are the dominant rule system, co-designed by government managers, irrigators and politicians.
18 This connection is partly recursive: farmers who happen to be in a location that allows excess appropriation of water can become rich and middle peasants over time because their relatively high income allows them to expand their holdings. However, already large/affluent farmers have also acquired land in favourable locations. On the water distribution-related land market, and the phenomenon of land lease and purchase by in-migrating (rice) farmers, see Mollinga (Citation2003, chapter 5).
19 This is one point at which the equity dimension of localisation is frequently discursively mobilised by elite farmers towards government officials and elected politicians. For a broader analysis of the populism of India’s 1970s and 1980s ‘new farmers’ movements', see Brass (Citation1995); for Karnataka specifically see Nadkarni (Citation1987).
20 This was documented in fieldwork in 1991–1992, when I looked up registered cases at the High Court and interviewed advocates involved in such cases (see Mollinga Citation2003, 72–75).
21 The equity dimension of localisation continues to be mobilised discursively in the political sphere, the localisation schedule continues to be used to calculate formal canal release schedules at the start of the irrigation seasons, and administrative documentation of its violation is routinely produced. Localisation thus primarily has symbolic purchase – arguably of declining strength.
22 I use the term ‘marketisation’ to (loosely) refer to the variety of approaches to canal irrigation reform that find their inspiration in economic theories focusing on the positive allocative and efficiency work that private property-based markets and market(-like) mechanisms can do.
23 The 2030 Water Resources Group (WRG), established by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in partnership with the World Economic Forum, private companies and development agencies, is a global carrier of this discourse that is also active in India (see 2030 Water Resources Group Citation2012).
24 Interestingly, the global policy concept of irrigation management transfer (IMT; cf. Vermillion Citation1997), which has a much stronger ‘marketisation’ emphasis than PIM does, has not gained currency in Indian irrigation scholarship and policy discourse, except in some globally funded research efforts (Brewer et al. Citation1999). The most thoughtful and balanced statement on issues of pricing in India irrigation remains Vaidyanathan (Citation1992).
25 This paragraph is based on fieldwork in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat in 2015.
26 Cf. the brochure Proposed Scheme. Drip Irrigation for Sugarcane in Karnataka. A revolutionary initiative published by the GOK/DWR/MMI (Citationn.d.).
27 The Gujarat Green Revolution Company (GGRC) established by the Government of Gujarat to promote micro-irrigation, among other things, is an example (for more information on the Company, see www.ggrc.co.in, accessed 10 August 2016).
28 This ‘uncooperative commodity’ argument should not be essentialised. For example, in England and Wales, efforts are ongoing to push further the incomplete process of marketisation of urban water supply, which has been argued to have stalled because of the ‘uncooperative’ nature of water, through new interventions in the institutional context (cf. Walker Citation2014). The point is that a lot of ‘embedding’ work may be required to make markets work more as envisaged in theory. The feasibility of such efforts depends on characteristics of both the existing cultural political economy and the resources management system – neither of which is, however, immutable.
29 The Indian state's ownership claim on water resources has been increasingly contested in past decades in the case of new diversions.
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Peter P. Mollinga
Peter P. Mollinga completed his PhD on the political economy of unequal water distribution in South Indian canal irrigation in 1998, at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and a Habilitation in development sociology at the University of Bonn, Germany, in 2008–2009. He has been based in the Development Studies department at SOAS University of London since September 2010, and is one of the founding editors of the open access e-journal Water Alternatives (http://www.water-alternatives.org/)