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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
Some methodological remarks at the outset should help in the appreciation of the study. Indigenous systems have been presented in simplistic manner, not merely in terms of their differences with Western societal systems but in terms of their internal structures, too. Our use of certain terms like ‘community’, or the topic itself, may evoke popular images like homogeneity or Asiatic mode. But it should be remembered, that such images were often built upon skeletal knowledge about indigenous societies and are, in effect, deterrant to further development of substantive understanding. A second precaution needed is about concepts of development and evolution. The development theories including the Marxist one, have been accused of West-centricity. It will now be rather easily accepted, that the Western experience of development may not be the universal course of development, even though there may exist some fundamental similarities. We shall be concerned here with environment-specific development possibilities. Undoubtedly, they differ from region to region2 and to that extent at least, developmental alternatives available to different regions are different.
1 As recent researchers on social differentiation, agricultural labour, commercialisation, land market and technology in precolonial times have shown.
2 Marxist development theory provides room for this. Note, that in the historical evolution process productive forces are thought to have a continuous development and only their quantitative development is supposed to be affected by social revolution.
3 Tamaki, Akira, The Development Theory of Irrigation Agriculture (Tokyo 1977);Google ScholarBray, Francesca, ‘Patterns of evolution in rice-growing societies’, Journal of Peasant Studies 11, 1 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Indigenous technology of the West could also benefit and indeed it did benefit. This is why the modern/traditional division in technology is meaningless, see Nirmal Sengupta, ‘Irrigation traditional vs. modern’, Economic and Political Weekly.
5 In precolonial days these systems accounted for nearly half of all irrigated areas in India and almost the whole of irrigation works in the Indonesian Islands. Rainfed agriculture, terrace cultivation and coastal swamp cultivations of Indonesia have their parallels in India. But those required different types of irrigation organisation. Considerations of all these varieties are not possible within this brief space.
6 The storage tanks of Bihar are at least 2500 years old, see Sengupta, Nirmal, ‘Indigenous irrigation and irrigation social organisation in South India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 17, 2 (1980) 164–165. The comparable works in Peninsular India date back to the megalithic period, seeCrossRefGoogle ScholarGunawardhane, R. A. L. H., ‘Intersocietal transfer of hydraulic technology in precolonial South Asia: some reflections based on a preliminary investigation’ in: Jayawardhane, S. D. G. and Moeda, N. eds., Transformation of the Agricultural Landscape in Sri Lanka and South India (Kyoto 1984) 78. The Brantas river irrigation systems predate the Indo-Javanese period, seeGoogle ScholarMeer, N. C. van Setten van der, Sawah Cultivation in Ancient Java: Aspects of Development During the Indo-Javanese Period, 5th to 15th Century (Canberra 1979) 2. The techniques might have been invented even earlierGoogle Scholar.
7 It is noteworthy that these irrigation systems correspond to the first prosperous agricultural settlements in the iron age. Extensive forest clearance made possible after the discovery of iron must have opened up scopes for development of irrigation agriculture. The societal structure laid out at that time may have a good relation with irrigation.
8 Gunawardhane, ‘Intersocietal transfer of hydraulic technology’.
9 Ramachandran, C., East India Company and South Indian Economy (Madras 1980) 80, 83Google Scholar.
10 The first major work (the Jamun a canals) near Delhi was under the jurisdiction of the Company by the close of the century.
11 It is claimed that the first European irrigation system in Indonesia was laid down sometime i n the period 1743-50; see Booth, Anne, ‘Irrigation in Indonesia’, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 13, 1 and 13, 2 (1977) 35. But Booth expressed her reservations about the scope of such worksGoogle Scholar.
12 Baker, C. J., An Indian Rural Economy, 1880-1955. The Tamilnad Countryside (Delhi 1984)Google Scholar.
13 Manual of Administration of the Madras Presidency I (1885) A.
14 In permanently settled areas, the government had no interest in improving even major irrigation, for it had nothing to gain thereof. In temporarily settled areas interest was shown because the government could realise benefits by revising the revenue. But still the projects undertaken were major works which passed through the jurisdiction of several zamindars jind required a mediator or greater authority over the zamindars. Even then, property rights created a lot of complications and delayed the implementation of irrigation projects; see Whitcombe, E., ‘Irrigation’ in: Kumar, Dharma ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India II (Hyderabad 1982). For improvement of irrigation works within the jurisdiction of a single zamindar the government could, at the most, encourage and provide incentives as they did later through laccavi loans — but could not undertake the tasks by themselvesGoogle Scholar.
15 Francis Buchanan, Accounts of the Districts of Bhagalpur, Bihar, Patna and Shahabad (1810-1813; repr. Patna 1934-1939).
16 In Bihar even now the state of ignorance prevails. Leave alone such exhaustive works like complete listing, the similarity of these works with ‘tank’ irrigation of South India has not yet been noted; see Sengupta, Nirmal, A Political Economic Study of an Indigenous System (Ph.D. thesis, Calcutta 1984)Google Scholar.
17 Raffles picked up the case of lift irrigation of Bengal for comparison and declared that the Bengal system was superior for that it employed machinery of some form; see T. S. Raffles, The History of Java I (1817; repr. Kuala Lumpur 1965) 119.
18 Knight, G. R., ‘From plantation to padi fields: The origins of the nineteenth century transformation of Java's sugar industry’, Modern Asian Studies 14, 2 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 E.g. sugar-cane requires perennial irrigation, rice does not. Rice can survive some fluctuations in water-availability but sugar-cane requires greater certainty.
20 The importance of this point may not be obvious, which indeed is the problem of recognition we are talking about. In any irrigation system, at one stage or another, the control of water and responsibilities have to be handed over to the users. This question, the problem of articulation between the administrative authority and the water-users, the crux of the management problem, is no less important than the civil engineering aspects of irrigation works. Several important questions deman d thorough consideration, e.g. how far (whether up to distributaries or to field channels) should the authority of the irrigation administration extend; whether its responsibility should be as much as to include allocation and regular repair, or only some financial commitment, which agency of user should be chosen for handing over the responsibility, etc. Such considerations have profound impact, so much so, that the physical layouts of irrigation projects differ from one type of allocation to another. See Tamaki, Development Theory, and Sengupta, Political Economic Study.
21 Japan adopted this method for development of modern irrigation; see Tamaki, Akira, Development oflocal culture and the irrigation system ofAzusa basin (Tokyo 1979). Essentially, i s the traditional method by which the overlords have assisted in irrigation development in India and elsewhere; see Sengupta, Political Economic Study. China's ‘melons-on-a-vine’-design too, is similarGoogle Scholar.
22 Booth, , ‘Irrigation in Indonesia’, 36Google Scholar.
23 No doubt, many new tertiaries were established under the project. But once the principles of proper interaction develop on the basis of the existing units, those apply to the new tertiaries and are well-suited to any new local organisation which may be formed alon g the indigenous principles of formation of organisations.
24 Pasendran, E., ‘Group management of irrigation systems in Indonesia’ in: Wong, John ed., Group Farming in Asia (Singapore 1979) 125Google Scholar.
25 Booth, , ‘Irrigation in Indonesia’, 44–45Google Scholar.
26 Faced with the interaction problem, a managerial expert would recommend something like the formation of a water-users' association. A civil engineer, whose training does not lead to such imaginations, would see it as yet another engineering problem and would extend his sphere of activity to all such works like tertiary construction and management which could have been done by the users' associations.
27 A policy which is being pursued even now.
28 The smaller units, after construction, were to be handed over to the users. This is beacuse the Public Works Department would not have been able to look after thousands of such works, distributed over a wide area.
29 Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands (New York 1956)Google Scholar.
30 Whitcombe, E., Agrarian Conditions in Northern India I (New Delhi 1971);Google ScholarWilcocks, W., Lectures of the Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal and its Application to Modern Problems (Calcutta; repr. Delhi 1984)Google Scholar.
31 Until the modern power-driven water-lifts for groundwater exploitation were introduced.
32 E.g. Krishnaswamy, S. Y., Rural Problems in Madras (Madras 1947) 440Google Scholar.
33 Oppen, M. Von and Rao, K. V. Subba, ‘Tank Irrigation in Semi-Arid Tropical India’ I (mimeo, Andhra Pradesh 1980)Google Scholar.
34 E. g. Breman, Jan, ‘The village on Java and the early colonial state’, Journal of Peasant Studies 9, 4 (1982) 233 n. 85, orCrossRefGoogle Scholar, Koentjaraningrat ed., Villages in Indonesia (Ithaca/London 1967) 329Google Scholar.
35 Booth, , ‘Irrigation in Indonesia’, 43Google Scholar.
36 Sengupta, ‘Indigenous irrigation’.
37 Note that the Dutch colonial government was only interested in the proper method of interaction with the users, not in the interaction amongst the users.
38 Wittfogel, Karl A., Oriental Despotism (Yale 1957)Google Scholar.
39 Again this is not a term specific to irrigation works. It seems that in Java role embeddedness was of a very high degree and there were names only for communal works in general, not for specific types of works.
40 Leach, E. R., Pul Eliya: A Village in Ceylon (Cambridge 1961)Google Scholar.
41 Coward, E. Walter Jr ‘Principles of social organisation in an indigenous irrigation system’, Human Organisation (1979);Google ScholarSiy, R. Y. JrCommunity Resource Management: Lessons From the Zanjera (Quizon City 1982)Google Scholar.
42 Sengupta, Political Economic Study. All these studies are about recent conditions, in spite of rapid differentiation and legislative support to free transactions of land for more than a century.
43 Recently, Neil Charlesworth has made a valuable study of fragmentation in India: ‘The Origins of Fragmentation of Landholdings in British India: A comparative examination’ in: Robb, Peter ed., Rural India, Land, Power and Society under British Rule (London 1983)Google Scholar.
44 From an intensive study of such an organisation in Bihar (Sengupta, Political Economic Study).
45 Recent researches have brought out that all these elements are, also present in European commons. Fragmentation and scattering of plots had the same rationale that everyone had one piece of each type of landed property. In Asia crop paddy required no crop rotation and synchronisation of crop practices were guaranteed by the onset of the monsoon. The European conditions required stringent regulations exercised by commons to effect similarities in crop choice and crop practices. Dahlman opined that the existence of the community was due to the communal work for livestock rearing. E.g. McClosky, D. N. ‘The persistence of English Common Fields’ and ‘The economics of enclosure: A Market Analysis’ in: Parker, W. N. and Jones, E. L. eds., European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History (Princeton 1975);Google ScholarDahlman, Carl J., Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis of An Economic Institution (Cambridge 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 E.g. like the characteristic field system discussed earlier.
47 E.g. like the regulations on crop choice and crop practices.
48 Recent researchers on social cost-benefit analysis confirm that this results in a more efficient allocation than unregulated development of private property.
49 Scholars have pointed out that adat law has a communal characteristic (cited in , Koentjara-ningrat ed., Villages in Indonesia, 398). I am not aware of any research in India directed to investigate such aspects of a traditional systemGoogle Scholar.
50 Except for the fact that the communal units might not have been the same as earlier; see Breman, ‘The Village on Java’.
51 Baker, , Indian Rural Economy, particularly 471–472Google Scholar.
52 For the first such settlement in Salem and Baramahal, Read had to conduct measurement and assessment of the land of nearly 80,000 cultivators; see Murton, B. J., ‘Key people in the countryside: decision-makers in interior Tamilnadu in the late eighteenth century’, Indonesian Economic and Social History Review 10, 2 (1973) 162–163Google Scholar.
53 Baker, Indian Rural Economy.
54 In turn, the less efficient functioning of the indigenous irrigation works during this period, might have motivated the colonialists to undertake improvement works. Shortage of labour for reasons discussed later, might have been another cause of deterioration.
55 Probably in the past the role of leaders was merely symbolic if the community materialised from the willingness of the members themselves.
56 White, Benjamin, ‘“Agricultural Involution” and its critics twenty years after’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 15, 2 (1983) 24–25Google Scholar.
57 This description pertains to Bihar which largely escaped the notoriety of the farming system i n the eighteenth century. Besides, the indigenous irrigation system in Bengal proper was much more complex.
58 Several reports described Gaya district as immune to famine; see Sengupta, ‘Indigenous irrigation’.
59 Sengupta, Political Economic Study.