Aplicación de la fórmula del modelo factorial:

Views on the importance of dam and canal irrigation in today‟s India are related to views on the impacts of canal irrigation in Colonial India. A brief review of the positions in this debate is therefore useful as a background for a study of the Sardar Sarovar Project. The views on colonialism differ both in the interpretations of the intentions and the effects of British colonial policies. I will get back to these questions after a brief presentation of pre-colonial irrigation techniques in the sub-continent and the associated risks.

Indian pre-colonial water technologies: managing rain, rivers and ground water

Water management has always been important in arid and semi-arid parts of the Indian sub- continent. The specific climate, topography, hydrology, and soil conditions in different parts of the subcontinent gave rise to different forms of water management techniques from ancient times.

In South and Central India, tank irrigation was widespread. Tank irrigation involves an interlinked system of crescent-shaped dams or bunds built across the natural drainage paths of the monsoon rain water. These systems cover large areas and were developed through trial and error throughout the centuries of different South Indian kingdoms and rulers (Mosse 2003). The British officers of the East India Company who came to South India in the 18th century noted that the tank irrigation system was intricate and elaborate. In the words of British administrator Thomas Munro, there was “scarcely any place where a tank can be made to advantage that has not already been applied to this purpose by the inhabitants” (quoted in Mosse 2003:31). The tanks collect rainwater, and were managed by one or several villages. Water stored in the tanks was used for irrigation and also percolated into the ground water and recharged wells, although well irrigation seems to have been of minor importance (Mosse 2003). Decisions on the distribution of the tank water were taken at the village level. However, because the position, height, and maintenance of each tank had implications for tanks and villages both above and below it in the drainage flow, a political superstructure was needed (Mosse 2001).

21 In North India, pre-colonial agriculture was largely rain-fed or used groundwater resources from open wells. However, both the Mughal and the Sikh rulers of the Indus and Ganges basins had developed large canal systems which diverted water from the rivers in times of peak flows, so-called inundation canals (Stone 1984; Gilmartin 1998). Agriculture was not the sole or even main purpose for all these canals, but the watering of the Mughal palace gardens and hunting grounds (Whitcombe 1972; Stone 1984). Some parts of Sindh, in today‟s Pakistan, does not get any monsoon rain, and therefore depended entirely on the annual floods of the Indus River for water. Here, the Muslim Amir rulers orchestrated the construction and maintenance of natural and man-made inundation canals which followed the contours of the land (Perera 2003). The rulers had the power to summon forced labour for the task of silt removal from the inundation canals. Crops received water either by lifting through “Persian wheels” operated by labourers or cattle, by gravity when the canal was full, or by being cultivated on river bed land when the floods receded (Perera 2003). In Western India, Saurashtra and Gujarat, well irrigation was the most common form of irrigation, as will be described in more detail in Chapter 3.

Despite the relatively widespread use of diverted river water in North India, rainfall and well water were the most important sources of irrigation for both pre-colonial and colonial North India. Colonel Baird Smith, who prepared a report for the British Famine Commission in 1862, estimated that in 1860-1, out of the total cultivated area of twenty-four million acres in the North-West Provinces, three to four million acres were irrigated by wells and only one million acres were irrigated by canals (Whitcombe 1972). As we have seen, in pre-colonial South India, irrigation by tanks was more important than by wells, but the tank systems also served to recharge ground water and thereby support additional well irrigation (Mosse 2003).

Monsoon agriculture and risk

Agriculture in a monsoon climate is risky and unpredictable. The traditional methods of irrigation described above improved human control over parts of the hydrological cycle while at the same time increasing the risk of certain damages. The interlinked hydrological system of tanks in South India increased the risk of flood damage in case of heavy rains. When continued heavy rainfall breached the embankments of a tank in the upper parts of the system, the floods cascaded down the tanks with a domino effect and caused serious damage to life

22 and property (Mosse 2003). In years of failed monsoons, the rain-based tank system could not provide protection from droughts. “The endemic condition of unpredictability and scarcity in the tank-irrigated regions [of Tamil Nadu13] resulted in intensive famine and emigration to neighbouring districts throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” writes Mosse (2003:35). The inundation-canal-based agriculture in Sindh was likewise risky and unpredictable. Crops cultivated on river beds on receding floods ran the risk of being washed away if the river re-flooded; and crops depending on gravity flow from a full canal could whither when the water level suddenly dropped (Perera 2003). Rainfall and well-based agriculture of the North-Western Provinces was vulnerable to failed and erratic rainfall, and farmers tried to spread the risk of total crop failure by diversifying the crops planted in each field; they planted crops with different needs of water amount and water timing in the same field to ensure that at least one crop stood the chance of surviving (Whitcombe 1972). If the rains failed completely, only irrigation could save the crops.

Colonial canal construction: Famine prevention or exploitation?

There were several reasons for British expansion of canal irrigation in India, and to disentangle and attribute weight to the different intentions behind political decisions is complicated. Usually, there is a mixture of different interests, intentions, and political considerations that brings forth a certain set of policies. On the one hand, the British clearly had selfish interests in India. The main aim of colonialism and imperialism was the accumulation of wealth and power. India was a major source of raw materials for the industrialisation of Britain. The destruction of the Indian weaving industry is only one example of the damaging effects of British rule on the local economy. The reason for the construction of irrigation canals is also frequently attributed to exploitative intentions. Irrigated land was a source of revenue for Britain both through taxes, which were higher on irrigated land, and through export earnings from cash crops like indigo, cotton, and sugarcane which needs assured and plentiful water supply. The first British canals were therefore so- called “productive” irrigation canals, intended to generate revenue large enough to cover the interest on their cost of investment. With this policy, the construction of dams and canals in

23 many regions were deemed uneconomical, f.ex. in the famine-prone Bombay Deccan (Attwood 2005).

However, there were also humanitarian considerations behind canal construction. The occurrence of a severe famine in North India in 1837-8 was the main reason for the reopening of the then shelved plans for the Ganges Canal (Stone 1984). Engineer James Thomason, founder of the Thomason College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee, claimed in 1851 that “The government has embarked with all the energies it can command in the noble work of improving the condition of the people and developing the resources of the country” (quoted in Gilmartin 2003:1). Later, the drought of 1876-79 caused a terrible famine with an estimated death toll of 6-10 million people in the Madras Presidency, the Bombay Deccan, and the North-West Provinces (Davis 2001). A Famine Commission was established after this, and its report of 1880 advocated the construction of protective irrigation works to prevent the devastating effects of drought in the future (Davis 2001). A liberal irrigation lobby in England, led by among others Sir Arthur Cotton and Florence Nightingale, played an important role for the establishment of this famine commission14. This group advocated a more humane colonial policy and a priority of irrigation investment over railway investment, as well as spending on public health and removal of the salt tax (Davis 2001). Other recommendations of the Famine Commissions were the construction of railways to facilitate the transport of food grains from surplus to deficit areas, and a set of Famine Codes which were adminstrative guidelines for early warning systems and relief provisions in the case of crop failure and impending food shortage15 (Banik 2007). The main logic of British famine prevention policies was to ensure purchasing power in drought affected areas by providing public work projects, and facilitating private trade in grains by providing transport infrastructure (Drèze 1995). However, the relief provisions given by the government were quite stingy, and the level of wages paid for relief work was extremely low (Drèze 1995). Drèze quotes a circular of the Government of India from 1883 which stated that “while the

14 _{Davis quotes historian Brennan who quotes a letter from the Secretary of state for India, Lord Salisbury, to}

Viceroy Lytton in 1877: “Strachey will also explain to you what I have talked a good deal to him about – the necessity of some commission on Famine measures in the future, in order to save ourselves from the Irrigation quacks. They will undoubtedly make a strong fight: for I observe that under the Presidency of Cotton, they have been beginning some sort of League … for the Parliamentary campaign” (quoted in Davis 2001:57).

24 duty of the Government is to save life, it is not bound to maintain the labouring community at its normal level of comfort” (1995:154).

In short, the comprehensive and centralised irrigation planning which so impressed the Americans towards the end of the 19th century had been developed as a result of several factors. Political, economic, technological, and humanitarian factors combined to give an impetus to hydraulic engineering works in India. Several famines and the Mutiny of 1857 made the British government see irrigation as a means of preventing social unrest (Whitcombe 1972; Stone 1984); the cultivation of cash crops for export presupposed assured water supply; scientific developments in mathematics opened new possibilities in hydraulic engineering; and the new engineering possibilities empowered the state to control larger units of rural society through control of the environment (Gilmartin 1998).

Some historians pass a devastating verdict on British famine-prevention policies. Davis (2001), f.ex., dismisses them as based on a Malthusian ideology, describing “deliberately cruel” selection criteria for relief access and comparing the lowest ration, the so-called “Temple ration” of 1 pound of grain per day, to Nazi experimental research in the Buchenwald concentration camps. Drèze (1995), on the other hand, gives the British some credit in actually wanting to prevent famines, although financial considerations and a non- welfarist ideology contributed to dangerously low rations. While Drèze notes that the “Temple rations” fortunately were abolished right away, Davis does not mention this, giving the impression that this extremely low ration was the rule for a long time. However, it is clear that financial considerations and the aim of keeping British expenditure in India at the lowest possible level also influenced the sanctioning of protective irrigation canal construction. Expansion of irrigation into famine-prone areas was only carried out if it proved economically remunerative, taking into account the cost of famine (Stone 1984).

Impacts of colonial canal irrigation

On the issue of impacts of colonial canal irrigation, the two main competing views can be found in Elizabeth Whitcombe‟s “Agrarian Conditions in Northern India” from 1972 and Ian Stone‟s “Canal Irrigation in British India” from 1984. Whitcombe concludes overall that the negative effects of the canal irrigation introduced by the British in the region between the

25 rivers Ganges and Yamuna in the United Provinces were substantial, and largely outweighed the positive increase in production. Her verdict on the impacts of British colonial policies on the agricultural conditions in North India is harsh: the result was a “depressed peasantry” labouring in “a distorted ecological and economic environment ” (Whitcombe 1972:xi and 276). Canal water benefited mostly cash and export crops like cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, and indigo, argues Whitcombe. The coarse food grains, which were the staple diet of the majority of the population, did not require irrigation neither in the kharif nor rabi season. This distorted the production away from food grains and towards cash and export crops with the consequence that food prices increased and the poor suffered. The relative simplicity of canal irrigation by gravity compared to the more laborious lifting of well irrigation encouraged over-cropping and over-application of water which led to reduced productivity of the soil, and loss of crop land to salinisation and water logging. In addition, the canals and accompanying increase in water table disrupted the stability of the soil in its vicinity and caused existing earthen wells to cave in. This forced farmers to pay for the more expensive canal water and thus trapped them in a cycle of dependency on the government system, argues Whitcombe. The change from well to canal irrigation, therefore, was not always voluntary (Whitcombe 1972:80). Widespread application of canal irrigation was also an important source of revenue for the British, who therefore encouraged it despite its known negative environmental side- effects. The new railway lines exacerbated the negative environmental effects of canal irrigation, as they cut across natural drainage lines and impeded surface runoff. A British report on the environmental conditions in Indian agriculture by 1891 estimated the amount of salinity damaged land to between four and five thousand square miles16, or from 2.5 to 3.2 million acres (Whitcombe 1972).

Stone (1984) questions the negative conclusions of Whitcombe, and argues that except for a documented increase in malaria, the picture for Indian peasants and agricultural environment was not so gloomy. He questions the severity of the problem of salinisation and waterlogging, and has a different interpretation of the farmers‟ response to the new irrigation technology. The effects of the canals on wells varied from area to area. “Indeed, just as some villages could lose entirely their source of irrigation as a result of the canal, so it was possible for

26 villages out of the canal‟s reach to have an improved water supply in their pukka wells, as was the case in parts of eastern Bulanshahr”, writes Stone, and concludes that the effect of canals on wells “is mixed rather than one of sweeping destruction” (1984:85). Even though the negative side-effects of canal irrigation were well-known in contemporary society, it was advocated by successive Famine Commissions, Irrigation Commissions and Indian Nationalists. Stone interprets this as a sign that the benefits of canal irrigation exceeded the damages. Contrary to Whitcombe‟s analysis, Stone argues that well irrigation was “markedly restricted as well as restricting” for farmers (1984:70). He emphasises historical evidence that farmers chose to abandon their most efficient wells in favour of the canal, even when the canal water was only available through lifting:

“The canal was an innovation which met their requirements, and it did so because it slotted into the productive aspects of the peasant system in a way which made it generally more advantageous than even the most favourable well irrigation.” (Stone 1984:70).

He compares the dynamic economy of the Western districts (which had canal irrigation) of the region with the stagnation in the Eastern districts (which did not have canal irrigation), and concludes that the canals were the fundamental ingredients in the Western growth process. The canals “enhanced the peasant‟s ability to utilise more fully his available resources (by saving labour and bullocks, extending the range of cropping options, and reducing some of the risks his production was constrained by)” (Stone 1984:340).

The canal strengthened and enlarged a class of medium-to-large peasants, and this lay the foundation for a widely spread distribution of income, and prevented the “possibilities for scale economies conducive to polarization” (Stone 1984:346). Stone therefore sees in the canal irrigation of the Western Uttar Pradesh a lesson in appropriate technology for present- day developing countries.

Commersialisation of agriculture was further encouraged by the expansion of railways. As with British canal irrigation, the effect of British railway construction is a subject of controversy. We have seen the contrasting opinions of Whitcombe (1972) and Stone (1984). Some writers claim that the railways, contrary to the claims of the Famine Commission, actually carried food out of areas with starving populations, instead of into them (an example is Davis 2001). Other studies conclude that the expansion of railways considerably reduced

27 poverty and famine vulnerability by facilitating routine transport of grain into regions were harvests failed (Drèze 1995; Attwood 2005)17. Attwood (2005) argues that transport infrastructure and protective irrigation structures, in combination with enforcement of drought-relief policies, caused a considerable reduction in famine mortality in the Western parts of the Deccan Platteau. The Western Deccan had been virtually insulated from other grain-producing areas of India before the railways, which made the population extremely vulnerable to undernutrition and hunger in the case of droughts. Traditional methods of irrigation by diversion weirs (bandharas) on seasonal rivers in this region only captured a fraction of the rainwater, and dried up completely during droughts (Attwood 2005). There are historical records of terrible droughts and famines in this region from the 17th century onwards. Statistics over prize fluctuations for staple food grains (jowar and bajri), in the town of Sholapur for example, over the 19th century show a marked decline in price variations after 1860 when the town was connected to the railway. This is a sign that the railway led to the influx of grains into the region in times of scarcity (Attwood 2005).