My ethnographic investigation over a period of four months in the summer of 2006 in the Surya command area revealed that the incomplete condition and the poor
demands of the Mumbai Metropolitan region were the major causes of underutilization of irrigation water in the Surya project 1.
For the purposes of my fieldwork and in order to answer my research questions around water politics in papers one and two, I divided the command area of the Surya irrigation project into two ecotypes. Most of the Vadaval farmers in the coastal area, who belong to caste Hindu communities, have large land holdings which are mostly irrigated by groundwater and are officially outside the Surya project command area. On the other hand, the interior areas which lie eastward, within the command area, are dominated by members of the tribal community, but have seen Vadaval farmers lease in land in the horticultural belt around the village town of Vangaon. Within these two ecotypes (see Fig 2.1, Zones I and II), detailed qualitative information was available for one village, Sakhare, located at the upper reaches of the canal system of the Surya, and qualitative data was available on Vanai village, which was downstream on the canal.
Both villages lie in the Dahanu block of the Surya command area. Sakhare village was located in an area that has been the focus of a study on agrarian change by a University of Mumbai sociologist in the 1980s (Munshi,1983). This study was very useful as a baseline survey for my research. Ethnographic data on class relations was also available on this area from this study. The district census which is done once every decade is another useful source of data on population and agricultural land. My initial interviews with Surya dam project staff revealed that some of the richer Vadaval farmers have been default beneficiaries of the irrigation project because of the higher
groundwater tables in the village and the consequent prosperity they have come to experience.
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Figure 2.1: Agro ecology situation in Thane district. Source: Irrigation Department, Thane Irrigation Circle.
The access to groundwater had played a role, but their access to canal irrigation has further enabled them to improve their prospects in horticulture.
Very little ethnographic data from the past was available for Vanai village. My choice of this village was facilitated by a local NGO, the Kashtakari Sanghatana, which had a strong presence in the village as they had developed a grassroots presence for advocacy work done on behalf of the tribal poor. Vanai lies in the lower reaches of the canal system of the command area of the project and some tribal farmers have benefited from irrigation water of the project, while there are substantial segments of the village which had not experienced access. Both villages also had a significant seasonal migrant population which travels to other parts of Thane district for work. Moreover, given the history and the formation of caste and class-based identities in the district, the importance of studying social dynamics in the aftermath of irrigation proved to be very insightful. Sakhare and its surrounding settlements in Dahanu are at the centre of an interesting, evolving regional water politics where the farmers from the coastal parts are increasingly laying claim to the canal water of the Surya irrigation project due to the their political influence in the state capital in Mumbai. In addition to the conflict on the canal system, this imparts an interesting intra-rural caste and class dimension to water politics in the region.
I chose villages purposively, with the main criterion being the strength of contacts in both villages and the possibility of obtaining credible information. The location of the villages on the canal system played an important role in my decision. Sakhare was located in the northern reaches on the Palghar Branch Canal 2 while Vanai was located on the southern reaches of the same canal. Both Sakhare and Vanai villages have benefited from irrigation water, but these villages also witnessed the inward
movement of Vadaval farmers from the coast who had leased in or purchased agricultural land for horticulture. Moreover, both villages are at the centre of a fast changing rural landscape, are geographically central to major transport routes, and lie on a geographical continuum (the right bank canal coming down westward from the mountains extending from Suryanagar across the Western Express Highway via Sakhare to Vanai on Palghar Branch 2) which allowed me to “follow the water” as part of my methodological strategy to study regional water politics.
Access to irrigation water has historically been an important marker of class relations in agriculture in Dahanu. The following quotation from a 1983 ethnographic study of a village neighbouring Sakhare (pseudonym used: Gavatgaon in Munshi, 1983) highlights the importance of water to production relations in the villages in this belt.
While livestock and implements, especially the plough and bullocks which are necessary for cultivation may be borrowed on standard terms from the rich of the village, water remains a serious problem. The marginal peasants, the poor peasants and some middle peasants are entirely dependent on the rain water as the only source of irrigation. Wells are an extremely expensive proposition beyond the capacity of these classes. A few of the middle peasants, all the rich peasants and most of the landlord-trader-creditor own a well and a motor pump each, some even two. As a result, those without a well cannot grow a second crop, and get only one crop of rainfed paddy. Even more important is the harsh truth that the vagaries of nature which may affect all, may spell
ruination for the small peasants. “Last year the rains failed, we did not get even the seeds we sowed. (Munshi, 1983:213)
In Sakhare, there was a rich segment of Vadaval farmers who have done well in horticulture in Dahanu. Each farmer from this community on average owned more than twenty hectares of agricultural land and had good access to groundwater irrigation (Question 1 in the introduction chapter of this dissertation around the relationship of land ownership to water access). Using the study by Indra Munshi (Munshi, 1983) as a baseline, the canal system was the unit of analysis in this village. Both my fieldwork in 2006 and past research such as Munshi’s dissertation documents that this rich segment of farmers have been the mainstay of the rural economy in Dahanu, since they have marketed their vegetable produce in various parts of India and the Middle East. These farmers who belong to the Vadaval community have good access to credit, a ready supply of tribal labour for their agricultural operations and command political influence in the state capital, Mumbai, which they have used from time to time for their commercial interests in horticulture. Vanai village was more homogenous in its ethnic composition and a majority of inhabitants are small and marginal tribal farmers who own up to two hectares. Like Sakhare, the village population was divided between farmers who had large land holdings and came from outside the village and tribal farmers who were from within the village. So access to water is an important marker of production relations in agriculture in the village.
Canals constituted the major form of irrigation in Vanai village and the experiences of farmers with water availability and scarcity can be elicited only with an
extended stay as temporary resident in this village. In this village, as in Sakhare, the canal system was the unit of analysis. Canals are better maintained at certain points than others, depending in part on the political and social connections of the farmers. All these factors affect utilization of canal water and often contribute to the varying economic fortunes of farmers. The two research sites were part of the official beneficiary area of the Surya irrigation project. There is a major dimension of variance across the two communities in the two villages and purposive selection within these villages enabled me to seek answers to the questions on water access and its relationship with the state of production relations in this region. While I chose these villages for further field research in 2006, an IDRC grant made it possible for me to return to India at the end of 2007. I returned for field research in Thane district at the end of December 2007 and stayed in Dahanu until September 2008 to cover the irrigation season between November 2007- May 2008. The latter research trip involved a prior round of semi-structured interviews in the villages with farmers and engineers and a survey that was administered to farmers in both Sakhare and Vanai in May, 2008. I had made initial contact with engineers in the Thane Irrigation Department as well as the Surya irirgation project in 2006. While the frequent transfer of executive engineers with whom contact was initiated meant that I had to renew my contacts with new personnel, my strategy being to write persistent letters to the Thane Irrigation Department seeking access to the Surya project, finally met with a positive response in January 2008.
Given that a pure focus on production relations is insufficient (Harris, 1982; Mollinga, 2003), the role of the state, in particular, the local Irrigation Department in
water development in this area was closely examined for it to serve as an important background to the study of canal irrigation in this dissertation. My interviews with engineers constitute the focus of paper one. The methods and the context for this component of the research are outlined in some detail in section 2.4 below.