Colonial law, contemporary water issues in Pakistan

doi:10.1016/S0962-6298(01)00025-7

Political Geography

Volume 20, Issue 7, September 2001, Pages 817-837

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0962-6298(01)00025-7 Get rights and content

Abstract

The paper undertakes a legal geographical analysis of a key piece of legislation, the Canal and Drainage Act (1873), governing water resources management in the Indus basin of Pakistan from a critical legal perspective. The historical context of the Act is discussed to demonstrate the overlap between the Act and the colonial state that framed it. Textual analyses of the Act are undertaken to unpack the ideology and the functionality of the Act. Critical legal analyses of the Act reveal that the balance of legal rights enshrined in the Act is heavily in favor of the state as opposed to the water users. The overall tenor of the Act is that of a colonial document meant to facilitate control over a population than a legislation meant to facilitate efficient and equitable provision of a public service to the public. An analysis of the enforcement data about the Act demonstrate that the Canal and Drainage Act indeed lends itself to differential enforcement because of its insensitivity to issues of social power and geographical variations in the physical and social environment in the basin. The paper concludes that equity in water resources management in the Indus basin is contingent upon engagement with the issues of legal rights and geographical implications of a colonial legislation like the Canal and Drainage Act (1873). The analyses in the paper contribute to a growing literature on legal geography and engage the discourses on legal rights and issues of access to resources.

Introduction

Law is simply politics dressed in a different garb . . .Blomley (1994a: 11–12)

The legal framework, which legitimizes, organizes, and eventually concretizes state power on lived sociospatial relations has been a relatively neglected area of interest for geographers, especially in the field of resource management. Part of the reason for this relative lack of interest by geographers in connections between law and geography may have been partially because of the popular misconception about law as a closed field of knowledge and praxis (Blomley, 1994). There is a growing realization in legal and social science circles, however, that the law is indeed contingent, political and contestable, often perpetuating and legitimizing exploitative and oppressive geographies of social power (Blomley, 1994, Chouinard 1994). Law and the state apparatus are inextricably linked in the process of production and reproduction of socio-spatial patterns of access to resources and the empowerment and disempowerment of certain social agents in the process. This article revisits and synthesizes the law and geography nexus as developed by various geographers and some legal experts to analyze the ideology and geographical implications of a key piece of legislation, ‘The Canal and Drainage Act (1873),’ governing water resources management in Pakistan. The article further explores the connection between the concomitant state apparatus to the Act and its geographical implications for equity, justice and democracy in water resources management, with the help of data regarding the enforcement of the Act collected from the irrigation authorities in Pakistan.

Pakistan is home to more than 131 million people, with more than sixty percent of its population dependent upon irrigated agriculture in its semi-arid heartland in the Indus river basin (Government of Pakistan, 2000). The world’s largest contiguous, state managed, surface irrigation system forms the backbone of the country’s predominantly agricultural economy (Fig. 1) (The World Bank, 1994). The irrigation system of the Indus basin of Pakistan has been a virtual laboratory for national and international engineers, social scientists and lawyers investigating the engineering and managerial aspects of the system (Westcoat, Halvorson, & Mustafa, 2000, Michel, 1967). Although there have been many investigations into the role of the Pakistani state in the management of the system and its implications for participatory development (e.g., see Bandaragoda, 1998, Van der Velde & Tirmizi, 1999, The World Bank, 1994, Ireson, 1991, WAPDA, 1990), none of the investigations, to my knowledge, have specifically explored the connection between law and geography to explain the persistent patterns of inefficiency and inequity in access to water resources at various scales. The article redresses that deficiency in the literature on resource geography in general and water resources geography in Pakistan in particular.

Section snippets

The law and geography nexus in water resources management

The legal geographical studies in geography can be distinguished into two broad categories, the impact assessment approach and the critical legal geographic approach (Blomley, 1994a, Palm, 1997). The impact assessment approach emphasizes the geographic consequences of various legal regimes, e.g., land use laws, water laws or anti-homeless laws (for examples see Matthews, 1984, Platt, 1996, Platt & Kendra, 1998). The critical legal geographic approach on the other hand in the words of Chouinard

The historical geography of water law in Pakistan

The present canal irrigation system in the Indus basin of Pakistan, has its genesis in the massive public works drive undertaken by the British colonial administration in the late 19th century (Ali, 1988, Stone, 1984, Whitcombe, 1982). Although there had been a longer tradition of construction and maintenance of seasonal inundation irrigation channels in the Indus basin for agriculture, that earlier tradition was dwarfed by the physical and social transformative power of the new irrigation

Unpacking the ideology and functionality of the Canal and Drainage Act (1873)

The Canal and Drainage Act (1873) has been, and continues to be, one of the most influential and longest lasting pieces of water law in the Indus basin. I unpack the ideology and functionality of the Act by reading it as a text, which has its autonomy but is also a socially situated product with concrete connections to sociospatial practice (Giddens, 1979). The following analyses will concurrently draw upon the impact analysis method as well as reading of the Act as a legal text in a critical

The state and the spatial practice of water law

The actual implementation of the Canal and Drainage Act (1873) in the canal colonies of the Punjab has been characterized by conflict between the state and the water users, and between the higher echelons of the irrigation management hierarchy and the field staff, since the very inception of the Act. Imran Ali (1988) documents the frustrations faced by the British colonial administration in recovering the economic price of water from water users at the turn of the 20th century. The colonial

Conclusion

I have shown that the Canal and Drainage Act (1873), because of its insensitivity to physical geographical contexts and issues of power differentials, perpetuates patterns of differential application of the law by the state. Furthermore, given the overwhelming power that is given to the bureaucracy in the Act, without any balancing rights for the water users, or legal mechanisms for the bureaucracy’s accountability to the water users, it is hardly surprising that the water users have to suffer

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was funded by the National Science Foundation Grant No: SBR 9711357. I am grateful to James L. Wescoat Jr., Rachel Silvey, John O’ Loughlin, Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, and Sharon Lash for their helpful comments on the earlier drafts of the manuscript. The paper has benefited considerably from the comments of the two anonymous reviewers and I thank them for their candid reviews of the paper.

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