Contesting expertise: The politics of environmental knowledge in northern Indian groundwater practices
Introduction
Central to the politics of nature is the question of environmental knowledge, of how it is produced, contested, legitimated, and hybridized. The production of environmental knowledge and various forms of expertise are also central to the question of development. Scott (1998) posed the question – “why have so many well intended schemes to improve the human condition gone so tragically awry?” A significant part of Scott’s overall explanation was that states failed to take into account local knowledge, while at the same time having a blind faith in scientific and technological progress.
Scott’s original question has been furthered by asking: “what do these schemes do; what are their messy, contradictory, conjunctural effects” (Li, 2005, p. 384)? Important to these questions is an understanding that expertise comes not only from the state but also from the legions of non-governmental organizations, development institutes, donor agencies, and private firms (on firms see Ferguson, 2005). While he has been criticized for his singular focus on the state and state expertise, Scott’s work continues to draw critical engagement due to the vital position of the state in development projects (see Sivaramakrishnan, 2005 for a special issue of American Anthropologist devoted to Scott, 1998).
Central to Scott’s account was the high-modernist state’s positivist technocrat, who dismissed local knowledge (which Scott termed métis) as unscientific. Since his account, and after nearly a decade of various forms of participatory development schemes, such as Joint Forest Management (JFM), Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), or World Bank/IMF-sponsored Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) that sought to rectify this oversight, participatory development has taken center stage under a so-called postmodern development state (Escobar, 1995, Gupta, 1998, Ferguson, 1999, Li, 2005, Sivaramakrishnan, 2005). The fabled technocrat may be no longer strictly a positivist (Wilson, 2006, p. 509); s/he is engaged in integrating the particularity of local knowledge practices and socio-ecologies into development schemes. But are these new, post-technocrats really taking local knowledge seriously or are they equally dismissive of local environmental and/or agricultural praxis, even while representing themselves as understanding its importance (see O’Reilly, 2006 for a discussion of the contradictions of postmodern development)?1 If so why? In other words, does the state still “see like a state”, but with a more powerful lens, a lens that could underpin the more complete subjectification of its objects of development? Perhaps the state has not truly experienced a postmodern shift. And, in an inversion of Scott’s original question: how do people see the state (Corbridge et al., 2005)? These are still open questions. The answers to which illuminate the interaction and potential tensions between local and technocratic expertise (broadly defined), while informing the future of building effective and equitable resource governance strategies.
Recent efforts, drawing on post-structuralist thought and Science and Technology Studies (STS) approaches have called for a more nuanced understanding of the interaction and historical contingency of various knowledge claims (and their practices) on the subject of nature and how these questions inform equitable governance strategies (Escobar, 1999, Kaika and Swyngedouw, 2000, Robbins, 2001, Peet and Watts, 2004). While much research of this kind has focused on forest management (Robbins, 2000, Sivaramakrishnan, 2000, Klooster, 2002, Robbins, 2003, Agrawal, 2005), conservation areas (Bryant, 2000, Fairhead and Leach, 2003, Hunn et al., 2003, West, 2006), or biodiversity (e.g. bioprospecting or ethnobotany) (see Rosenthal, 2006 for a review), there have been fewer critical examinations of local and technical expertise in agro-ecology (but see Gupta, 1998, Armitage, 2003, Dove, 2003, Morris, 2006). During the same period, other work has focused on the continuity between the ‘techno-politics’ of the colonial, the modern and postmodern development state (Mitchell, 2002, Bolton, 2006). But none have focused expressly on the tensions between local and expert knowledge practices of water use and its management, particularly regarding groundwater (but see Mosse, 2003).
Groundwater is heavily exploited throughout the world and understanding the knowledges that inform its utilization is paramount in its future effective governance. The importance for this research then stems from the severe water crisis that much of the world is facing. According to the United Nations, groundwater use for irrigation by the world’s farmers exceeds natural recharge rates by at least 160 billon cubic meters per year so that by 2025, 50% of the world’s population will face water scarcity (Rosegrant et al., 2002). In India, groundwater meets 70% of the country’s irrigation needs and 80% of its domestic water supplies and its demand is expected to exceed supply by 2020 (World Bank, 2005). This is of particular concern in the state of Rajasthan, where groundwater extraction currently surpasses recharge in the state by nearly 410 million cubic meters per year, resulting in drastically falling groundwater levels (Directorate of Economics and Statistics, 2003, Government of Rajasthan Groundwater Board, 2003). The heavy reliance on groundwater for irrigation and domestic needs was made possible through the spread of electric tubewell technology throughout India, mostly since the Green Revolution. Today there are over 20 million agricultural tubewells in India, with over 1.4 million of these in Rajasthan (Shah, 2005, Government of Rajasthan Groundwater Board, 2006).
The rapid spread of this technology and concomitant groundwater overexploitation has prompted recent calls by the state and development donor agencies for the creation of formal groundwater regulation (such as permits for tubewell construction and water metering), where none exists today. The successful implementation of this governance shift hinges on the interaction between the crafters and enforcers of the regulation and groundwater users. Examining the interaction of existing local and state forms of knowledge of groundwater and irrigation is a useful starting point, therefore.
In northern India, groundwater continues to be utilized for agricultural and domestic purposes after centuries of adaptation of lifting techniques. So too, along with these adaptations has been the development, in various forms, of knowledge of water and water related technologies, including those originating from local, colonial, state and development sources. The question becomes, in what ways do conflicting environmental knowledges adversely affect the management of overexploited groundwater resources in water-scarce India? To address this question, I examine the coevolution of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial (post-independence)2 groundwater and irrigation knowledges and technologies to expose the ways that they are produced, contested, legitimated, and hybridized.
Consequently, by examining the tensions created through the production of groundwater expertise in the study area (see Fig. 1), I contribute to theoretical debates regarding the interaction of local actors and the state in environmental governance in an agro-ecological setting. The paper argues the following three claims. First, the relationship between the state and local producers of groundwater knowledge practices is non-linear and porous. For instance, the way that state subjects experience the state is uneven because within and in-between historical moments the state may attempt to assimilate, reorganize, plagiarize, or disparage local knowledge. Second, these attempts produce or exacerbate existing historically rooted tensions between farmers and state groundwater engineers. But in response, farmers often seek out non-state avenues of expertise, such as tubewell drilling firms. This results in the further hybridization of knowledge practices and also in the present-day marginalization of the state. Third, the relationship between farmers and the state is further strained because of a current lack of state visibility in the study area and also because the state continues to “see like a state”. These shifting meanings and power relations around groundwater and irrigation knowledges produce tensions that will undoubtedly negatively impact future groundwater governance strategies.
This paper proceeds in six additional sections. In the next section, I outline, critique and bring together current theories of environmental expertise in order to bring these efforts to bear on the tensions in the production of groundwater knowledges in the study area. In the third section, I introduce the methodology employed for this research and my study area near Jaipur, Rajasthan. In the fourth section, I chart three periods of groundwater use, and technological adaptation and hybridization: pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial. In the fifth section, I attempt to understand just where and in what ways groundwater and lifting technology (e.g. tubewells) expertise is produced. Before concluding, in the sixth section I examine the multiple ways that these knowledges interact between the state, farmers, Hindu groundwater experts and tubewell drilling firms to illustrate the particular constellations of power they represent and their effect on future governance strategies.
Section snippets
Rethinking expert and local knowledges
Recent work in geography and cognate fields (Gupta, 1998, Scott, 1998, Mitchell, 2002, Mosse, 2003, Agrawal, 2005, Corbridge et al., 2005) is interrelated through its attention to colonial, modern and postmodern development states’ attempts to incorporate existing knowledge practices into their systems of governmentality (Foucault, 1991). Governmentality refers to the set of government “technologies”, including institutions, procedures, and tactics, that are designed by the state to exercise
Study area and methods
In a number of respects, Rajasthan is an ideal place in which to study the tensions between local and expert groundwater knowledge practices. First, the area has a long history of groundwater use for irrigation and domestic purposes. Second, these practices were catalogued and systematized during the colonial period. And third, it has a recent history of rapid expansion of groundwater lifting technologies and associated knowledge practices under a modern and postmodern state. Taken together,
Regimes of groundwater and irrigation use: the reorganization and hybridization of groundwater knowledge and technologies
Next, I examine the historical development of groundwater and irrigation knowledge practices. Following Rosin (1993), discrete timeframes are difficult to demarcate, but three broad dominant “timeframes of transformation” (following Mitchell, 2002) are useful and defensible: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. As will be shown, institutionalized knowledge practices endure through each of the periods and they interact with new ideas and techniques of doing irrigation in hybrid ways.
Who embodies groundwater knowledge/expertise?
Table 1 distinguishes groundwater and tubewell irrigation experts into five observable categories: (1) government engineers; (2) development experts and academics; (3) tubewell drilling firms; (4) land managers; and (5) Hindu groundwater diviners (Sunghas). Government engineers working for the Central Groundwater Board, Rajasthan Groundwater Board, and Rajasthan Irrigation Department are trained in the Western academic tradition of groundwater hydrology or engineering positivist science. They
Conflicting views on expertise
With the various practitioners of groundwater expertise outlined above in mind, I queried farmers about those from whom they would seek advice before digging a tubewell. Their consultancy options included: (1) government engineers from the Groundwater Board; (2) tubewell drilling firms; and (3) Sunghas.
Conclusions
The success of future decentralized environmental governance in developing contexts hinges on the interaction of the state and its agents with local users and managers of resources. Underpinning these encounters, are struggles over the need to make sense of the changing relationship that the state and local users have with each other and with their environment. The foundation of which is environmental knowledge. By examining the conflicts between different forms of environmental knowledges, I
Acknowledgements
This project was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) grant. I owe a great debt to the many Rajasthani farmers and government engineers who gave me their time. I am particularly indebted to my research assistant, Jaywant Mehta, who provided much needed research support and encouragement. And finally, I gratefully acknowledge the intellectual insights of Paul Robbins, Kevin Cox and three anonymous reviewers. Any shortcomings in the manuscript are mine.
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