Browsing by Author "Baker, J. Mark"

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Changing Contexts, Steady Flows: Explaining Patterns of Institutional Change within the Gravity Flow Irrigation Systems (Kuhls) of Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India
(1996) Baker, J. Mark
"In this paper I develop a framework for the analysis of change within CPR regimes in order to explain why and how some regimes persist despite environmental change while others do not. I use this framework to analyze the impacts of the rapidly increasing nonfarm employment sector on the gravity flow irrigation systems (kuhls) of Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India. Based on fieldwork among the 39 kuhls which divert water from the Neugal River just west of the town of Palampur in Kangra Valley, I argue that the potential for caste, class or locationally derived conflict among the irrigators of a kuhl, and the degree of reliance on the irrigation water a kuhl provides, shape the tensions arising from increasing nonfarm employment as well as the means people employ to resolve those tensions. I suggest that the temporal and spatial variation among kuhl regimes in their degree of role specialization and organizational formalization, and the extent of state involvement in kuhl management, reflect the differential responses of kuhl regimes to the stresses arising from increasing nonfarm employment. Furthermore, I argue that the varied roles the state of Himachal Pradesh plays in the management of different kuhls can be best accounted for as a process of negotiation between various state agents and individuals involved in kuhl management. When it occurs, the basis and content of this negotiation and the outcomes in terms of state involvement in water management, are also shaped by local social and ecological influences rather than by the undifferentiated application of a homogenous state irrigation "policy" across a socially andecologically differentiated landscape."
Colonial Influences on Property, Community, and Land Use in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh
(Duke University, 2000) Baker, J. Mark; Agrawal, Arun; Sivaramakrishnan, Kumbakonam G.
"British rale in the western Himalayan hill state of Kangra, which began in 1846, represented both continuities with, and disjunctures from, precolonial notions of sovereignty, property, and rule. Early colonial administrators, like their predecessors the Katoch rajas, were attuned to the importance of symbolic representations of state power. The early British revenue assessments in Kangra were also modeled after those of the prior Sikh government. However, the first land settlement of Kangra in 1850 facilitated changes in the control, use, and area of agricultural and forest lands in Kangra. These changes resulted from three interrelated processes. First, during the inherently contentious process of recording rights to land, settlement officers in this hill region applied models of property rights and the village community that had developed on the plains and that were informed by European notions of private property and agricultural development. The result was the creation of new 'traditions' of land use and control. Second, Revenue Department officials emphasized the notion of property as a transferable economic resource that was allocated to individual property owners, in contrast to precolonial conceptions of property as an instrument for securing political legitimacy by distributing 'interests' in property among different groups. Third, the Revenue and Forest Departments' use of land ownership as the sole criteria for assigning rights to forests and uncultivated areas increased local inequities; landless and nonagricultural groups were disenfranchised from resources to which they had previously possessed usufructuary rights of access and use."
Communities, Networks and the State: Continuity and Change among the Kuhl Irrigation Systems of Western Himalaya
(2001) Baker, J. Mark
"The extreme set of ecological and social conditions within which the kuhls of Kangra Valley exist challenge the ability of theories of common property resource management to explain their persistence and change. In order to account for the differential patterns of change and persistence among the kuhl regimes of Kangra, three broad, over-arching questions must be addressed. These questions extend the domain of inquiry beyond that which is often considered in the study of systems of common property resource management. The first over-arching question asks what is the role of the state in supporting or not supporting community-based institutions for common property resource management. Answering this requires rethinking the relationship between state and local institutions, and indeed, our understanding of what constitutes the 'state' and 'local' and how they may mutually constitute and reinforce each other. A second over-arching question concerns the possible roles of exchange (material or symbolic or both) between different community-based resource management systems in enabling their persistence. Exploring this issue requires drawing back from a micro-focus on individual systems of common property resource management to a more landscape-scale perspective in order to first identify and then evaluate the possible effects of exchange between networked resource management systems. A third overarching question focuses on the importance of regionality in terms of how it informs the specific institutional forms, microlevel social relations, ritual aspects of, and trajectories of change within common property resource management systems. This question forces investigation of the role of culture, informal institutions, and region-specific understandings of community and identity. These over-arching questions incorporate multiple levels of analysis and integrate different analytical perspectives. When woven together, these levels and perspectives create a tapestry whose pattern should correspond to the transformations and rhythms of change observed within individual kuhl regimes."
Consolidating Authority: Bureaucratization of Local Resource Management Institutions in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh
(1997) Baker, J. Mark
"Kuhls are gravity flow irrigation systems prevalent throughout the hill districts of Himachal Pradesh. Kuhls have been managed informally for centuries under the supervision of locally appointed watermasters. However, since the early 1950s formal committees have emerged as a common form of kuhl management organization. Fourteen of the kuhls which divert water from the Neugal River in Kangra now have committees. These committees are remarkable for their structural similarity: each consists of a governing body of elected officers which includes a President, sometimes Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer. Nominations and elections are usually held once a year. Most committees maintain a variety of written records. In this paper I address the following questions. What accounts for the recent emergence of these similar rational bureaucratic local organizations for water management? How do underlying social and ecological factors help account for the functional differences between structurally similar committees? Lastly, to what extent do they legitimize new forms of local authority and knowledge and thereby entail shifts in power from one group to another?"
Irrigation Networks in the Western Himalaya: Methodological and Conceptual Implications for Public Administration Theory
(1995) Baker, J. Mark
"Interconnected gravity flow irrigation systems (kuhls) in the western Himalaya provide fertile ground for developing methodologies and conceptual frameworks useful for analyzing public organization networks. This paper integrates resource dependence theory with insights drawn from the new institutionalism and population and human ecology to generate a model which suggests that under conditions of common environmental vulnerability, interconnectedness can become a resource which reduces the risk and uncertainty associated with unpredictable environmental perturbations. This proposition is tested by developing an empirical indicator of the structure of interconnectedness between kuhl irrigation systems and examining the relationship between interconnectedness and interkuhl coordination of water management activities. After analyzing the structure and effects of irrigation networks within one watershed, I examine the technical, embedded, cognitive and normative basis' for network coherence. The paper illustrates the methodological and conceptual challenges associated with moving beyond networks as metaphors for interorganizational relations to the network as a rigorous analytical construct."
Persistence, Transformation and Demise within the Gravity Flow Irrigation Systems (Kuhls) of Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh
(1997) Baker, J. Mark
"The inability of centrally organized, large scale irrigation and afforestation programs to efficiently and equitably manage water, forest, and related resources has led government planners, non-government organizations, and researchers to turn to local, community-based resource management alternatives. The advocacy of local, co-operative management of natural resources in recent years has produced India's widely acclaimed programs for Joint Forest Management (JFM), numerous water user's associations responsible for the management and distribution of water at the delivery end of large irrigation projects, and other local management initiatives such as pani panchayats and the revitalization of irrigation tanks. The devolution of management authority to more local arenas is aimed at promoting equitable resource management and investment in natural resource systems, reducing inefficient resource use and conflict between state and local entities, and satisfying local natural resource needs. However, the failure of centrally organized resource management programs does not imply the success of local,community-based resource management efforts. Key questions remain unanswered concerning the equity effects of local resource management, the conditions under which meaningful participation is more or less likely, the nature of state-local relations and their effects on resource management and use, the role of possible interdependent or exchange relations between different 'local' systems of resource use, and the patterns of investment and resource extraction associated with local resource management.By analyzing contemporary transformations in the farmer-managed gravity flow irrigation systems of Himachal Pradesh, known as kuhls, I hope to shed light on three issues pertinent to this workshop. The first concerns participation - what it is and when it occurs. I investigate the conditions under which local participation in water management is more or less likely, the factors which influence effective participation, and local responses to the problems and conflicts associated with declining participation. The second concerns state-local relations, by which I mean the relationships between local resource managers and users, and government agencies and the civil administration. The kuhl irrigation systems reflect a wide variety of different state roles in local irrigation management. I will discuss both the nature and effects of these different state roles, the influence of the bureaucratic state on kuhl organization and the effects of that organization on local power relations. Thirdly, I address the possible adaptive functions of inter-kuhl linkages. I show that many kuhls irrigate multiple villages and many villages are engaged with multiple kuhls. I suggest that the resulting networks of interdependent kuhls can facilitate the persistence of individual irrigation systems. This may be analogous to tank irrigation systems which, when viewed at a higher scale of analysis, become parts of larger basin-wide or regional water management systems."
The Politics of Ecological Knowledge: The Case of British Colonial Codification of 'Customary' Irrigation Practices in Kangra, India
(1999) Baker, J. Mark
"One of the hallmarks of British rule in India was the attempt to base colonial administrative rule on Indian customary laws. The requisite colonial knowledge for this was sought through the codification of Indian social customs, practices, and law. From the tenure of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of India, through to the last colonial census of India in the twentieth century, British rule in India was characterized by exhaustive efforts at cataloguing, classifying, and codifying what some Indians said about who they were and what they did. As many scholars have ably demonstrated, the project of gathering colonialist knowledge about 'authentic' Indian traditions was fraught with insurmountable challenges, not the least of which included the plurality and changing nature of Indian customs, the inherent relations of domination and subordination which characterized colonial interactions with Indians, the strategic or pragmatic decisions Indians made about how to represent themselves to colonial rulers, and the British tendency to reify ideas rooted in European social philosophy as Indian tradition."