Changing Contexts, Steady Flows: Explaining Patterns of Institutional Change within the Gravity Flow Irrigation Systems (Kuhls) of Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India

Abstract

"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."