Access and Rights, Conflict and Cooperation: Water Resource Governance

in Chotanagpur, Jharkhand

Joe Hill

Supervisors: Dr Nitya Rao, Dr Bruce LankfordSchool of Development Studies, UEA

Overview of Presentation

• Introduction• Context: Water and Society in

India• Context: Chotanagpur, Jharkhand• Case-Study Village• Conceptual Framework

– Water Rights and Institutions– Processes of Negotiation– External Interventions

• Research Questions• Methodology: Epistemology and

Research Methods

Introduction

• Watershed development widespread in rainfed India• Poor implementation & inappropriate technology• Policy: failure of ‘community’, solution=participation• Policy: no mention of water rights & institutions• Research: attention to water lags behind land & forest

Why? Researchers – ‘mobile’ water difficult Policy-makers – claim state ‘ownership’

• This study: broader view of water rights• Political and actor-orientated approach• Water as a productive and symbolic resource• Research contribution: Regional study of water rights

Policy recommendations - acknowledge water rights?

Context: Water and Society in India

• In India, 2 major positions on water and dev’t– 1st: Environmentalist critique of state– 2nd: Reformist policies

• Off-shoot: decentralised participatory NRM– New ‘paradigm’ or ‘tyranny’?

• ‘Participatory’ watershed management• Min. Rural Dev’t: new ‘revised’ guidelines

2001– Multiple ‘new’ organisations, stress PRA– Target: Resource poor in watershed

• Critiques: – Limited to ‘good’ facilitating NGOs– State view water scarcity as natural, real,

chronic– Amenable to technical, apolitical solutions– Undermine existing water allocation institutions– Restructure water rights, miss opportunities

Context: Water and Society in India

• Statutory, or de jure, water rights: – No single system – British riparian laws = root cause of inequity?– Not clearly defined

• Customary, or de facto, water rights: – Interwoven with state legal history– Non-static, often contested– Claims negotiated with reference to courts– Disputes settled primarily thro’ self-organisation – State view: customs only source law if recorded

• Water rights: – Distinction between access and

control/management– Related to social and power relations– Related to land tenure systems

Context: Chotanagpur, Jharkhand

• Chotanagpur: one of India’s poorest regions• Agriculture:

– Uplands, rainfed agriculture, one crop/year– Rainfall high but erratic, run-off high– Soil classification: Low-land, middle, upland

• Other livelihoods: local waged, migration• Exploitation of minerals and forest• Adivasis, sadans, 1930s call for ‘Jharkhand’• 2000, new state of Jharkhand• Jharkhand: most ‘food insecure’, high

poverty• Political instability:

– No panchayat elections held– Naxalites controlling rural areas

Case-Study Village

• Multi-ethnic: adivasi, hindu, muslim• 2 ongoing water resource interventions:

– Watershed development, NGO as PIA– Pond construction

• Past projects: pond, bunds, hand-pumps• Indigenous water harvesting structures• Naxalites (MCC): forest user committee

Conceptual Framework

• Focus of this study: water rights and institutions, with a view to explaining how through their explicit acknowledgement and recognition in state policies, delivery mechanisms of water-related interventions could have more favourable outcomes

Water rights and Institutions

Processes of NegotiationInfluenced by Social and

Power Relations

Water-related State Development

Interventions

Social Actors

The Water Resource

Water Governance

Socio-economicOutcomes

Conceptual Framework: Water Rights and

Institutions

• Legal pluralism: multiple legal and normative frameworks coexist:– Government, religious, customary, project rules, unwritten norms– Historical perspective– Local perspectives, daily experiences, meanings, options for acquiring

• Actor-orientated approach: Social actor– Agency: capacity to process information, devise ways of coping with

life– Strategies, processes of change, links local to larger-scale phenomena

• Institutions: broader than organisations– Water rights, markets, social networks, other intangible aspects of

society

• Cultural values and meanings of water: productive and symbolic

Conceptual Framework: Processes of Negotiation

• Negotiation process is a continuing interaction– Actors use ‘bundle of rights’ to access water for certain purposes– ‘Formal’ meetings, to less visible struggles, e.g. abstention– Distinction between water allocation, and water distribution

• Water Rights:– Are a base for claims to water, but environmental context

provides actual distribution– Therefore they structure social relations and practice, by

establishing notional principles for discourse and negotiation– Discourse continuing process - actors (re)construct rules/rights– Formed and structured by social relations and practice

Conceptual Framework: Processes of Negotiation

• Negotiation linked to knowledge processes:– Exist in very unequal power relationships– To understand: actors’ strategies, manoeuvres, discourse

• Power: relational, cannot be possessed, accumulated, imposed• Visualise unequal power relations:

– Spatial patterns of control and resistance– Nodes of control and resistance

• Power analysis:– Should not restrict to understanding social constraints, access to

resources– Should not restrict to rigid hierarchical categories– Explore actors’ perceptions: capabilities to manoeuvre, to devise

strategies– Subordinate are not powerless, ‘powerful’ are not fully in control– Comparison of ‘public transcript’ and ‘hidden transcripts’ (Infrapolitics)

Conceptual Framework: External Interventions

• State interventions and water rights - unsuccessful:– May restructure unproductively unless negotiated– Rights embedded in existing physical infrastructure– ‘Bestowed’ rights not treated seriously– May erode local rights, expand state rights, strengthen ‘new’

claimants– Overlaid on existing schemes, transformed institutions persist

• State interventions and water rights - successful:– Honour existing rights and institutions/social relations– However, multiple complications with renegotiation of rights– Different bases for claims have implications e.g. prior appropriation

Research Questions

External interventions: • How do interventions acknowledge, get affected by, and impact

upon:– Water rights and institutions– Processes of negotiation, and cooperation and/or conflict– Material and symbolic social relations

Water rights and institutions:• How can the following be defined and differentiated, and how

have they changed over time:– Social actors, water and land resources– Multiple legal and normative frameworks of water rights– Water-related institutions

Processes of Negotiation:• In which various ways and forms do:

– Social actors negotiate over water– More powerful actors seek to exert control over water– Power relations manifest themselves in terms of water– Weaker actors resist more powerful actors’ control and use

of water

Methodology: Epistemology

and Research Methods

• Social constructionist• Ethnographic and qualitative

– Observation, interview, informants…– Social and natural resource mapping– Oral histories/case studies– Ongoing interpretation of above

• Intervention and policy documents• Archival research

Thanks, any comments very welcome