In 1947, British India-the part of South Asia that is today's
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh-emerged from the colonial era with
the world's largest centrally managed canal irrigation
infrastructure. However, as vividly illustrated by Tushaar Shah,
the orderly irrigation economy that saved millions of rural poor
from droughts and famines is now a vast atomistic system of widely
dispersed tube-wells that are drawing groundwater without permits
or hindrances. Taming the Anarchy is about the development of this
chaos and the prospects to bring it under control. It is about both
the massive benefit that the irrigation economy has created and the
ill-fare it threatens through depleted aquifers and pollution.
Tushaar Shah brings exceptional insight into a socio-ecological
phenomenon that has befuddled scientists and policymakers alike. In
systematic fashion, he investigates the forces behind the
transformation of South Asian irrigation and considers its social,
economic, and ecological impacts. He considers what is unique to
South Asia and what is in common with other developing regions. He
argues that, without effective governance, the resulting
groundwater stress threatens the sustenance of the agrarian system
and therefore the well being of the nearly one and a half billion
people who live in South Asia. Yet, finding solutions is a
formidable challenge. The way forward in the short run, Shah
suggests, lies in indirect, adaptive strategies that change the
conduct of water users. From antiquity until the 1960's,
agricultural water management in South Asia was predominantly the
affair of village communities and/or the state. Today, the region
depends on irrigation from some 25 million individually owned
groundwater wells. Tushaar Shah provides a fascinating economic,
political, and cultural history of the development and use of
technology that is also a history of a society in transition. His
book provides powerful ideas and lessons for researchers,
historians, and policy
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