Communities, Networks and the State: Continuity and Change among the Kuhl Irrigation Systems of the Western Himalaya (DRAFT MANUSCRIPT) BLOOMINGTON, IN 47408-3895 U.S.A. J. Mark Baker January 2001 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Shocks, Changes and the Kuhls of Kangra 1 Chapter 2 A Framework for Analyzing CPR Management Regimes 20 Chapter 3 Kangra as Place: The Ecological, Social and Agricultural Setting 46 Chapter 4 Kuhls and the State: A Historical Overview 83 Chapter 5 Patterns of Change Within the Kuhl Regimes of Kangra 113 Chapter 6 Networks of Interdependence .....146 Chapter 7 Conclusion 165 Bibliography. 174 Appendices Appendix I Summary Characteristics of Kuhl Regimes 185 Appendix II Two Kuhl Stories 187 Figures 2.1 Predicted Relationship Between the Variables "Core", "Interdependence", and "Dependence", and a CPR Regime's Capacity to Persist 32 3.1 Average Monthly Rainfall at Dharmsala (1968-1991) and Palampur (1977-1992) 48 3.2 Monthly Rainfall and Evaporation, Palampur, 1975-1991......... 49 3.3 Cultivated Area, Neugal Basin, 1851-1990 53 3.4 Population, Neugal Basin, 1951-1991 55 3.5 Agricultural and Nonagricultural Workers, Neugal Basin, 1961 -1991 55 3.6 Kharif and Rabi Cropping Pattern, District Kangra, 1988-89....'.. 59 3.7 Kharif and Rabi Cropping Patterns, Neugal Basin, 1991-92 59 6.1 A Diagrammatic Illustration of Unilateral and Mutual Dependence after p. 153 6.2 Kuhl Patterns of the Neugal Watershed after p. 156 6.3 Kuhl Patterns of Four Watersheds Adjacent to the Neugal after p. 156 HI Tables 1.1 The Major Kuhls of Kangra Valley, by Khad, by number of tikas (hamlets) each Kuhl Irrigates 12 3.1 Number and Proportion of Landholdings by Size Class, District Kangra, 1976-77 57 3.2 Average Yields of Important Crops, District Kangra, 1988-89 60 3.3 Irrigated and Rainfed Crop Yields (qtls/ha), Palampur 60 3.4 Percentages of Irrigated and Uninigated Land, by Tehsil, District Kangra, 1897 62 4.1 Origin of the Major Kuhls in Tehsils Kangra and Palampur 95 4.2 Origin Dates of Nine of the Nineteen State Sponsored Kuhls in Tehsils Kangra and Palampur 95 4.3 Percentages of Cultivated Land, District Kangra, by Caste, by Tehsil, 1919 108 4.4 Land Ownership, by Caste, Kangra Valley, 1890 108 5.1 Number of Days called for Khana, by number of farmers who came each day, Pathan Kuhl, 1978-1991.. 116 5.2 Kuhl Committees of the Neugal Basin, when and why started, by Kuhl 129 5.3 Average Participation Rates for Masanol, Gagruhl, Bhagotla and Pangwan Kuhls 133 6.1 Mauzas and Kuhls of the Neugal Basin, Right Bank 147 6.2 Mauzas and Kuhls of the Neugal Basin, Left Bank 148 6.3 Degree of Interlinkage and Nature and Extent of Interkuhl Coordination 151 Chapter One Shocks, Changes and the Kuhls of Kangra On April 4, 1905 a devastating earthquake struck Kangra Valley. In addition to the tragic loss of life (12,663 deaths were reported1), villages were levelled, roads were destroyed and bridges collapsed. The extensive networks of gravity flow irrigation systems, known locally as kuhls, were also severely damaged. The timing of the earthquake, at the beginning of the rice planting season, threatened famine later in the year because kuhls are the only source of irrigation water until the onset of the monsoon in late . June; had the summer paddy crop failed, Kangra's relative isolation from the plains to the south would have made famine relief difficult. The British colonial government, aware of the ramifications of interrupted irrigation, mobilized the expertise and labor of soldiers in military engineering units known as Sappers and Miners to rebuild and repair the destroyed irrigation structures. By the third week of April the Chief Secretary of the Punjab Government cabled the Government of India Home Department Secretary that "...Sappers and Miners have commenced work on [the] irrigation heads of Baner stream..." and "A fourth double company of Pioneers [have] arrived Shahpur and will join the Sappers and Miners in repairing the irrigation channels which take out of the Baner in neighborhood of Kangra...".2 With the help of the British army the irrigation channels were repaired. Nearly fifty years later, in 1952, a different type of environmental shock struck the kuhl irrigation systems of an adjacent mountain river, the Neugal. During a torrential monsoon downpour a landslide in the narrow canyon headwaters temporarily dammed the Neugal.3 Eventually the force of the rising waters burst the debris dam sending a wall of water and debris raging down the streambed. The destructive force of the wall of water eroded large areas of fertile agricultural fields, destroyed the cliffside portions and diversion structures of many kuhls, and changed the course of the Neugal. Two kuhls in the middle reaches of the watershed, Patnuhl and Menjha, were among those the flood destroyed. However, Patnuhl Kuhl, just upstream from Menjha Kuhl, was less severely damaged and within a few weeks the irrigators of both were able to repair Patnuhl. For the next three years, until Menjha Kuhl's diversion structure was successfully relocated 50 meters upstream and a new cliffside channel constructed, farmers from Menjha Kuhl received irrigation water from Patnuhl Kuhl. 1Middleton, L. 1919. Final Report of the Third Revised Land Revenue Settlement of the Palampur, Kangra and Nurpur Tehsils of the Kangra District, 1913-1919. Lahore: Government Printing, p.5. 2Telegrams no. 239 and 240 dated 23 April 1905. From Chief Secretary to the Gov't of the Punjab, to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department. Delhi: National Archives. 3 See Agarwal et al. (1991) for a discussion of landslide dams in the Himalaya, including their frequency and large contribution to overall erosion and sediment loads. 2 During the last fifty years changes in the political economy of the region have further challenged the ability of farmers to maintain the integrity of the kuhl systems on which they still depend for summer and winter crop irrigation. While less dramatic than earthquakes and floods, the changes are pervasive. They include increased household engagement with the market economy, primarily in the form of outmigration for employment. Male outmigration has differentiated the interest in and dependence on agriculture among households with or without access to remittance incomes; households with high remittance incomes and low male labor availability at home have resorted to social fallowing in which agricultural terraces are converted to fodder production. , Outmigration has created acute labor shortages for communal tasks, challenging capacities to mobilize adequate labor for annual kuhl repair and maintenance. And it has exacerbated caste and class based inequalities, which stretch the conflict resolution capacities of kuhl regimes. Some kuhl regimes were unable to manage the internal tensions resulting from these changes and shocks. Their channels lie defunct. However, at the cusp of the new millennium, most kuhl channels still brim with water during the crucial pre-monsoon irrigation season and also during the winter wheat growing season. Kuhl regimes demonstrate the potential resiliency of institutions for common property resource management in their ability to maintain their physical and institutional integrity despite these sorts of shocks and transformations. Key Questions and Explanatory Threads 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, micro- level 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. Four intellectual strands, each representing a different scale and set of relations, must be