Aalborg Universitet Irrigation Management in Nepal's Dhaulagiri Zone Institutional Responses to Social, Political and Economic Change Berg, Torsten Rødel Publication date: 2008 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Berg, T. R. (2008). Irrigation Management in Nepal's Dhaulagiri Zone: Institutional Responses to Social, Political and Economic Change. SPIRIT. Spirit PhD Series No. 16 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? 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Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: November 28, 2020 SPIRIT Doctoral Programme Aalborg University Fibigerstraede 2-97 DK-9220 Aalborg East Phone: +45 9940 7195 Fax: +45 9635 0044 Mail: [email protected] Irrigation Management in Nepal’s Dhaulagiri Zone: Institutional Responses to Social, Political and Economic Change Torsten Rødel Berg SPIRIT PhD Series Thesis no. 16 ISSN: 1903-7783 © 2008 Torsten Rødel Berg Irrigation Management in Nepal’s Dhaulagiri Zone: Institutional Responses to Social, Political and Economic Change SPIRIT – Doctoral Programme Aalborg University Denmark SPIRIT PhD Series Thesis no. 16 ISSN 1903-7783 Published by SPIRIT & Department of History, International and Social Studies Aalborg University Distribution Download as PDF on http://spirit.ihis.aau.dk/ Front page lay-out Cirkeline Kappel The Secretariat SPIRIT Fibigerstraede 2, room 97 Aalborg University DK-9220 Aalborg East Denmark Tel. + 45 9940 7195 Fax. + 45 9635 0044 E-mail: [email protected] Homepage: http://spirit.ihis.aau.dk/ Irrigation Management in Nepal’s Dhaulagiri Zone: Institutional Responses to Social, Political and Economic Change A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.d in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Aalborg University by Torsten Rødel Berg Department of History, International and Social Studies March, 2008 Acknowledgements The Danish Council for Development Research funded this research for two and a half years, for which I am very grateful. Since the commencement of the research in late 2004, I have been associated with the Development and International Relations (DIR) research unit at Aalborg University’s Department of History, International and Social Studies (IHIS), where I have also been employed as an external lecturer. I am grateful to an enormous number of people for their support throughout the process of this research. I wish to thank my primary supervisor, Johannes Dragsbæk Schmidt of Development and International Relations, and my secondary supervisor, Helle Munk Ravnborg of the Danish Institute for International Studies, for their invaluable guidance. They may not know it themselves but Jytte Agergaard from the Department of Geography at Copenhagen and Neil Webster from the Danish Institute for International Studies inspired me to go ahead with the studies in the first place. Thank you. As a ‘development practitioner’, it was quite a change for me to re-enter academia, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly because of my colleagues at Development and International Relations, including Vibeke Andersson, Annette Kanstrup Jensen, Jacques Hersch, Jens Müller, Li Xing, Mammo Muchie, Louise Takeda, Corrie McDougall, Berhanu Balcha, and Mona Dam. On the administrative side, I wish to thank Marianne Høgsbro, Helle Weiergang, and Jytte Kongstad. You have always been helpful, as have Morten Mortensen and Louise at the Computer Unit. I have also benefited a great deal from meeting inspiring individuals in various research networks, including the Danish Water Forum (Research), the Danish Association of Development Research (FAU), and the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). Jan Grønnebæk deserves special thanks for listening to my ideas during runs, and Derrick Olesen for a language check of the research proposal. In Nepal, I wish to express sincere thanks to Helle and Jeevan Shrestha, their sons Victor and Vincent, and their extended family in Kupondole. Your friendship and hospitality made my stay very pleasant. I am also indebted to Leyla Tegmo-Reddy of the International Labour Organization in Kathmandu for providing office space and access to various resources, and to Sita Gurung for her assistance. The assistance of Yogendra Pant, the then chairperson of the NGO the Dhaulagiri Community Resource Development Centre (DCRDC), was crucial, as was that of field assistants Tara Nath Acharya and Nir Bahadur Thapa, at a time when doing rural research was not without risks. May the DCRDC continue to provide development alternatives in the Dhaulagiri Zone. I wish to thank Professor Manandhar and Dr Poudel of the Central Department of Geography, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, for affiliating me, and Dr Gurung at Prithivi Narayan Campus in Pokhara for providing access to historical data and for working (along with Dr Poudel) with me in Mustang. Also in Nepal, thanks to Subarna Kapali for assistance with the database. My former colleagues, Devendra Adhikari and Manu Thapa of Danida’s Energy Sector Assistance Programme, deserve many thanks for their support, and for helping me out with the maps. Thanks to Marcus Moench of the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, as well as Prachanda Pradhan of the Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems Promotion Trust for advice on the direction of the research, to Jenny Riley for responsive editing, and to Finn Thilsted and his colleagues at the Royal Danish Embassy for providing feedback to my ideas, and to Nogendra Sapkota, Asian Development Bank for discussions and secondary data. Much of the data in this thesis date back to the 1990s, and I wish to extend my sincere thanks to all former colleagues in the Dhaulagiri Irrigation Development Project who contributed to making that project and my time there so special: thanks to Chris Baker, chief technical adviser, for giving me interesting assignments, and to H.S.S. Fonseka with whom I spent many interesting moments. I owe a very special thanks to the farmers of the Dhaulagiri Zone for giving me their time, both in the 1990s and the 2000s. My wife Sussie deserves the deepest thanks of all for putting up with a frequently absent husband, and for keeping our daughters, Frida and Maja, happy. I could not have done this without your support. Torsten Rødel Berg, March 2008. Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 The Focus, the Purpose and the Problem of the Thesis 1 1.2 Points of Departure 2 1.2.1 “Nepal is a Landlocked Country……” 2 1.2.2 Irrigation Systems and Agrarian Change 5 1.2.3 The Dhaulagiri Irrigation Development Project 7 Chapter 2 Towards Re-thinking of Irrigation and Rural Development 10 2.1 Introduction 10 2.2 Defining and Understanding Institutions: The Main Positions 11 2.3 Theoretical Trajectory of ‘The Local Resource Management 13 Institutions’ in Rural Development 2.3.1 Emergence of a Dominant Discourse: Enter the 15 ‘Local Resource Management Institution’ 2.4 The Limitations of Collective Action Approaches 18 2.5 Competing Perspectives 19 2.5.1 Common Property Resources or Common 20 Property Regimes? 2.5.2 ‘Property, Access and Entitlement’ Approaches 22 2.6 Towards Re-thinking 23 2.6.1 Property as a Dynamic of Rural Change 24 2.6.2 Access as a Dynamic of Social and Economic 25 Change 2.6.3 Entitlement and Livelihood Approaches 26 2.6.4 Livelihoods, Diversification and Common 29 Property Regimes 2.6.5 The Role of Geography 32 2.7 Collective Action, Property, Access and Entitlements as 34 Ingredients in a Re-thinking of Approaches 2.7.1 Collective Action Frameworks as Tools for 34 Measuring Performance 2.7.2 Changing Common Property Regimes as 35 Subsumed in Rural Change 2.7.3 Understanding Irrigation in Regional 35 Historical Perspectives 2.7.4 Strands of Access 35 2.7.5 Access and the Political-economic Moment 35 2.7.6 Livelihoods Analysis as an Integrating Framework 36 Chapter 3 Methodological Approach 37 3.1 Introduction 37 3.2 Perspectives on Repeat-Study Methodology 39 3.3 The Comparative Base 40 3.4 The 2004 (Cross-Sectional) Repeat-Survey 41 3.5 The Qualitative Surveys 44 3.6 Notes on other Sources of Data 45 3.7 Notes on the Timeframe 45 3.8 Data Collection during War Time 45 Chapter 4 1990-2005 as ‘the Political-Economic Moment’ 48 4.1 Introduction 48 4.2 The Role of Democratic Policies 49 4.3 Access to Information 52 4.4 The Economic Environment and its Rural Development Planning Framework 53 4.5 Migration and Remittances 54 4.6 The Feminization of Rural Life 56 4.7 An Episode: Coming Full Circle -The End of the Democratic Era 57 4.7.1 Democratic Regression 57 4.7.2 Donors and the Conflict 59 Chapter 5 The Study Area 61 5.1 Introduction 61 5.2 Before the Road 62 5.3 An Episode: Opaque and Visible Change 64 5.4 Studies on the Area 67 5.5 Characteristics of the Dhaulagiri Zone and the Western Development