Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India 0195682173, 9780195682175

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Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Drowned and Dammed (p.ii) (p.iii) Drowned and Dammed

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Title Pages by Oxford University Press, New Delhi © Oxford University Press 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN-13: 978-0-19-568217-5 ISBN-10: 0-19-568217-3 Typeset in Berkeley 10/12.5 by Paragon Prepress Inc., New Delhi 110 019 Printed at Ram Printograph, Delhi 110 051 Published by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001

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Dedication

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Dedication (p.v) For Karelia, Karissa, Kiara, Ryan, and Kay Mansfield (p.vi)

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Maps, Figures, and Tables

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

(p.viii) Maps, Figures, and Tables Maps 1. Deltaic Districts in Colonial Orissa 21 2. Deltaic Rivers of Orissa 29 3. Canals and Embankments in Deltaic Orissa Between pages 144-5 Figures 1.1 Schematic Representation of Main Features of a River System 25 1.2 Deltaic Rivers of Orissa and their Major Distributaries in 1877 28 1.3 Kuakhai and its Distributaries 30 3.1 Erosion and Enlargement of the Kathjuri River Head 116 3.2 Captain Shorts’ Masonry Groyne at Naraj 117 Tables 1.1 The Catchment and the Delta 31 1.2 Rainfall in the Catchment and Deltas of Orissa 31 1.3 Discharging Capacity of Orissa’s Deltaic Rivers 32 2.1 Maratha Collections 55 3.1 Dimensions of Three Embankments in 1805 98 3.2 Average Annual Expenditure on Embankments for Different Time Periods 106 3.3 Recommendations for Controlling the Mahanadi (1856–9) 118 4.1 Rent and Water Rate in Pargana Matkutnuggur 142 II.i Deltaic Area Protected in Orissa 228 II.ii Irrigated and Protected Lands: Gubbay’s Note of July 1923 228 Page 1 of 2

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Maps, Figures, and Tables II.iii J. Shaw’s Note to the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee 1939–40 229

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Preface and Acknowledgements

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

(p.ix) Preface and Acknowledgements This book argues that British colonialism assembled the idea and practice of flood-control in the Orissa Delta centrally as a political project. It contends that the many colonial attempts to dominate the region’s rivers were inextricably entwined with imperatives for disciplining the local populace and forging specific economic and social relations. In the course of over a century of torturous hydraulic interventions, British colonialism brought about a massive and unprecedented ecological rupture in the delta. Put differently, through the rubric of flood-control, the Orissa Delta was transformed from being a flooddependent agrarian regime into a flood-vulnerable landscape. This ecological rupture, I argue, revealed the particularities of colonial capitalism in its relationships to the natural world. In other words, the logic and calculation of colonial capitalism as a social form could be made operable in the delta only with the latter being transformed into a flood-vulnerable landscape. In thus arguing that flood-control must essentially be unravelled not as a listing of technical interventions but as a narrative about political economy, this book is aimed as an effort to further broaden explorations in environmental history, political ecology, and contemporary concerns on capitalism. India, in many ways, makes for compelling studies on the linkages between water histories, hydraulic technologies, and politics. In particular, in the early 1990s, two massive popular movements erupted against large dams, the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the anti-Tehri Dam agitation. These movements, perhaps for the first time, loudly revealed the sordid connections between power, exclusion, enclosure, ecological destruction, and the diversion of resources for elite consumption. These popular protests fundamentally unsettled the reigning belief, till then, that Multi-Purpose River Development was politically neutral and a technical means for embracing development. Since then, campaigns directly or indirectly around water have moved to the Page 1 of 4

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Preface and Acknowledgements centrestage of the Indian (p.x) political landscape. One cannot but notice the regular and thick flow of reports about river disputes between states, popular struggles against groundwater extraction by private corporations, farmer agitations for irrigation water, urban anxieties about meeting water requirements and so on and so forth. To explore these many dimensions of the water question in India, however, scholarship requires to move along the contemporary terrains of political economy and to track the details petrified in archives or even the quiet notings in an irrigation engineer’s diary—a task this book attempts in a modest way. Drowned and Dammed is based largely on my PhD thesis submitted to the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Many of the ideas as they were then being fleshed out at the thesis stage, drew from a wide circle of friends, activists, peers, and an equally voluminous number of voices who emphatically dismissed the project. It would be an impossible attempt to recollect in any meaningful order the long list of debts incurred. Nonetheless, I acknowledge, value, and gratefully express my deepest gratitude to Dunu Roy, Dinesh Mishra, Mahesh Rangarajan, Biswamoy Pati, Satyajit Singh, Joseph Mathai, Bela Malik, Thomas Mathew, Harish Damodaran, Archana Prasad, Vasant Saberwal, Amita Baviskar, Ram Rawat, Sushil Aaron, Soumyajit Bhattacharya, Deepak Kumar, Pranob Mukhopadhyay, Deborah Sutton, Ashish Kothari, Ramachandra Guha, Keith Meadowcroft, Carey Watt, D. Manjit, Subrat Raut, Satish Saberwal, Ravi Rajan, Indivar Kamtekar, Padmanabh Samarandra, Sangeeta Dasgupta, Amar Farooqui, Sahiba, Harsh Dobhal, Rohit Bhargava, Ashok Prasad, Amarjeet Prasad Singh, Rama Vasudevan, and Chandra Bhan Prasad. In Orissa, I was sustained and helped by many. Colleagues at the Regional Centre for Development Cooperation made my fieldwork possible in 1995. I thank Sushil Bhai, Biranchi, Tapan, Pinku, Manauj, and Biren. I also warmly thank Sulekha and P. K. Patnaik for shelter and affection during one of my visits. Mr Hota put me up in his residence without demur, despite my extended stay. Sadhana Satpathy and Shakti Padhi were generous hosts and showed a keen interest in my work. I was enabled to revisit and rework many of the arguments and claims by two helpful and generous postdoctoral fellowships. As a fellow at the Agrarian Studies at Yale University (1999–2000), I immeasurably benefited from the vigorous and dazzling scholarship of my co-fellows. 1 enthusiastically thank Henry Bernstein, Cindy Hahamovitch, Scott (p.xi) Nelson Jeanette Keith, Joan Matinez-Alier, Gabrile Rasuly-Paleczek, and Paula Worby. Richard Grove and Vinita Damodaran made my stay in New Haven eventful, dangerous, and at times simply colourful. Gaston Gordillo was exceptional for his friendship and, of course, for making it theoretically known that good scholarship is not ‘boring’. My experiences at the Agrarian Studies programme, however, would be Page 2 of 4

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Preface and Acknowledgements incomplete without mentioning the warmth and care of Aran Agarwal, Rebecca Hardin, Susan Cook, Charles, Sam, Harold Forsythe, Clement, and Jessica Stites. Also particularly endearing was the affection of Anders Corr, Janet Laible, Anne Louis Antonoff, Amy Poteete, and many other students who frequented the Friday colloquiums. All of these wonderful times, however, were made possible under the overarching umbrella of Jim Scott’s great nurturing spirit. And last but not least, three cheers to Kay Mansfield: the heart and soul of the programme. My two years as the Ciriacy-Wantrup Fellow (2000–2) at Berkeley, University of California, were equally rewarding. At Berkeley I had the luxury of rethinking the project anew. The idea of the book was redrawn in the long scholarly shadows cast by Richard Norgaard, Tim Duane, Michael Watts, Nancy Peluso, Ian Boals, and Judy Guthman. The course I took on ‘river restoration’ by Mathais Kondolf turned out to be profoundly influential in shaping my understanding of hydrology. I also benefited immensely from an exciting and talented set of scholars and friends. In particular, I thank Jake Kosek, Dena Woolwine, Donna Green, Kate Blumberg, Liza Grandia, Heather Alden, Paul Baer, Jacquelin Cochran, Priya Joshi, Isha Ray, John Roosa, Hala, and Arne Jacobson. I warmly thank Donald Moore for allowing me to stay in his beautiful house. Lawrence Cohen was the equivalent of my local guardian at Berkeley. I treasure and value greatly his affection and friendship. Donna Bridges and Sandra Dovali were comrades. They kept my scholarship going with great humour and kindness. For my introduction to the ‘Californian way of life’, I owe much to Ilana Umansky, Lilia Carol, Joyce Scott, and John; especially for the invitation at their retreat in the Sierra’s for Thanksgiving. In my second year at Berkeley, I moved to San Francisco and soaked in the incredible company of Shellie Corman and her charmed circle of friends. I thank many times over, for this exceptional period of wonderment, Danny, Nouchine, Mel, Ondria, Harry, Judy, Masimo, and Pica. Acknowledgements and gratitude are also in order for the staff at the many libraries and research centres I frequented. Much thanks to the staff (p.xii) at the Orissa State Archives (Bhubaneswar), Central Irrigation Library (Directorate of Designs, Bhubaneswar), Jawaharlal Nehru University Library (Delhi), Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Simla), National Archives of India (Delhi), Nehru Memorial and Museum Library (Delhi), Central Water Commission Library (Delhi), Sterling Memorial Library (New Haven), Mudd Library (New Haven), New York Public Library (New York), Bancroft Library (Berkeley), Water Resources Centre Archives (Berkeley), and the Oriental and India Office Collection (London). Revised versions or parts of this book had earlier appeared as journal articles. A version of Chapter 2 had appeared as ‘Rigidity and the Affliction of Capitalist Property: Colonial Land Revenue and the Recasting of Nature’, Studies in History, 20(2), 2004. Sections of Chapter 4 were published as ‘Canal Irrigation and the Conundrum of Flood-protection: The Failure of the Orissa Scheme of Page 3 of 4

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Preface and Acknowledgements 1863 in Eastern India’, Studies in History, 19(1), 2003. Parts of Chapter 6 had been published as ‘Damming the Mahanadi River: The Emergence of MultiPurpose River Valley Development in India (1943–46)’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 40(1), 2003. Many of the arguments in Drowned and Dammed had also been previously vetted, criticized, and improved through presentations at several colloquiums, conferences, and seminars at Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Yale University, University of California, University of Edinburgh, and at Sussex University. The final stages of turning Drowned and Dammed into the book form were nerve-racking. I owe a special thanks to Shashank Sinha at Oxford University Press, who ensured a soft landing in the final jump. Ritupan Goswami put the bibliography together and helped me cross the t’s and dot the i’s. As I wind towards the end of my acknowledgements, I wish to warmly express my affection to a host of friends who suffered me for many years in particular, Amol Kahlon, Sujata Patnaik, Prabhat, Riho Isaka, Ravikant, Shahana, Harish Dhawan, Rajesh Mahapatra, Daman, Sharmila, Julia Shaw, Sanjay, Andrew Nash, Sara Davis, Vinita, Nivedita Majumdar, Vivek Chibber, and Narendra Rana. Malavika Kasturi will be special for ‘talking me through’ a very difficult period. Though knowing fully well that a brief mention in a preface cannot express my deep gratitude to members of my family and those who became family as the years drifted by; nonetheless, my warmest thanks to Joseph Mathai, Snehlata (Bulbul) Gupta, Revathi, Sunil Prabhu, Lora Prabhu, Diya, Thomas Mathew, Bela Malik, Richard Grove, Vinita Damodaran, Sita (p.xiii) Damodaran, Edwin, Ram, Lisa, and Lila. Reaven supported me through most of my PhD and Ryna made sure that I had someone to report to and was accountable. Glorious thanks to Raj, Najida, Karelia, Karissa, Kiara, and Ryan. Mention is also to be made of the long list of family at Bolkunjay West: the Sequiera’s, D’Souza’s, Martis’, D’Cruzs’, and the Castellinos. And finally Yu Sasaki for her companionship and having made many things possible.

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Abbreviations

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

(p.xiv) Abbreviations B&O: Bihar and Orissa Files BP: Board Proceedings BPP: Bengal Past and Present BRP: Bengal Revenue Proceedings CDR: Cuttack District Records C&S: Conservation and Society CIWAB: Central Irrigation and Water Advisory Board CTPB: Central Technical and Power Board CR: Calcutta Review CWINC: Central Water Irrigation and Navigation Commission DVC: Damodar Valley Corporation EA: The Eastern Anthropologist E&H: Environment and History EMB: Embankment Branch Page 1 of 4

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Abbreviations EIB: Embankment and Irrigation Branch EICC: East India Irrigation and Canal Company EM: Environmental Management EPW: Economic and Political Weekly ER: embankment rate FD: Finance Department, Planning Branch GIP: Global Integrity Project GOI: Government of India HE: Human Ecology IECH: Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health IESHR: Indian Economic and Social History Review IHR: Indian Historical Review JAS: Journal of Asian Studies JEH: The Journal of Economic History JPS: Journal of Peasant Studies LRD: Land Revenue Department (p.xv) MAS: Modern Asian Studies NAI: National Archives of India, Delhi NMML: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi MICC: Madras Irrigation and Canal Company MPRVD: Multi-Purpose River Valley Development OHRJ: Page 2 of 4

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Abbreviations The Orissa Historical Research Journal OIOC: Oriental India Office Collection, London OLAP: Orissa Legislative Assembly Proceedings OR: owner’s rate OSA: Orissa State Archives, Bhubaneswar, Orissa PB: Planning Branch PWD: Public Works Department RCC: Reconstruction Committee of Council RD: Revenue Department SIH: Studies in History SSR: S.L. Maddox, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement of the Province of Orissa (Temporarily Settled Areas) 1890 to 1900, vols 1 and 2, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1904. TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority WR: water rate WMLR: William Mary Law Review

Conversion Factors 1 rupee = 16 annas 1 anna = 6 pice 1 lakh = 1,00,000 1 mile = 1.609 kilometres 1 hectare = 2.471 acres 1 square miles = 640 acres 1 square kilometres = 100 hectares (0.3861 square miles)

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Abbreviations Weights

Local weights and measures varied greatly within coastal Orissa. While the standard weight in which rice was sold was in gaunis, large quantities were sold in bharans. In Cuttack and Puri Districts, a bharan was generally 80 gaunis and a bharan varied between 6 and 10 standard maund. A maund was roughly equal to 48 kilogrammes. Area

The man varied between 0.248 of an acre and 1.39 acres in different parts of coastal Orissa. The begha approximates an acre. (p.xvi)

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Introduction

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Introduction Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords The Introduction gives outlines the previous debates on India’s ecological past and provides an overview of the book. In bringing together past debates, the Introduction discusses works of Ian Whitcombe, David Gilmartin, Nirmal Sengupta, the Centre for Science and Environment, David Hardiman, and Indu Agnihotri. It also discusses the four broad themes on which structure the book. The first underlines the need for a notion of ‘ecological integrity’ in order to track ecological transformation and thereby help situate the society/nature dynamic. The second theme explores the link between capitalist property and environmental change. The third theme discusses the attempts of the colonial government to overcome the crisis created by capitalist property by trying to regulate the Orissa Delta’s river system and commodifying it through the Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863. Keywords:   Ian Whitcombe, David Gilmartin, Nirmal Sengupta, Centre for Science and Environment, David Hardiman, Indu Agnihotri, ecological integrity, commodification of nature, Orissa Canal Scheme, 1863, environmental change

On that ‘fateful day’ of 31 August 1982, wrote Durga Charan Mohanty, floods overwhelmed Orissa in a mahapralaya (great deluge). Surging waters roiled eight of the state’s thirteen administrative districts and ‘seriously affected’ 10 million people. Once formidable looking embankments, canal lines, and irrigation channels now lay cut up and breached in close to a thousand odd places. Crops were swamped and ravaged in approximately 11,00,000 hectares, while close to 6,000 km of roads were washed away and about 8,000 villages were submerged.1 In the inconsolable sorrow of this ‘great deluge’, it was Page 1 of 17

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Introduction apparent that the government’s many laboured efforts to tame the delta’s ‘recalcitrant’ rivers had been brutally confounded. Possibly, for most of the flood victims as well, this moment of truth had also brought home the rude fact that the much celebrated Hirakud Dam, towering astride the Mahanadi River in steel and cement, could never be the final answer to their countless prayers. Nevertheless, Mohanty insistently declared, in his Communist Party of India pamphlet, the solution to the ‘problem’ lay in ‘taming nature’ and urged the government to complete in haste a slew of flood-control schemes: namely, the Bhimkund, Indrabati, Upper Kolab, and the Manibhadra projects.2 His suggestions calling for the permanent containment of flooding rivers with renewed administrative vigour, however, flowed along a well-furrowed precedence, chiefly assembled in the early decades of the nineteenth century. According to this much troubled quest, seasonal deltaic flooding was cast principally as a ‘natural calamity’ that excited an immediate and necessary response in the form of structural measures such as embankments, canals, and perhaps even a large dam. This practice of structural flood-control in the course of over a century in the delta had so tightly woven notions about hydraulic volatility with pleas for elegant engineering solutions that what was a mere admixture of guess work and confusion in the initial years soon got transformed into the (p.2) swagger of a scientific truth. In fact, such insistent demands for structural flood-control inevitably acted to shape and produce its own object—flood vulnerability as a natural calamitous event. The linear deployment of sturdier hydraulic technologies, however, did not lead to unqualified engineering triumph. Floodcontrol initiatives were constantly harassed, dogged, undermined, and foiled by innumerable counter events—of the delta’sinhabitants being fatally wounded by rampaging waters, engineering hubris shredded by ferocious river currents, popular destruction of the embankments, protests against the canal system, dissent by hydraulic engineers against river control, and the spectacular soaking of the entire delta, as on that fateful day of 1982. A historical account of floodcontrol in the Orissa Delta, in other words, cannot be meaningfully described as a debate about the success or failure of the attempted conquest of nature through inert physical structures of cement, motor, and concrete. Rather, I argue, the idea and practice of flood-control should be unravelled as an ideological construct and as an artefact assembled by specific political economies. Consequently, when inserted into explorations of the broader momentum of colonial capitalism, the study of flood-control can be more squarely revealed as being integral to strategies for empire. It is by thus uncovering and throwing beams of searching light on these hitherto hidden political and economic roots of flood-control that the latter’s contradictory narrative is exposed not merely as the technical means for dominating rivers but instead as a critical element to the colonial political project itself. But in this attempted disciplining of the subjects of empire through the control of river Page 2 of 17

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Introduction systems, the practice of flood-control, I furthermore argue, most markedly brought about an unprecedented ecological rupture in the region by transforming the delta from previously being a flood-dependent agrarian regime into a flood-vulnerable landscape. This unprecedented ecological rupture, brought about by colonial capitalism, was not merely a result of administrative inadvertence or a consequence of misunderstandings about the delta’s unique hydraulic behaviour but essentially arose from and was integral to sustaining specific social and political relations. The quest to control water and dominate livers in British India, therefore, is not simply a narrative about engineering triumph or failure but must instead be ‘disclosed’ or revealed for the many distinct calculations of colonial capitalism and the specific imperatives that drove empire. (p.3) Thus far, water in British India has largely been discussed along two major axes. Whitcombe’s Agrarian Conditions in Northern India, published in the early 1970s, was arguably the first attempt at challenging the hitherto received wisdom on colonial irrigation. In contrast to the belief that canal irrigation was overwhelmingly a positive contribution, Agrarian Conditions concluded the opposite. According to Whitcombe, the introduction of perennial irrigation in the semi-arid plains of north-western India brought about adverse ecological consequences such as waterlogging and salinization, destroyed traditional wells, and inevitably these canals created some islands of plenty amidst a sea of epidemically swamped and ‘depressed’ peasantry.3 In reply, almost a full decade later, Ian Stone in his Canal Irrigation in British India sought to stand Whitcombe’s claims on its head. For Stone, colonial irrigation when viewed primarily in the context of the peasant’s adaptation to new technologies, capacity for rational decision-making and the quest to maximize output, canals became a source for economic dynamism and constant innovation. Consequently, for Stone, despite several negative externalities, the canals released positive ‘expansionary forces’.4 In a slight shift from the pessimism versus optimism debate on the British canal system, Imran Ali in a study of the massive British canal colonies, established in the semi-arid plains of Punjab between the late nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries, indicated frictions between colonial economic agendas and their political aims. For Ali, the latent capacity for initiating dynamic capitalism in the canal colonies was defeated by the colonial state’s continued embrace of traditional and archaic social institutions. Thus, the canal colonies witnessed a contradictory economic movement in which growth was closely paralleled by underdevelopment.5 David Gilmartin, in fact, in an earlier essay on canal colonies, pointed to similar irreconcilable antagonisms between what he termed as ‘scientific empire and ‘imperial science’. While discourses on imperial science helped organize the productive control of nature for increasing revenue and expanding commercial agriculture, its ‘transformative’ potential was constrained by practices of scientific empire—harnessing science to craft, and sustain political hierarchies Page 3 of 17

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Introduction and the exploitative character of colonial society.6 A similar set of debates around colonial irrigation in the southern deltas of the Godavari and Krishna explored questions of agricultural productivity and various challenges that were posed following the introduction of perennial irrigation technologies.7 (p.4) The second axis of concerns have largely dealt with the schism between ‘traditional’ or indigenous water technologies and colonial hydraulic engineering endeavours, termed as modern systems.8 Attention to pre-British irrigation organization, design, and operations, in terms of their relationships and status in a colonial context, was arguably first dealt with by Nirmal Sengupta. In an article published in 1980, Sengupta primarily sought to explore reasons for the ‘decline’ of traditional ahar and pyne or tank and channel irrigation systems in colonial south Bihar. According to him, the ahar and pyne network began to breakdown following the introduction of new revenue routines by the colonial administration. In particular, by facilitating and encouraging a shift from ‘produce’ to ‘fixed’ and then to cash rents, the colonial administration invariably upset an entire rhythm of procedures, protocols, and duties between tenants and landlords over the question of maintenance and servicing of the ahars and pynes, in effect, while the rent burden historically for the indigenous irrigation system was factored as a ‘land-water combine’, the colonial revenue format realized claims only from ‘land’.9 In several ways, Sengupta set the tenor for subsequent works on the subject. In 1997, the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based non-governmental organization, released a report titled Dying Wisdom, which remains as possibly the most exhaustive survey on traditional or pre-British water-harvesting systems in India.10 Besides describing the functional details and varied operational aspects of these water structures and situating them in their regional and ecological settings, Dying Wisdom also sought to advance a larger historical claim that traditional water-harvesting systems in India declined or were substantially degraded by a range of colonial actions for rule and profit. Colonialism, in other words, by instituting private property, commodifying land, pursuing highly extractive revenue agendas, and dismantling community control over natural resources caused the impoverishment of the rural populace at large and led to the decay and destruction of several indigenous water-harvesting systems.11 Subsequent scholarship, however, has questioned whether colonialism did indeed have such a sweeping impact on traditional water structures. David Hardiman, for example, in an excellent study on indigenous water systems in Gujarat argued that aspects such as commercialization and peasant indebtedness were in fact processes that not only predated colonial rule in the region but were integral, ironically enough, to actually expanding well irrigation in the region.12 In a recent study, David Mosse on expioring ecology and (p.5) politics in south India argued that Dying Wisdom’s belief that ‘organic and autonomous villages’ sustained stable water-management practices cannot be historically validated. For Mosse, pre-British village communities were unstable entities riven by Page 4 of 17

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Introduction hierarchies and were shaped and affected by larger processes of statecraft and regional politics. In effect, Mosse suggests that tanks in south India underwent various phases either of efflorescence or decline prior to colonial rule.13 Lastly, the pronounced claim in Dying Wisdom that traditional water-harvesting structures declined or disintegrated across the board in the colonial period has also been challenged. Thomas Rosin, in a meticulously argued essay, suggested that in western Rajasthan, a series of complex groundwater irrigation and drinking water devices (khadin’s, step wells and L-shaped embankments) remained functional and viable well into the colonial and post-colonial periods. In other words, these systems were capable of ‘overlapping’ with other hydrological regimes. Thus, Rajasthan’s unique water-harvesting systems rather than being displaced were instead ‘overlaid’ or made to coexist with new types of modern hydraulic technologies that were introduced by the British.14 Nevertheless, these qualifications aside, the argument that a large number of traditional water-harvesting systems declined or were marginalized in both relative and absolute terms still holds. Colonial water technologies such as weirs, dams, and barrages, oriented towards delivering perennial irrigation for settled agriculture, in most instances, proved unable to not only coexist with traditional systems but were sharply aimed at eliminating the latter as well. Indu Agnihotri’s insightful and prescient essay on the ecological and land use consequences of the canal colonies in Punjab indicated that British perennial irrigation did not, as widely held, simply bring water and increase agricultural productivity in hitherto desolate ‘wastes’. Rather, according to Agnihotri, the colonial canal systems of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries overwhelmed, overran, and substantially eroded an existing vibrant pastoral economy in the region. These pastoral grouping, moreover, had also taken to seasonally cultivating crops, which were watered through a complex network of inundation canals.15 These debates and discussions on water in British India nonetheless, have failed to establish the specific colonial momentum as a social form with regard to ecological change. Put differently, how does one historicize and explain the particular dynamics brought on by colonialism in its (p.6) dealing with nature —‘the “otherness” to humanity’?16 Why did colonial interests have to intervene technologically and otherwise to orient water strategies differently from prevailing traditions of water use? What forces propelled the colonial dispensation to pursue and persist with large-scale ecological change in South Asia and hydrology in particular. Could one define a colonial context as being marked out and dependent upon a distinct ecological signature? Undoubtedly, elements such as revenue maximization, commercialization, commodification, or the urgency to extend the agrarian frontier served as strong push factors for transforming prevailing relationships between pre-colonial society and nature. The question that, nonetheless, loses focus in a simple enumeration of colonial attributes is the problem of moving from identifying the characteristics of Page 5 of 17

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Introduction colonialism to arriving at the specific character of colonial rule itself. That is, identifying the colonial momentum or dynamism that unfurled through a specific portfolio of practices for environmental actions. The colonial environmental presence, in other words, could only be defined and made possible through a particular relationship with nature. Thus, in the instance of flood-control in the Orissa Delta, I argue that colonial capitalism could realize itself as a specific social form only by forcibly trying to coexist with a flood-vulnerable landscape rather than returning the region to its flood-dependent agrarian regime. In other words, the colonial dispensation in the Orissa Delta, I aver, could not backtrack on its environmentally-debilitating policies without undermining the very architecture of its rule and the social and economic fabric of its existence. But to reorient the understanding of the colonial/nature interface from a mere enumeration of colonial practices towards explaining its dynamism as a social form requires clarity at two conceptual levels— ecological change and the colonial watershed thesis.

Ecological Change: Scale and Dynamic The template for describing ecological change can essentially be separated into two rough components. One half is the task of indicating the scale of ecological impact, such as the consequences of replacing forest ecologies with cultivated fields or the urbanization of once rural landscapes. The other half is that of unravelling the lead dynamic or momentum, as it were, that acts as the engine driving ecological change, such as ideologies for dominating nature. Explaining ecological change through scale and dynamic, however, is riddled with several complications. For (p.7) one, concluding on what comprises the natural is complicated by cultural contexts and contested values. If anything, as William Cronon has elegantly pronounced, ‘the word “nature” says as much about ourselves as about the things we label with that word’.17 This interpretative turn, in many ways, has helped emphasize how necessarily reflexive and cautious the researcher has to be when exploring the weave between the social and the natural. Put differently, the idea of nature in an environmental narrative is not an objective given but must be navigated as a site bearing varied, multiple, and oftentimes contradictory social meanings. In Misreading the African Landscape, Leach and Fairhead convincingly demonstrate how a motivated ‘environmental orthodoxy’ was constructed and deployed as valid science to serve various administrative policy ends. According to them, several governing bodies and agencies misrepresented the Kissidougou Prefecture in Guinea (West Africa), throughout the twentieth century, as an environment that was rapidly being deforested, when, in fact, the local communities there viewed their ecosystem as a savanna landscape that was in the process of being replaced by forests.18 Another similar example is well brought out by Roderick Neumann in his book Imposing Wildernes. Neumann argues that a capitalist aesthetic essentially underpinned the Tanzanian government’s drive to create the Arusha National Park. The government’s claim that the park was previously Page 6 of 17

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Introduction an uninhabited wilderness and therefore had to be retained as an ‘unspoiled benchmark’, in fact, ran counter to a long history of occupancy and use by the Meru peasant community in the area. Neumann thus argues that the government in instituting the park as a capitalist aesthetic—reinvented as a wilderness zone for the consumptive pleasure of dollar rich tourists—forcefully denied the local Meru community their historic access to resources in the Arusha.19 Clearly, these monographs amply demonstrate how cultural and political filters can influence and determine ideas and responses towards nature. Consequently, notions about environmental degradation and what constitutes credible strategies for ecological preservation are contentious conceptual terrains. Similarly, exploring the dynamic that accelerates or pushes for ecological change can be fraught with problem ridden claims about cause and effect relationships. More so when environmental narratives account for the relentless transformation and reorganization of the natural world by human action with diverse and oftentimes conflicting explanatory models. Clive Ponting’s masterful survey titled A Green History of the (p.8) World grandly attempts to explain why human motivations, across historical epochs, cause ecological change.20 Ponting argues that natural ecosystems, in large measure, were stressed and ultimately destroyed by a dyad consisting of human population growth and resultant technological choices. The ‘original sin’ that heralded environmental destruction, as it were, in his schema, appears to be brought about by the introduction of settled agriculture, at the expense of an environmentally lighter imprint by hunter, gatherer, and herder. Agrarian society, in turn, enabled a rapid increase in human numbers, which then required a matching need to produce the means of livelihood by having to adopt extractive and polluting technologies. In time societies in order to cope with ecological constraints and scarcity ramped up their demands on the earth’s limited resources and inevitably degraded their natural environs. Thus, for Ponting, human induced ecological change has been chiefly brought about by an escalation in the growth of human populations and the resultant adoption of technologies for dominating ‘terrestrial ecosystems’.21 J.R. McNeill, in a somewhat similar sweep, undertakes to explain the wide-ranging human impact on the natural world in the twentieth century. This ‘great modern expansion’ for McNeill emerges sometime in the 1760s, when for the first time world population growth began an unprecedented climb upwards from that of earlier eras.22 And much like Ponting, McNeill argues that explosive growth in human numbers resulted in the devising of clusters of new technologies, new forms of energy to enhance labour productivity, and inevitably new forms of social and business organizations. In sum, rapid ecological degradation followed in the wake of a cocktail of causes comprising population growth, the shift to a fossil fuel-based energy system, and the ideological and political commitment to economic growth and military power.23 Page 7 of 17

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Introduction Though helpful in setting up a rough template of sorts for identifying human interventions that spur ecological change, such grand global environmental history writings tend to overemphasize Neo-Malthusian explanatory schemas. Neo-Malthusianism, as a variant of environmentalism, emerged and acquired dominance in the 1970s, with the central claim that the planet’s natural resources were being rapidly exhausted by an unrelenting growth in human populations. In a wave of books and articles, some of which were alarmingly titled—The Population Bomb, The Limits to Growth, The Tragedy of the Commons—Neo-Malthusianism sought to link anxieties about environmental stress to the (p.9) geometric burdening of human numbers.24 In effect, the environmental crisis was constructed and interpreted as essentially being generated by a quantitative impact (human numbers) rather than a qualitative (type of society) ecological footprint. In contrast, critiques of Neo-Malthusianism have argued that nature, either as limit or resource, is not a predetermined given or a finite quantity.25 In the words of David Harvey, limits are a ‘social relation with nature rather than some externally imposed necessity’.26 Thus, evaluations must go beyond drawing simple equations between increasing environmental degradation and rise in crushing human numbers. Rather, more meaningful insight can be gained by analysing how a specific social form—a sum total of its economic and political relationships—imposes itself on nature. Consequently, different types of social formations, it can be argued, create ecological impresses that are distinct to their respective political economies. This change in emphasis, from a quantitative to a qualitative one, in several ways opens a window to examine, understand, and explain why, for example, pre-capitalist or non-capitalist societies have radically dissimilar impacts on nature than capitalist societies. How nature is harnessed, exploited, polluted, or exhausted, in effect, is as much an enquiry about assessing the gradient of ecological change and the impacts from technological choices, as it, in many profound ways, illuminates social differentiation and imperatives of political economy. Such an approach helps explain why two dissimilar social forms, organized along different notions of power, surplus appropriation, and ideologies, can mark the same environmental landscape with strikingly different types of ecological footprints. Environmental historians have, in fact, shown great nuance in unravelling various types of ‘ecological imperialisms’, wherein two different social forms at their point of contact and collision are respectively revealed and contrasted with regard to their social differentiation and ecological signatures. Arguably, some of the most exciting and arresting literature exploring such questions have dealt with the dramatic transformation of the ‘New World’.

Different Worlds at their Points of Impact Alfred Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism, a redoubtable classic, explored, at the point of impact, the entry of the Europeans from the ‘Old World’ into the then ‘New Worlds’ of Australia, the Americas, and New Zealand. (p.10) These lands, Page 8 of 17

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Introduction which had been ecologically and culturally isolated for millennia from the ‘riven core of Pangea’, namely, Eurasia and Africa, underwent a radical demographic and environmental upheaval following the introduction of what Crosby termed as the ‘portmanteau biota’—a collective term for the Europeans and their accompanying organisms. In time, the New World landscapes were sought to be assembled as neo-Europes, which, both as new societies and ecological contexts, were consolidated by annihilating the native peoples through disease and the introduction of a range of Old World weeds, grasses, crops such as wheat, and cattle and other quadrupeds.27 In effect, large swathes of the indigenous ecological and social landscapes of the New World had been irremediably altered and transformed by the ‘biological expansion’ of Europe. The sources for ecological change in the New World had other dimensions as well. Warren Dean’s With Broadax and Firebrand in great detail, pointed out how the Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, in the sixteenth century, intensified levels of environmental stress that ultimately caused the massive denudation and destruction of the variegated and complex Amazonian forests along the Atlantic coast. Prior to the Portuguese colonial presence, indigenous groups such as the Tupi and other such forest-based communities drew upon the Amazon’s resources through a portfolio of practices comprising, in the main, hunting, gathering, and swidden agriculture. The Portuguese, on the other hand, introduced an unprecedented range of ecological pressures. They at first initiated the commercial logging of the forests for dye woods, followed soon with the setting up of centres for sugar and wheat cultivation. By the early decades of the eighteenth century, the colonial dispensation, once again, pushed for a massive shift towards mining for gold and diamonds, which, in turn, spurred another drive towards cattle raising for beef. These new production contexts and demands on the forests, significantly enough, were mostly carried out through slave labour, which involved, in different phases, the enslaving of the native populations and the importation of African labour.28 Both Crosby and Dean emphasize strong correlations between the annihilation of the indigenous populations and the large-scale alterations of their ecological worlds. In other words, the aggressive conquest of the New World and consolidation of neo-European societies by the Old World was premised on the initiation of radical ecological change. Undoubtedly, (p.11) in large measure, this massive reworking of the environmental landscape was a fallout from the European attempt to acquire a sort of cultural familiarity for realizing their objectives. However, it would be misleading to suggest that the European need to establish familial ecological and other material conditions in the New World was entirely a cultural quest. William Cronon in changes in the Land provides an excellent example of how imperatives of political economy underwrote the ecological choices made by the early English colonizers in New England (northeast region of the United States), in the seventeenth century. The rise in the dominance of the English colonizers over the native Indian in New England was Page 9 of 17

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Introduction heralded by the mostly violent replacement of the latter’s ‘village system’—a seasonal alternation of shifting agriculture with hunter-gathering activities. The English agricultural configuration, on the other hand, was made up of household production units involved in sedentary agriculture, with raised crops and domesticated animals. But underpinning English agrarian production was the notion of ‘fixed property’, with a large part of the surplus generated being inevitably meant for commercial markets. While the native Indians sought to work the land to provide subsistence, the English colonizer reordered the environment to meet a near endless demand for commodities.29 Thus, the English accumulation and wealth seeking imperative drove ecological change in New England and caused its accompanying complement of environmental stress. Changes in the Land, in this way, helps underline that the sharpest differences between the native Indians and that of the English colonizers, in terms of their respective relationships to New England’s ecology, lay most fundamentally in the realm of political economy. Richard Tucker, in Insatiable Appetite, further amplifies this point by describing how the ‘American ecological imperium’ between the 1890s up till well into the 1960s, radically transformed forests in the tropical world in order to produce and extract a plethora of profitable commodities.30 Big ‘Yankee investors’ moved in their capital and capitalist agricultural technologies and techniques to carve the tropics into swathes of monocrop plantations, tree farms, and ranches for raising commodities such as sugarcane, bananas, rubber, coffee, timber, and the ‘crop on hooves’ (beef). The process of inserting fields and plantations in to the ‘private property regime’ and the cash economy, besides impoverishing biological diversity, was also simultaneous with the debilitation of many indigenous communities. (p.12) Hence, for Tucker, ecological change in the tropics was ‘inseparable’ from the project of radically reconstituting subsistence and village societies in the image of the market.31 Insatiable Appetite, in several ways, emphasizes how the specific nature and context of us capitalist development impelled and enabled it to commandeer natural resources located in outlying territories and in different continents. Such grasping impulses of capitalism, in fact, are well captured in the notion, ably spelled out by Peter Dauvergne, as the phenomenon of the ‘shadow ecology’. In his book Shadows in the Forest, Dauvergne illustrates the Japanese role in spurring the massive deforestation of forests in several South-East Asian countries such as Indonesia, east Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak), and the Philippines, from the 1960s onwards. According to Dauvergne, the term shadow ecology refers to the ‘environmental impact of one country’s economy on resource management in another country or area’.32 Japan, according to Dauvergene, in order to meet its demand for timber cast an ecological shadow over the East Asian tropics that was operated, in the main, through the Sogo Shosha—sixteen Japanese general trading companies. Though the Sogo Shosha were essentially a collection of trade intermediaries, they nevertheless played a Page 10 of 17

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Introduction critical role in organizing and lubricating various fiscal mechanisms and political practices that in the end fostered a reckless and unsustainable extraction of vast quantities of South-East Asian timber and its subsequent export to the Japanese mainland. Clearly, these monographs reveal the almost profound analytic limitations of the Neo-Malthusian explanation for ecological change, especially in the longue duree of history. Thus, uncovering the specificity of the social form and the unique dynamic of its political economy, I argue, provides a closer look as to why particular types of environmental indents were left on the landscape. This book, in fact, draws on such insights to conceptually recast some of the major debates that have thus far informed environmental narratives on colonial South Asia. Much of the environmental literature on colonial South Asia has centred on the notion of the ‘colonial watershed thesis’—the claim that a sharp ecological rupture was effected in the subcontinent during the course of colonial rule.33 But, as I will argue, the phenomenon of colonialism itself has been little explored or explained through its ecological footprint.

(p.13) The Colonial Watershed Broadly, existing studies on the colonial watershed have indicated that some of the major ecological markers for the colonial period include the expansion of the arable, the considerable extermination of wildlife, a decline in forest cover, and a dramatic rise in waterlogged and salinized lands.34 With regard to the causes that spurred such ecological transformations, these studies have overwhelmingly tended to suggest that the colonial watershed was effected by a combination involving western sensibilities about nature and colonial agendas for exploitation and rule. I contend that such frameworks have been descriptive rather than explanatory, as they have not been able to explain why and in what manner colonial policies for altering the South Asian ecological mosaic were uniquely colonial. In other words, while the ecological impact has been highlighted as being specific (despite certain continuities), the underlying momentum determining its colonial character has remained relatively obscure and unexplored. Undoubtedly, in a superficial sense, colonial policies for expanding the arable or instituting modern irrigation projects appear to have been driven by raw economics, involving the paramount need for extracting surpluses. I argue, however, that the colonial economic or ideological calculus was not merely underlined by a simple drive for profits, but was fundamentally structured by the peculiar context of colonial capitalism. The colonial quest for transforming Indian society turned significantly on the need and urgency for instituting capitalist property, capitalist social relations and its production and accumulation imperatives, which then inevitably translated into several scales of environmental change. Colonial capitalism, I argue, therefore, had to effect social change and ecological impact as simultaneous and interrelated processes in South Asia. To correctly capture this weave between society and nature, however, requires a qualitative shift in perspective which necessitates taking up Page 11 of 17

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Introduction the challenge of exploring how colonial capitalism simultaneously determined itself as a particular social form and as a specific ecological footprint. The significance in shifting focus from a descriptive emphasis on the colonial watershed towards instead tracking the momentum that caused ecological change is twofold. First, several contemporary Indian environmental dilemmas are arguably an intensification of the contradictions with nature brought on by the continued embrace of capitalist (p.14) property and social relations. Second, though colonial India’s ecological impact was unique in many respects it can be meaningfully situated in the broader frame of the expansion of capitalism in this period and the consequences emanating from the latter’s ecological footprint. More so given the fact that the contemporary ecological crisis is now not only perceived as a global phenomenon, but also credibly explained to be a result of the accumulation imperative of the ‘world system’ of capitalism.35 Hence, India’s dramatic ecological transformation needs to be explained and viewed both as part of the unique and yet general experience of colonial capitalism.

Colonial Capitalism and Nature By relocating the notion of ecological change outside the limitations of NeoMalthusian frameworks and arguing for the colonial watershed thesis to be rescued from its descriptive emphasis, this book goes on to pose the British experience with flood-control in eastern India as being that of addressing the broader problem of tracking colonial capitalism’s relationships with nature. Towards this, I discuss the emergence and consolidation of flood-control in colonial India under four broad themes. The first will underline the need for a notion of’ecological integrity’ in order to track ecological transformation and thereby help situate the society/ nature dynamic. In particular, in recent years, ecologists have increasingly argued that nature is not a static reality or a mere passive backdrop to fast-paced political and social drama. Rather, the natural world is intrinsically riddled with instabilities, oscillations, and gradients of change. This calls for employing far greater nuance and a deeper understanding of ecological processes in the framing of environmental narratives. In the instance of the Orissa Delta, Chapter 1 will describe hydraulic volatility and seasonal inundation as elements of geomorphologic process, which, in the precolonial era, appears to have been harnessed by the local populace rather than sought to be undermined. That is, cultivators in pre-colonial eastern India seemed to have evolved a tradition of flood utilization and dependence. The second theme discussed in chapters 2 and 3, attempts to explore the links between capitalist property and environmental change. Chapter 2, chronicles how the Mughal-Maratha agrarian order was comprehensively dismantled and replaced by the colonial zamindari tenure system. However, in this bid to realize (p.15) capitalist property, the colonial authorities recast the phenomenon of deltaic inundation from a geomorphologic-process to a calamitous event. Chapter 3 outlines the various debates over the embankments, which were Page 12 of 17

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Introduction prolifically constructed in this period across the length and breadth of the delta as the technical means for ‘protecting’ cultivated land as property. The embankment debates in Orissa starkly exposed the several limitations inherent in colonial flood-control strategies. If anything, the embankments introduced a range of hydraulic complications that seemed to worsen deltaic inundations and undermine agrarian production. By the mid-1850s, flood-control policies in the Orissa Delta had not only floundered but were clearly counterproductive as well. The colonial administration, therefore, found itself in a bind; it could either continue to affirm capitalist property at great financial cost or stage a retreat by restoring deltaic inundation as a geoomorphologic process. This brings up the third theme, which discusses the colonial administration’s attempts to overcome the crisis created by capitalist property by attempting instead to bound and regulate the delta’s river system as a commodity through the construction of the Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863. The canal system was in several ways a desperate effort by the colonial administration to bail itself out of the hydraulic crisis while still retaining an overall momentum for capitalist consolidation. Flood-control as profitable venture instead of mere defensive strategy, nevertheless, failed. The Orissa Canal, in a short period, accumulated huge losses and its financial troubles raised a range of questions about the feasibility of controlling complex hydraulic processes through a market imperative. With the collapse of such initiatives for commodifying the delta, the colonial administration, in the early decades of the twentieth century, once again found itself in an impasse of sorts. It became apparent that attempts to sustain colonial society in the delta required an altogether fresh spiral of intervention and investment in order to prevent recurring inundations from overwhelming both property and rule. Chapter 5 describes this impasse and provides an overview and assessment of the report of the Flood Committee of 1928. This report provided an unprecedented and comprehensive critique of the various ecological and social costs that had resulted from over a century of flood-control initiatives. In Chapter 6, the fourth and last theme will be discussed. This concerns the notion variously referred to as ‘capitalization of nature’ (Martin O’ Connor), ‘remaking nature’ (James O’Connor), or ‘production (p.16) of nature’ (Neil Smith).36 Roughly, these notions describe the manner in which a substance of nature is transformed in order to be treated as a unit of capital or a stock of capital, which is then deployed to reinforce and facilitate capitalist accumulation. In the instance of the Orissa Delta, I argue, these concepts best describe how the political and economic events in the early half of the 1940s combined to propel the decision to dam the Mahanadi River at Hirakud. Hence, this period witnessed, in the dying years of the British Empire, the ‘production’ of deltaic inundation from being treated as a calamitous event to now being harnessed as a natural resource for ostensibly providing irrigation, navigation, and hydroelectricity. In effect, the very hydraulic character of the Mahanadi River was sought to be altered through the rubric of Multi-Purpose River Valley Page 13 of 17

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Introduction Development (MPRVD) and ‘remade’ instead as an internalized element within the broader momentum of political economy in the region. Deltaic inundation, in a sense, was now no longer meant to be a part of nature, a geomorphologic process, a temperamental flood-prone river, but instead a humming current of carefully controlled and calibrated water that was meant to lubricate a new physical context for India. The idea and practice of flood-control in deltaic Orissa was not merely a linear uncurling of hydraulic technologies but was crucially indexed to sustain the dynamics of colonial capitalism. Consequently, despite the British administration’s repeated failures to end deltaic inundations, it persisted with strategies for dismantling the flood-dependent agrarian regime through floodcontrol structures such as embankments, canals, and ultimately a large dam. In effect, colonial capitalism had to transform the delta into a flood-vulnerable landscape in order to affirm and substantiate itself as a distinct political economy for rule and exploitation. This book, thus, argues that the impetus for ecological change in the Orissa Delta was brought about by the incompatibilities between the momentum of colonial capitalism as a social form and nature as process. Or put differently, it explains why Durga Charan Mohanty’s ‘solutions’, aimed at preventing another mahapralaya in the Orissa Delta, can be read as having drawn entirely upon the colonial legacy of flood-control and remained firmly within the calculations of capitalism. Notes:

(1) . Durga Charan Mohanty, The Mahapralaya (Deluge) in Orissa (Delhi 1982), pp. 5–13. (2) . Ibid., p. 31. (3) . Elizabeth Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in Northern India: The United Provinces under British Rule, 1860–1900, vol. 1 (Berkeley 1972). (4) . Ian Stone, Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy (Cambridge 1985). (5) . Imran Ali, The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885–1947 (Princeton 1988). Also see M. Mufakharul Islam, Irrigation, Agriculture and the Raj: Punjab, 1887–1947 (Delhi 1997). (6) . David Gilmartin, ‘Scientific Empire and Imperial Science: Colonialism and Irrigation Technology in the Indus Basin’, JAS, 53(4), 1994. (7) . G.N. Rao, ‘Transition from Subsistence to Commercialized Agriculture: A Study of Krishna District in Andhra, 1850–1890’, EPW, 20(25–6), 1985. Also see

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Introduction G.N. Rao, ‘Canal Irrigation and Agrarian Change in colonial Andhra: A Study of Godavari District, c. 1850–1890’, IESHR, 25(1), 1988. (8) . Nirmal Sengupta argues that the ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous’ can be separated from modern irrigation systems by the difference in their participatory character. While traditional systems require extensive participation and cooperation amongst its users, modern systems are governed by formal and centralized bureaucratic management. This distinction, however, tends to convey the impression that systems prior to British rule were rooted in democratic decision making and principles of equity, a claim that ignores caste practices in water distribution or the use of forced labour in repair and maintenance. Second, it is sometimes difficult to draw a hard and fast line between traditional and modern irrigation technologies as several modern schemes have incorporated aspects from pre-existing structures. For our purposes, therefore, traditional will refer broadly to the systems that prevailed before British intervention. See Nirmal Sengupta, User-Friendly Irrigation Designs (Delhi 1993), p. 10. Sandra Postel argues that irrigation’s modern moment first found expression in the nineteenth century in British India. See Sandra Postel, Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? (New York 1999), pp. 40–64. (9) . Nirmal Sengupta, ‘The Indigenous Irrigation Organization in South Bihar’, IESHR, 37(2), 1980, passim. (10) . Anil Agrawal and Sunita Narain (eds), Dying Wisdom: Rise, Fail and Potential of India’s Traditional Water-harvesting Systems (Delhi 1997). (11) . Ibid., pp. 269–311. (12) . David Hardiman, ‘Well Irrigation in Gujarat: Systems of Use, Hierarchies of Control’, EPW, 33(25), 1998. (13) . David Mosse, The Rule of Water: Statecraft, Ecology, and Collective Action in South India (Delhi 2003). (14) . R. Thomas Rosin, ‘The Tradition of Groundwater Irrigation in Northwestern India’, HE, 21(1), 1993. (15) . Indu Agnihotri, ‘Ecology, Land Use and Colonization: The Canal Colonies of Punjab’, IESHR, 33(1), 1996, passim. (16) . For a helpful and convincing use of the concept of nature see Kate Soper, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human (Oxford 1995). For her qualifications on the use of the term nature see pp. 15–36. (17) . See the introduction in William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York 1996), pp. 23–68.

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Introduction (18) . James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge 1996). (19) . Roderick Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa (Berkeley 1998). (20) . Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (New York 1993). (21) . Ibid., Ponting summarizes his main thesis in pp. 393–407. (22) . The explosion in human numbers in the 1760s onwards, for McNeill, had a lot to do with ‘luck’. Apparently, according to him, a peculiar set of circumstances in this period allowed a kind of adjustment between parasites, pathogens, and human beings, which led to several diseases being ‘marginalized’ and ‘domesticated’ in this period. See J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York 2000), pp. 3–17. (23) . Ibid. (24) . Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York 1968); Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York 1972); Garett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, vol. 162, 1968. (25) . For a helpful survey of the criticism against Neo-Malthusianism see W.M. Adams, Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in the Third World (London and New York 2001), pp. 142–8. Also see Eric Ross, The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development (London and New York 1998), passim. (26) . David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford 1996), p. 147. (27) . Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge 1995). (28) . Warren Dean, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Berkeley 1995). (29) . William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York 1998). (30) . Richard Tucker, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (Berkeley 2000). (31) . Ibid p. 5. Page 16 of 17

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Introduction (32) . Dauvergne draws on the notion of the ‘shadow ecology’ from Jim MacNeil, Pieter Winsemius, and Tazio Yakushiji. See Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, MA and London 1997), pp. 2–12. (33) . Some of the notable monographs would perhaps be Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Delhi 1989); Richards Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge 1995). For collections on South Asian environmental history writing see Ramachandra Guha and David Arnold (eds), Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia (Delhi 1995); Richard Grove, Vinita Damodaran, and Satpal Sangwan (eds), Nature and the Orient: Essays on the Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia (Delhi 1998); Aran Agrawal and K. Sivaramkrishnan (eds), Social Nature: Resources, Representations and Rule in India (Delhi 2001). For a survey of ongoing work on the subject see Mahesh Rangarajan, ‘Environmental Histories of South Asia: A Review Essay’, E&H, 2(2), 1996; Mahesh Rangarajan, ‘Polity, Ecology and Landscape: New Writings on South Asia’s Past’, SIH, 18(1), 2002, and Rohan D’Souza, ‘Nature, Conservation and Environmental History: A Review of Some Recent Environmental Writings on South Asia’, C&S, 1(2), 2003. (34) . For an excellent discussion on the themes listed here with regard to the colonial impact see K. Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Delhi 1999). On wildlife see Mahesh Rangarajan, India’s Wildlife History: An Introduction (Delhi 2001) and Vasant Saberwal, Mahesh Rangarajan, and Ashish Kothari, People, Parks and Wildlife: Towards Coexistence (Hyderabad 2001). (35) . James O’Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (New York 1998); John Bellamy Foster, The Vulnerable Planet (New York 1999), Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World (New York 2002). (36) . James O’Connor, ‘Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible?’ in Connor, Natural Causes, pp. 234–53; Martin O’Connor, ‘Codependency and Indeterminacy: A Critique of the Theory of Production’ in Martin O’Connor (ed.), Is Capitalism Sustainable: Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology (New York 1994), pp. 53–75; Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space (New York 1984), pp. 32–60.

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords This chapter describes the hydraulic volatility and seasonal inundation as elements of geomorphologic process in the case of Orissa Delta, which, in the pre-colonial era, appears to have been harnessed by the local populace rather than sought to be undermined. That is, cultivators in pre-colonial eastern India seemed to have evolved a tradition of flood utilization and dependence. The ecological integrity of the Orissa Delta does not refer to some original pristine pre-colonial state of being, but is measured instead by the latitude the fluvial system was allowed as a geomorphologic process: wherein the fluvial action of erosion and deposition lead to the consolidation of the delta as a land form. Colonial administrative deliberations provide some of the most cogent and careful observations on the relationships between inundations and agrarian production in the delta. Flood dependence as agrarian practice appeared to be able to sustain itself without fundamentally unsettling the equation between hydraulic volatility and geomorphologic process. Keywords:   hydraulic volatility, inundation, Orissa Delta, flood dependence, flood utilization, geomorphologic process, agrarian practice, fluvial system, flood-vulnerable landscape, agricultural production

The delta is a soft alluvial plain, overrun by a braided web of river channels and their effluents. It is an unstable land form, almost colloidal, with its contours and proportions frequently reworked by fluvial currents, tidal action, and extreme hydraulic events. The delta is both a receptacle to the onrushing flows of several rivers and a staging point of sorts from which massive columns of water weave their way towards the sea. It is an interstitial zone where land, river, and sea Page 1 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm collide and shape each other. The delta, as an ecological complex, does not fit cleanly into most familiar tropes about nature in environmental writings on South Asia. It cannot be insightfully captured either as a passive back-drop or a quantity that had been subject to overuse and thereby diminished or degraded. To uncover the colonial impact, therefore, one requires an altogether different conceptual vantage (Map 1). A reading of nature that shifts from describing relatively static ecological contexts such as forests to emphasizing process in which the delta’s hydrology is foremost involved in recurring gradients of change.

Order Against Integrity For long, a dominant strand amongst ecologists contended that nature was imbued with design and in the absence of any endogenous disturbances it essentially gravitated towards being static and stable. Nature, in other words, had a ‘balance’ or an ‘equilibrium’ that it maintained or moved towards. Two of the most influential concepts that helped endorse the claim for an intrinsic harmony or order in nature were theories on succession and community and the ecosystem. According to advocates of the succession and community view, plant communities, following a disturbance, were assumed to go through a sequence of changes until they reached a stable self-replicating climax. An end point, so to speak, wherein the community’s dynamism finally drew to a rest and expressed (p.21) (p.22) its integrity.1 System ecologists built on such insights and expanded the model to include relationships with nonbiotic components like energy, geochemical processes, and other physical conditions. Eugene Odum’s 1969 article titled ‘The Strategy of Ecosystem Development’ proved in-fluential in popularizing the concept of nature as having an orderly, directional, and predictable path which, he argued, evolved towards greater complexity, diversity, and

Map 1 . Deltaic Districts in Colonial Orissa. Drawn by Swati Sachdev, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

stability.2 The ecosystem idea subsequently went on to became the basic unit for ecological analysis and it helped fortify the assumption that a universal strategy for homeostatis was integral to ail natural processes.

The idea of a natural balance has been subject to much criticism in recent times and increasingly a revisionist perspective, suggesting virtually the opposite, has begun to gain traction. Several studies now posit that nature is random, contingent, discontinuous, and always in flux. In the words of the philosopher Page 2 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Mark Sagoff, ‘nature pursues no purpose, embodies no end and develops in no direction’.3 Undisturbed nature is, in fact, not at some equilibrium in structure or form but is regularly altered at every scale of time and space by a host of short- or long-term factors that are regularly generated by both internal and external agents. In contrast, therefore, to the previous view that nature’s ‘melody leads to one final chord that sounds forever’, Daniel Botkin has suggested instead the metaphor of a ‘discordant harmony’, involving changing tones of often erratic and random complexity.4 Along similar lines, the single stable state ecosystem community has been supplanted with the notion of a disparate multitude of stable state communities simultaneously operating in any given locale. The patch—an ecologically distinct locality in the landscape—is now often described as the basic ecological unit for analyses.5 As localized discontinuities in landscapes, patches allegedly develop a varied range of associations with each other and often establish a highlydifferentiated and erratic set of interactions. In such a schema of almost cellular diversity and dynamism, it is argued that each species will respond ‘individually’ to its environmental gradients rather than as a community. Thus, the ecosystem is too endemically riddled with micro-level variations, disturbances, and perturbations to achieve any overarching integrity that would define it as a stable configuration. To this branch of deconstruction ecology ‘nature has no essence; it has a history’.6 Even in the case of the inanimate or non-biotic part of nature, change, it is presumed, is recurring and constant albeit often at a slower more ponderous and glacial pace. But if there is no (p.23) baseline ecology, as argued here, how does one map the impact of a society on its surrounding environment? Sagoff sums up this dilemma: Because ecosystems have altered dramatically virtually every place in which human beings are found, what do we use as a baseline? Where in the flux of a biological community do we take a ‘snapshot’ and say ‘here it is in equilibrium’ or ‘here it has integrity’ or ‘now we have reached the carrying capacity of the land’? Is the ecosystem developing towards a ‘healthy’ condition, is it now ‘healthy’ or is it falling apart?7 While the emphasis on the stochasticity of the natural world has been influential in calling for the revision of the notion of the static climax community in classical ecology, others have argued that deconstructionists have overstretched their reasoning to wrongly conflate randomness with chaos. Ecologist Ernest Partridge, for example, in a scathing rebuttal to Sagoff, contends that the idea of constant change or that nature is in flux does not subvert the basic methodology of theoretical ecology. For Partridge, the notion of the ecosystem is conceptually intended to register not static but dynamic interactions between the constituent components that comprise an ecological community. Similarly, in his opinion, ecological communities establish clear patterns of mutual interdependence and are integrated with their environment in specific ways and are not flotsam Page 3 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm jetsam biological material in freewheeling association, combination, or change.8 For our purpose, however, the salience in Partridge’s scrupulously argued rejoinder is his emphasis that the deconstructionist perspective can muddy the difference between natural ecosystems and those managed by human intervention. The rate and scale at which natural ecosystems are ‘selforganizing’ can in most cases be radically different from those which human management or action has acted upon. In other words, there is need to distinguish between change that is integral to natural process from those impacts brought on by the specificity of a social formation or political economy. Amidst the stride of this new turn in theoretical ecology, the environmental historian William Cronon, crossed ideas about the chaos of nature with notions about cultural construction and advanced a compelling axiom—‘ideas of nature never exist outside a cultural context’.9 In thus emphasizing that conceptions about the natural world have been and are always refracted through ideological filters, Cronon further unsettled standard environmental narratives that for long stood on hard ground marked by a clear and sure divide between the natural (p. 24) and social.10 However, reducing the physicality of nature to mere gloss and ideological representation, can raise an altogether different dilemma which Kate Soper has posed as the problem of granting ‘reality to culture and its effects while denying it to nature’. Perhaps, a way out of this dead-end reasoning is by embracing Soper’s own suggestion, which is to invoke an ‘extra-discursive reality’ about nature in order to track a given society’s impact on its surrounding environment.11 In some ways, her suggestion can be interpreted as a plea for having a hard baseline of sorts which could help distinguish the natural from the social. This, of course, does not occlude the fact that ideologies, cultural constructions, and social imaginations will constantly press on any assessment of the natural. Nevertheless, to prevent the natural from being simply collapsed into the social, environmental writings could take up Donald Worster’s appeal to deliberate on the ‘regularities and great coherences’ of nature that. ‘persist over time’.12 In step with Soper and Worster, I contend that the notion of ecological integrity, as theorized and defined by members of the Global Integrity Project, could serve as a useful ecological baseline for understanding deltaic inundation.13 According to some members14 of the GIP, ecological integrity is associated with: …wild, untrammelled nature and the self-creative capacities of life to organize, regenerate, reproduce, sustain, adapt, develop, and evolve itself. These capacities are displayed spatially in a hierarchy of natural systems and temporally as the legacy of aeons of evolutionary and biogeophysical processes with their potential to continue into the future. Finally ‘integrity’ signifies that the combined functions and components of whole natural systems are valuable for their own sake….15

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm By ‘wild and untrammelled’ nature, the GIP does not suggest that pristine nature is intrinsically privileged in opposition to that which is modified by human action. Rather, their emphasis is on drawing a distinction between the natural and social. Second, ecological integrity describes nature as an ongoing process and not as single stable state ecosystem. The ecological integrity of the Orissa Delta for us, therefore, does not refer to some original pristine pre-colonial state of being, but is measured instead by the latitude the fluvial system was allowed as a geomorphologic process: wherein the fluvial action of erosion and deposition lead to the consolidation of the delta as a land form. The grand and extensive deltas of the world, such as those formed by the Mississippi, Yangzte, Nile or the Ganges-Brahmaputra, can, in fact, be described as colloidal land masses in the process of being stabilized by hydraulic action. (p.25)

Following the Delta During his travel across British India in the mid-nineteenth century, W.W. Hunter recorded with characteristic eloquence the turbulent behaviour of Orissa’s deltaic rivers: Three great rivers collect the drainage of 57,000 sq.miles of central India and gradually converging towards the coast, dash down their accumulated waters within thirty miles of each other upon the Cuttack District. The velocity which

Fig. 1.1 . Schematic Representation of Main Features of a River System

they had obtained in descending from the inner table land finds itself… suddenly checked upon the level delta and they break into a hundred distributaries like a pitcher of water thrown violently on the ground. These distributaries roam over the delta, struggling by a thousand contortions and convolutions towards the coast forming a network of rivers which after innumerable interlacings and bifurcations generally reunite with one of the three parent channels as they approach the sea.16 The hydrological phenomenon described by Hunter is typical of rivers in the deltaic stage and the three rivers referred to are the Mahanadi, Brahmani, and Baitarani which flow from gorges that mark the boundary (p.26) between the western hilly regions and the bowl-shaped alluvial coastal plains (Map 2). Topographically a river usually traverses three phases: the upper reach in the hilly regions, a middle segment comprising the flood plains, and, finally, upon nearing its out-fall into the sea, it acquires the features of the deltaic stage (see Page 5 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Fig. 1.1).17 In complete contrast to its relatively stable behaviour in the upper reaches, in the deltaic stage the river is usually volatile. Hunter’s eloquence can once again be recalled to describe the striking difference between what he termed as the ‘common English idea of a river’ and that of its deltaic behaviour: In its [river] first stage it runs on a lower level than the surrounding country, winding through mountains valleys and skirting the base of the hills. During this long part of its career, it receives innumerable streams and tributaries from the higher country on both banks. So far it answers to our common English idea of a river. But no sooner does it reach the delta than its whole life changes. Instead of running along the lowest ground, it gradually finds itself hoisted up until banks form ridges which rise high above the adjacent country. Instead of receiving confluents it shoots forth a hundred distributaries. In short, it enters upon its career as a deltaic river and presents a completely different set of phenomenon from those we are accustomed to in European rivers.18 The deltaic river’s tendency to abandon its bed at regular intervals, scour new channels, alter its course, shoot off effluents and repeatedly overspill its banks results from a combination of factors. During the river’s journey through its mountainous and semi-mountainous phase, its steep gradient and the sharpness of the drop in its bed helps generate powerful currents. This sustains a strong scouring action and thereby causes the river to carry a heavy charge of sediment and detritus. In the deltaic phase, however, the river’s gradient flattens suddenly and there is a rapid consequent loss in its velocity. With its speed thus reduced, its ability to carry the charge of sediment weakens and rapid deposition takes place on its bed. In course of time, the bed of the river fills up and gradually a shallow ridge is built on the summit of which the river now flows. But the increasing rate of deposition, in time, clogs the river’s channel, causing it to burst its banks and inundate the surrounding depressions.19 The deteriorated section of the channel in several instances may even be abandoned and the main flow of the river now diverted into new offshoots. On the other hand, a once active channel could easily disintegrate into an ox-bow lake, a cut-off, or a moribund river.20 The regular occurrence of inundations or (p.27) channel abandonment and the creation of water bodies are, however, all part of a broader process facilitating the gradual accumulation of sediment and detritus in the deltaic tract. In the long run, such rhythms of erosion and deposition lead to the build-up of the delta as a land form, by being gradually hoisted above the sea level and the channels of the rivers that course its plains.21 Several factors combine to determine the nature and rate of the delta’s build-up, such as the sediment load of the river, the depth of the coastal waters, the effect of waves and tidal currents, and the amount of silt and sand carried by the rivers as they weave their way to the sea.22

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Morphologically, the Orissa Delta can be differentiated into three broad zones: a narrow salt tract which stretches just beyond the shoreline for 5–6 km inland, fertile broad alluvial plains, and a sub-montane region which is the meeting zone of the dead-level flat alluvial plains of the delta with the escarpments of the Eastern Ghats. Across this arcuate-shaped terrain, approximating 9,500 sq km, the Mahanadi, Brahmani, and Baitarani river haphazardly weave their way along a gentle slope as they drop towards the Bay of Bengal. A series of sand bars along the coast, termed the littoral drift, has, however, caused the Orissa Delta to become uncommonly short. These sand bars obstruct the river’s discharge into the sea and cause an increase in the rate of deposition within the delta itself. The littoral drifts have thus acted to shorten the distance between the deltaic-heads of the rivers and their ultimate destination into the Bay of Bengal to a little over a hundred odd kilometres.23 Individually, the three major rivers have very distinct attributes in terms of their points of origin, their branches, and ultimately their hydraulic behaviour. The southernmost of the three is the Mahanadi, which literally translates as the Great River. The Mahanadi originates from the Maikal Mountains popularly referred to as the Amarkantak Plateau in the adjoining western state of Madhya Pradesh. From here it journeys collecting the waters of several tributaries and gathers great force until it reaches the Siddheswar and Debikote hills. At this point, the river channel is forced to contract to less than half a mile in width and at a gorge at Satkosia its immense bottled energy finally bursts forth debauching onto the coastal plains of Orissa, just above Naraj (approximately 14 km to Cuttack). The Mahanadi then reveals itself as a deltaic river; it shoots arms, throws branches, contorts and flings outward from its main stem several bifurcations, all the while racing towards False Point from where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. It is one of the most active depositing rivers in the Indian subcontinent with an extremely irregular discharge regime (p.28)

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm (p.29) (p.30)

Fig. 1.2 . Deltaic Rivers of Orissa and their Major Distributaries in 1877 Kuakhai supplies Puri District and after many bifurcations finds its way, by the Chilika Lake, into the Bay of Bengal (see Fig. 1.3). Source: W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. XIX, London, 1877, p. 23.

Map 2 . Deltaic Rivers of Orissa. Drawn by Swati Sachdev, Centre for the

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm and some of its important Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru distributaries are the Kathjuri, University, Delhi Birupa, Paika, Chitratola, and the Suk Paika (see Figs 1.2 and 1.3). Closely paralleling the Mahanadi main channel, is the Brahmani which originates in the north-west flanks of the Chotanagpur Plateau. It enters the Orissa Delta above Jenapur and then courses its way to the Dhamra Estuary, where it offloads its waters into the Bay of Bengal. The important branches of Fig. 1.3 . Kuakhai and its Distributaries. the Brahmani are the Kimiria, Kharsua, and Patia. And finally, Source: W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account the Baitarani is the northern-most of Bengal, vol. XIX, London, 1877, p. 19 of the three and has its source in the southern slopes of the Chotanagpur Plateau. It cuts through the Keonjhar Plateau and enters the coastal plains some 50 odd kilometres above Akhuapada. The Baitarani as it ambulates towards the bay, bifurcates into two loops—the Kochila and the Baitarani—which then unite only at Jajpur.

This liquid lattice of rivers, rivulets, streams, channels, bifurcations, and distributaries, sometimes in a slow sulk or on other occasions racing furiously across the delta, constantly soften or knead the boundaries between land and water. The alluvial plains of the delta consequently can only be grasped as a dynamic process; islands of soil locked in an interminable chaotic entanglement with the many moods of its rivers. The extreme hydraulic volatility of the Orissa Delta is, however, a function of several peculiarities. For one, the combined catchment (entire area drained by a river) of the three rivers is almost fifteen times that of their deltaic stretch. Consequently, the huge volumes of water that were collected over (p.31) a vast area is now forced to drop, hurtle, and squeeze through the relatively narrow deltaic passage (see Table 1.1).

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm

Table 1.1 The Catchment and the Delta Rivers

Lenght (km)

Distance from deltahead to mouth (km)

Catchment (area in sq. km)

Delta (area in sq. km) Delta area as percentage of the cathment (%)

Mahanadi

853

107

130,560

7526

5.76

Brahmani

701

149

35,840

2186

6.10

Baitarani

344

99

10,240

1687

10.47

Source: N.C. Behuria, Orissa State Gazetteer, vol. 1, Government of Orissa, 1990, p. 48

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm The troubled draining of the catchment waters is further complicated by the skewed distribution in the region’s precipitation pattern. The Mahanadi Delta and its catchment receives on an average up to 78.5 per cent of its total annual rainfall in only five of the monsoon months (June to October). For the BrahmaniBaitarani system, it is even higher at 83.51 per cent of the total rainfall being concentrated in the same period (see Table 1.2). Thus, unlike the snow-fed rivers of northern India, which maintain a relatively even flow throughout the year, the Orissa rivers are characterized by highly erratic flow regimes with a massive discharge of its waters in the monsoons and virtually dry beds in the winter months (see Table 1.3).24 Table 1.2 Rainfall in the Catchment and Deltas of Orissa Region

Annual average rainfall (inches)

Average rainfall in the [JuneOctober] (inches)

Mahanadi catchment and delta

57.05

44.77

Baitarani and Brahmani catchment

56.73

47.38

and delta Source: Calculated from data given in B.N. Sinha, Geography of Orissa, Delhi, 1971, p. 84. In effect, several factors such as the deltaic nature of the rivers, the littoral drift, channel incapacity, and the concentration of rainfall in the monsoon months, combine to make inundations virtually an annual feature in the Orissa Delta. Thus, agrarian operations in what is clearly an active ecological milieu would have to contend with extreme variability (p.32) Table 1.3 Discharging Capacity of Orissa’s Deltaic Rivers River

Mahanadi

Mean maximum flood discharge (in acre feet)

Mean minimum discharge (in acre feet)

15,00,000

1,500

Brahmini

8,00,000

300

Baitarani

5,00,000

100

Source: N.C. Behuria, Orissa State Gazetteer, vol. 1, Government of Orissa, 1990, p. 48 in production conditions. In the period preceding colonial rule in the Orissa Delta, as will be discussed next, the Oriya cultivators negotiated these seasonal inundations with a creative mix involving the utilization of the flood waters and a cropping pattern Page 11 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm adapted to distribute risk. In fact, several of these agricultural practices and techniques that helped interweave the agrarian production regime with the seasonal inundations survived well into the early decades of the twentieth century.

Though colonial accounts about agrarian production in the Orissa Delta were primarily collected to orient and assist the administration towards insulating cultivable lands from inundations, they nonetheless also recorded, in many instances, aspects of the dependence of the delta’s agrarian rhythm on the annual floods. Ironically, therefore, colonial administrative deliberations provide some of the most cogent and careful observations on the relationships between inundations and agrarian production in the delta.

Risk and Flood Utilization In 1822, Andrew Stirling in the first exhaustive account on coastal Orissa noted that rice was the ‘great article of produce’.25 Almost seventy years later in his comprehensive Survey and Settlement Report, S.L. Maddox reported that rice was grown in 87 per cent of the delta’s total cultivated area: 85 per cent in Cuttack, 92 per cent in Balasore, and 88 per cent in Puri.26 The innumerable varieties of rice, it was observed, were grown in three cropping seasons of the year and could be divided into three principal classes.27 Biali (summer-harvested rice)

This variety was the earliest and consisted of both fine and coarse specimens of rice. It was sown in April or May and reaped by the end of August or the (p.33) beginning of September. The biali rice was usually grown on the higher lands (kal) and sometimes even on river-side lands (pal). The cultivators apparently preferred to cultivate it in light loamy soils. The biali paddy was broadly divided into two main sub-classes; the satika or early variety which matured within sixty days from the date of sowing and the bara dhan which was a coarse variety and an important food grain. Sarad (winter-harvested rice)

Both coarse and fine varieties were found in this class and sarad was considered to be the most important crop for the cultivators in the delta. The sarad was sown at the end of May or beginning of June and was harvested between October–November or December–January. The sarad was divided into two subclasses according to the intensity of water required: the laghu (light variety) and the guru (heavy variety). These varieties were further distinguished by the manner in which they were sown—bua (broadcast) or rua (transplanted). Broadcasted laghu was grown on moderately low lands that remained wet or under 6 inches to a foot of water, continuously from June to October. It was also sown in fairly stiff soil (matal). The broadcasted guru variety was cultivated in very lowlands (jalapat), which retained anywhere between 2 feet-4feet of water. But the preferred soil type for this variety was actually heavy clay. Transplanted varieties were generally unpopular amongst cultivators as they involved intense labour but were, nevertheless, resorted to in certain circumstances: to get rid of Page 12 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm wild paddy, to avoid the risk of loss by early floods, and to replace the loss of the broadcasted crop, if for some reason it was adversely affected towards the end of July. Dalua (spring-harvested rice)

This rice was a coarse variety grown on lands that were considered to be too heavily inundated for sarad paddy. It was sown in january or February and harvested in March, April, or May. Dalua paddy was generally cultivated on low, swampy, or marshy grounds and on lands lying along rivers and creeks. The soil had to be clayey or even saline. The clayey soil, moreover, ideally had to contain a large amount of decayed vegetable matter. From these observations, recorded sometime in the late nineteenth century, cultivators in the delta appear to be have been able to grow rice virtually throughout the year. The three season cropping cycle, however, need not be viewed as discrete production schedules. Rather, as will be (p.34) argued, they formed part of an aggregated agrarian system that was worked to minimize the effects of both floods and droughts. The intensity of precipitation, as noted earlier, peaks in the monsoon months. The delta is subject to inundations usually in two phases, roughly occurring between 21 July to 7 August and 21 August to 7 September.28 Severe floods, how-ever, have been recorded as early as 13 June and as late as 25 October.29 The cultivators usually faced submergence either at the time of harvesting in the case of biali paddy or at the transplanting and weeding stage in the case of sarad paddy. In contrast to the timings of the inundations, the cropping schedules required water at three points in the year: in May–June for ploughing, in July–August for bhiushan or ploughing up of the young rice plants, and in October for the final ripening of the crop (sarad).30 Given this challenging land/water complexity, the cultivator’s rice growing strategy seemed to have aimed at dodging or distributing risk. The biali, for example, could be a bumper crop in the event of rains failing the sarad variety. If floods, on the other hand, were greater than usual during the harvesting period of the biali, then the biali could be destroyed but the sarad would prosper. In the eventuality of both crops being washed away by heavy floods, dalua grains could be sown in the flooded tracts and rice thereby still harvested.31 Besides evolving rice strains that were timed to virtually dodge the ravages of flood or drought, cultivators also adopted other ways for risk distribution. This was sought to be achieved by cultivating crops in different classes of soil that were marked by varying composition, fertility, and located at different elevations.32 In the deltaic districts, fertility it appears was usually judged according to the moisture retentive capacity of the soil. In the district of Puri, aul referred to the first class in which moisture was expected to be retained until the ears of the rice were fully ripe. Likewise, doem, the second class, referred to soils capable of retaining moisture upto September, while the sandy soils were called some. In Page 13 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Cuttack, soil fertility was explained by the same principle but referred to as aul (first), dayam (second), sayam (third), and chaharam (fourth). Soil composition was categorized according to colour, texture, and consistency. In Cuttack District, Maddox recorded fifteen types such as: matal (stiff clayey soils, excellent for rice and sugarcane crops), dorosha (mixture of sand and clay, which was good for biali or autumn rice and for all rabi crops), chikita (sticky clay, good for coarse varieties of the sarad crop), rekti matal (stiff rich soil), etc. H. McPherson, in his report on the (p.35) settlement operations in Puri, listed twenty-one types, with soils such as sudh matal (purely muddy soil), nunia matal (saline impregnated soil), hadua matal (coloured like bone and hard consistency) etc. The location of land was another important element in the production calculus. Broadly, for all the districts, three classifications existed: jala (wet lands, embracing all the rice lands of the village), kala (homesteads used for growing vegetables and valuable crops) and pal (riverside lands enriched with silt deposits suitable for growing rabi or winter seasons crops). Finally, lands were also categorized according to elevation: khal (low-lying), dhipa (high-lands), gahira (very low-lands in hollows almost always full of water), thenga, thangi, or dangar (highlands that suffer from want of silt and water). Thus, the several classes of land, degrees of fertility, and the varied levels at which cultivable lands were situated enabled the cultivator in the delta to consider a number of production variables, chiefly aimed at distributing risk.33 Though it is unclear, given the absence of credible historical and statistical data, whether every cultivator had access to such diverse production choices, it is probable that such practices were widespread enough to be significant.34 A probable fact that seems endorsed by an astute colonial official, Lieutenant Colonel Haig, who while reviewing the infamous Orissa Canal Scheme in 1873 noted: His [the Oriya cultivator’s] whole system of cultivation has been adapted to an uncertain and precarious rainfall and periodic inundation. He is a gambler; he has one field on the high ground, another in the hollow and another half-way between, so that if he loses one crop by either flood or drought he is pretty sure to save the Other.35 Though rice was the most important crop, a range of rabi (winter sown) were grown as well. Andrew Stirling records that in the central and southern parts of the delta ‘abundant crops’ of pulses, millets, and vegetable oils were raised.36 These rabi crops, however, depended critically on the inundations. While the kharif (summer sown) rice crops could be destroyed due to prolonged submergence, the rabi crops planted much after the flood season could prosper because of the moisture and silt deposit. The observations of one M.H. Arnott, an executive engineer, on an inspection of the delta are instructive:

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm On the whole it may be said that the inundation on the islands formed by the Pyka, Suk Pyka [distributaries of the Mahanadi] and Mahanadi are beneficial…. (p.36) This water however is heavily silt laden and the deposit fertilizes the land for some years. Although in the particular year of inundation the villagers may lose a greater portion of their autumn rice [biali], still they will be compensated by a bumper rabi crop, such as mustard, biri [Phaseolus Radiatus], kulthi [Dolichos Biflorus] & c. This was seen in 1897 after the great flood of 1896, and from personal observation, after a complete tour on embankment inspection of both the islands.37 …in 1896 they lost all their biali on the island of Sankarisai and when I inspected the island early in 1897 never had I seen such luxuriant crops of mustard [Brassica hirta], kulthi and biri, and 1 should say, never had such crops been beaten. The duration of that flood was about two to three weeks.38 Clearly though agrarian production was often disrupted by floods, losses could still be minimized if the cultivators were able to successfully spread risk. On the other hand, it also appears that inundations, especially because of their silt deposits, were vital for the growth of the rabi crops. N.N. Banerjei, another careful observer on the delta’s agrarian production routines, in his report described that: The embankments of the Canals (and of the rivers as well) now prevent a large amount of silt [brought on by floods] being deposited on the land, so that in many parts of the district, crops such as wheat, mustard, mung [Phaseolus Mungo] & c., have suffered to such an extent that either cultivation has had to be abandoned.39 From such a pantheon of administrative voices and observations, it can be surmised perhaps authoritatively that the cultivators possessed a spectrum of strategic responses to flooding in the delta and even worked the unstable hydrology to their advantage. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, in fact, a steady realization of sorts began to gain traction amongst a number of administrators and engineers that agrarian production was implicated in many complex relationships with inundations and the latter therefore was not, as previously assumed, simply an overwhelming natural calamity. Several such observations testify to the civil administration’s growing awareness that varied environmental and production nuances were involved in the impacts of the annual inundations. The Inundation Committee of 1866, for example, concluded that the floods of 1866, which submerged large tracts of land in the delta for periods extending between seven to sixty days, were destructive (p.37) because of the long period of submergence rather than its Page 15 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm depth, which ranged from 3 to 15 feet. The flood of 1855, on the other hand, according to the Committee, was less disastrous, even though it was 2 feet higher in depth than the 1866 flood because it dissipated relatively far more quickly.40 A Superintending Engineer in the Orissa Circle, Walker, is reported to have observed that though the flood of July 1872 was almost 3 feet higher than the flood of 1866, ‘wherever [it] has run off within ten days the crops (kharif rice) will be magnificent’.41 J.W. Ottley’s note of 1874, was similarly categorical in stating that inundations when not of long duration or too early into the season were productive of ‘almost as much good as harm, as they are usually followed by excellent harvests’. In Ottley’s estimate, the inundations were disastrous for the rice crop only when they either submerged lands for long durations of time or when they occurred so late that they prevented re-sowing from taking place.42 These careful notings, in fact, bear a striking parallel to the more contemporary inferences of Harun Rashid and B.K. Paul. In their recent study of agriculture in the deltaic tracts of Bangladesh (which was part of the erstwhile Bengal Presidency under colonial rule), Rashid and Paul write: The normal annual flood [in deltaic Bangladesh] is an ideal event that commences at the right time, lasts for the right duration and has the right magnitude…. Thus, three types of floods—early floods, late floods and abnormally deep flood—can cause serious damage to crops as they deviate from the normal flood. A fourth type, a prolonged flood that commences prior to the early limit and recedes after the end limit, may also cause extensive damage.43 Other observations overlap as well. In Rashid and Paul’s study of agricultural practices in the delta, they suggest that several ‘adjustments’ were adopted by the cultivators in order to negotiate normal and abnormal floods. Much like in deltaic Orissa, the cultivators grow aus rice (biali) in the upper middle lands, while broadcasting aman (sarad) in the lowlands. In a drought year when the flood waters are below normal the aus will survive while the aman will wither. Conversely, if the floods are greater than usual, the aus will be destroyed but the aman will survive. In a normal year both types can be harvested.44 It would perhaps not be inaccurate, therefore, to conclude that the evidence does suggest that a large number of cultivators in the eastern deltas were able to substantially blunt the destructive potential of the annual inundations by taking recourse to (p.38) a combination of adjustment practices and cropping strategies. Such essentially defensive strategies, however, would make up only half the picture if one brought into account William Willcocks’ controversial thesis on ‘overflow irrigation’ in the region. According to Willcocks, prior to colonial rule, the annual inundations were integral to agrarian production rather than being merely a troublesome variable.

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Overflow Irrigation Sir William Willcocks (1852–1932) was arguably amongst the most celebrated hydraulic engineers of the British Empire. Born in India and having survived the events of the ‘Indian sepoy mutiny’ of 1857, Willcocks launched himself through the Indian Irrigation Service and acquired a considerable reputation for his services in Egypt and Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).45 In March 1930, in the twilight years of his career, he delivered four lectures at Calcutta University, which were subsequently published in June of that year. Oddly enough, for one who had spent a lifetime espousing the ideals and virtues of modern canal irrigation, Willcocks chose to deliberate instead on what he claimed was the physical erasure by colonial rule of a once vibrant tradition of inundation irrigation in the Bengal region. According to him, a large network of ‘overflow canals’ traversed the deltas of the Ganges and Damodar basins and irrigated almost 7,000,000 acres of land, all this much prior to the great civilizing and modernizing impetus of British rule. These broad and shallow inundation canals were designed to tap the silt-laden crest waters of the flooding rivers that also carried rich fine clay. These canals were, furthermore, long and continuous and ran almost parallel to each other. The most striking feature of flood or overflow irrigation, however, was its importance as a fertilizing agent and not merely as a source for water. Willcocks argued that the ‘rich red water of the river and the poor white water of the rainfall’ had to made to combine in order for agrarian production to be sustainable and successful. He further observed: …if your rice fields have been irrigated by rain water alone, they are weak and cry for irrigation in October with excessive and costly supplies of poor river water…. If however you have irrigated your rice fields with rain and river water mixed together in the early months of the monsoon when the river water is rich and full of mud, you so strengthen the plants of rice that they resist the hard condition of an early failure of the monsoon in a way rice irrigated by rain water alone has no knowledge of. River water in the early months of the floods is gold.46 (p.39)

Upon these muddy waters, moreover, bobbed a multitude of fish eggs which then floated into the subsidiary channels, tanks, and rice fields. These eggs, according to Willcocks soon hatched into young fish, who then instantly fell on the larvae of the mosquitoes and ‘lived on them’, thereby eliminating malaria.47 The other significance of overflow irrigation, he claimed, was that it did not obstruct the build-up of the delta; by widely diffusing silt deposition over the alluvial plains it allowed the annual inundations to actively function as geomorphologic agents which through time raised the land and thereby blunted the ferocity of flood currents.48 Some of the claims in Willcocks thesis, however, were immediately challenged by C. Addams Williams, then chief engineer in the Bengal Irrigation Department. The most substantial criticism was directed against Willcocks’ assertion that several of the rivers and distributaries in the Page 17 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Ganges Delta such as the Bhagirathi, the Gorai and some of the off-takes from the Bairab, the Jelingi, and the Mahatabanga were originally canals lined out and dug parallel to each other. Instead, to Williams, these rivers were natural stream courses and showed typical deltaic meanders In other words, their features, he contended, were designed by natural factors rather than human ingenuity.49 In a recent study, Arabinda Biswas, though largely upholding Williams, pointed out that the ‘remarkable straightness’ of the Gangur River, in the area between the Damodar and Banka rivers perhaps indicated an element of truth in Willcocks’ conjectures.50 Despite the sharp controversy on the origins of certain river channels, Willcocks’ claims on the existence of overflow irrigation in the Bengal Delta did not excite opposition from his engineering peers, notably, his outline of the techniques that cultivators pursued for carrying out inundation irrigation strategies. According to Willcocks, ‘overflow irrigation’ hinged on the ability to tap the. muddy crest waters of the river when the latter was in spate. The cultivator’s efforts were concentrated on leaking or diverting the flood flow with long shallow inundation canals that were led from certain points along the river’s main channel. The actual irrigation, in turn, was performed by cuts in the banks of these inundation canals, which were then closed when the floods receded. To keep the canals functioning, however, required a considerable amount of routine effort on the part of the cultivators as they needed to be desilted (known as puibandi) and their banks regularly repaired. Willcocks rounded his observations by also arguing that the failure to sustain the regular maintenance of the (p.40) inundation canals accounted for the steady collapse of the system. To him, the point of departure came about in 1815, when a combination of the Maratha– Afghan wars (1794) and years of neglect by the zamindars and the cultivators led to a steady and then fatal deterioration of the overflow canal system. For Willcocks, this decay meant that the once vibrant canal system was in time unable to leach the rivers of their silt-laden waters and their flows were soon bottled up in the main stem, causing the deltaic rivers to become hydraulically even more volatile. Despite this rapid change in the delta’s hydraulic character, Willcocks opined, the cultivators, nonetheless, continued to effect breaches along the river for irrigation purposes. Such breaches or the practice of kanwa51, as it was referred to, were supposedly carried out ‘when the fear of inundation had passed or a breach had occurred elsewhere’, and had thereby reduced the current at that stretch of the river. Though carried out in an ad hoc manner by the cultivators, these breaches were an improvization derived from the old era of overflow irrigation and enabled the cultivators to ‘more or less perfectly’ irrigate their lands. Willcocks termed the practice as zamindari bank irrigation.52 This practice of kanwa or the breaching of natural levees or man-made embankments, interestingly bears an uncanny parallel to a spate of embankment breaches in the latter half of the nineteenth century in the deltaic districts of Page 18 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm Orissa. Widely referred to as ‘attacks’ or ‘cuts’ by the colonial administration, they were periodically carried out by the Oriya cultivators despite the risk of being prosecuted.53

The Silt Cut Captain W.D. Short, the officiating superintendent of embankments, stoically observed in a memorandum, submitted sometime in the early monsoon of 1857, that the embankments in the Orissa Delta were regularly subject to an organized system of ‘cuts’. By means of friendly intercourse with zamindars and other means the system was made known to me and tracked out, numerous cases were discovered and the parties tried and convicted; in one instance a heavy breach had been closed apparently very well and turfed over, when on examination, the interior was a shell, or made up of strong jhantees [bamboo?] and brushwood. In most cases, discovery was hopeless…and they are all entered as ‘breaches’, by the darogas, who are regularly paid by the landowners for permitting them.54 (p.41)

Captain C.B. Young, the then officiating chief engineer in Orissa, in a letter on the same subject, concluded that the cuts were part of a highly organized system. According to the captain, the villagers would usually insert a hollow tree trunk into the embankment from where they wished to obtain water and carefully conceal it from the colonial administration by covering up the spot with earth. At certain times of the cropping season, notably when the flood currents were reasonably mild, the earth was removed and the water from the river was drained into their fields through the opening, even at the risk of the crudely assembled sluice deteriorating into a serious breach, or worse still, being discovered by the authorities. In Young’s opinion, the villagers maintained that the water thus obtained was life to them and ‘without it, they could not rear their crops or pay their revenue’. Significantly, to the administration’s extreme consternation, these embankment cuts were not simply individual acts but involved a strong community effort. On the discovery of a breach, apparently, one villager voluntarily came forward as a scapegoat and admitted to the crime of puncturing all the embankments, knowing fully well that during his period of punishment and imprisonment his family would be supported by the rest.55 The view that embankment cuts were simply ‘acts of sabotage’, however, was clearly an official perception. The case of village Kissenpur in Cuttack District, as reported by W. Connan, the then superintendent engineer, for example, suggest that these cuts were primarily attempts by the cultivators at irrigating the rice crop with flood waters: It is believed that the villagers cut the embankment during the night for the purpose of obtaining water for the irrigation of their rice fields. On the Page 19 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm morning of the 25th July, Sub-Engineer Coxe noticed irrigation channels excavated, ready to take water to the different fields, and the water from the breach was just getting up to them. The crops were benefited by the flow of water through the breach and no damage of any kind was done.56 It is possible from this to surmise, however cautiously, that cultivators in the Orissa Delta, in all probability, sought to tap deltaic inundations by introducing a system of cuts into the embankments and were not simply pursuing a vengeful strategy of sabotage against the administration. Though cutting the embankments was undoubtedly a hazardous and dangerous gamble, given the fact that an intended sluice could easily turn into a massive breach and devastate large swathes of land, it, nevertheless, (p.42) was, perhaps, an important means by which the cultivators could leach the flood waters onto their fields. In effect, the battle over the safety of the embankments was essentially a struggle by the cultivators against the colonial administration for access to the annual inundations and the ‘cuts’ appear to be much similar to Willcocks’ description of zamindari bank irrigation. How intense the attrition between the official pursuit of protective embankments and the cultivators need for inundation was suggested in a declaration made by one Babu Jagannath Das, a member of the Orissa Legislative Assembly in 1937: I [Babu Jagannath Das] live in a part where there are four or five rivers stopped by these protective embankments. They were not natural rivers as they appear to be now. There is one river called Benga in Jaipur subdivision. That river had 12 branches. That small channel could never have cut 12 branches in so little a period unless it was done by men. In this way, if you go and look to the channels existing and stopped now on account of these protective embankments, you will see that they were not natural streams. Sir William Willcocks would not only give the weight of authority… [to the fact] that most of the rivers were canals, but also attribute the decay of Central Bengal and similar other places to the neglect of these channels resulting in overflow irrigation having failed to enrich the fields of the province….57 This sharp contrast between the official and popular perceptions over the embankment cuts marked, in several ways, the manner in which the administration’s views on deltaic inundation ran entirely opposite to that of the cultivators. While the former viewed inundations as a natural calamity that needed to be shut out from productive lands, the latter saw them as bearing beneficial effects and wanted them on their fields. Deltaic inundations, for the cultivators, it seemed were not mere masses of water that exploded in sudden intemperate bursts and heaved destructively onto the surrounding land. Rather, as Willcocks had pointed out, the flood waters were saturated with red silt,

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm carried fish eggs, checked malaria, built the lands and therefore was a much valued geomorphologic process.

Mud Values Silt generally is made up of sand and mud, though the proportions may vary in different rivers or streams. When flood currents are relatively mild the heavier or coarser sand particles which can be harmful to fields are (p.43) rolled along the bed of the river, while the beneficial mud, composed predominantly of organic matter, is carried in suspension along the crests of the flooding waters.58 For the Mahanadi River, J.W Ottley in one of his notes to the government, recorded that the silt at Naraj contained 67.3 per cent of organic matter.59 While water is one of the important factors in wet rice cultivation, it is the water–soil relationship that determines the field’s productive possibilities, the most favourable of which is the slightly acidic heavy alluvial soils. Land adjoining rivers and in deltas can become particularly suitable for wet rice cultivation because of the constant deposition of fine-grained organic material.60 The other distinctive feature is that, whatever the nature of the original fertility of the cultivated plot, continuous wet rice cultivation tends to enhance the fertility of the land. This is caused by the action of water in altering the chemical composition of the soil through a process known as podzolization. In this process, water through constant percolation into the subsoil and in conjunction with various organic acids dissolve mineral compounds and deflocculates clay particles. This enables nutrients to be carried down to the roots of the plants in colloidal suspension. The addition of organic material or manures tends to increase the podzolization effect and thereby adds to the fertility of the soil.61 Silt deposition, consequently, provided it is rich in organic matter, could have a beneficial impact. Contrary views on the subject, nevertheless, also exist. There are some who argue that raw alluvium is ‘relatively infertile in the short term and instead fertility is brought about by algae, the decomposition of weeds and rice leaves and the alteration between reducing and oxidizing conditions of intermittently flooded soils. Accordingly, river alluvium contributes to soil fertility only in the long term with the weathering of minerals.62 Examples, however, abound of farming communities perceiving silt as being vital to agrarian production, especially in the case of rice cultivation. In the Yangzte Delta in China, cultivators for long considered the deposition of a thick layer of ‘steamed cake silt’ (Cheng ping yu) by the rivers as being of utmost importance. Joseph Needham, concluded that it was only through the constant renewal of the soil by silt that the ‘permanent agriculture’ of China was made possible, which involved intensive cropping without recourse to mineral fertilizers.63 It was, in fact, a general practice amongst cultivators in the Yangtze Delta to regularly tap seasonal inundations for silt-laden water and, much like their counterparts in the Mahanadi Delta, instances have been recorded (p.44) of embankments/dikes being frequently cut to divert muddy flows onto agricultural land.64 In the doabs of west Punjab (presently Pakistan), alluvial land inundated by sailab (silt) was Page 21 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm referred to as hithar and extensively cultivated with rabi crops which neither required irrigation nor artificial fertilizers. Towards the doabs of the Jhelum river, sudden freshets bearing silt were of regular occurrence and these inundations called hangs were valued by the cultivators for their fertilizing qualities.63 In portions of northern Italy, the term colmata (literally to ‘heap up’) or colmate di piano referred to the process of depositing silt on low-lying lands for the purpose of fertilizing the latter. This practice, which started as early as the Middle Ages and continued well into the twentieth century, was developed to fairly sophisticated levels. In the case of silt being applied for fertilization, the waters of the rivers were tapped only during a rise in the flood level and not when it was either in full height or when falling. This technique ensured that only the organic and lighter particles that were suspended in the upper crests of the waters were diverted onto the fields. On the other hand, when the lowlands needed to be raised the waters were applied at any stage of the flood.66 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in particular, a substantial amount of the lower lands in Tuscany were raised through the technique of colmate di piano.67 Basin irrigation as practised in Egypt, however, is probably the best example of the strategy for tapping silt-laden flood waters. For millennia, artificial ponds or basins were dug alongside the Nile River and inundated with the latter’s flood waters, which fertilized the land with organic deposits and enabled the production of luxuriant crops of wheat and barley.68 In the Orissa Delta, besides the evidence of embankment cuts revealing the cultivator’s desire specifically for inundation waters, colonial commentators have also noted the farmer’s stubborn refusal to introduce artificial manures for rice cultivation. This strongly suggests that the cultivators relied on river silt for fertilizing their fields. Two observations could perhaps further endorse this claim. One, by the ever-astute W.W. Hunter, who noted, as late as the latter half of the nineteenth century, that artificial manures were ‘hardly used at all’ in the inundated parts of the delta.69 Second, by N.N. Banerjei, on the same question, who while collating information on agriculture in the deltaic districts, came across cultivators whose: (p.45) …only answer to my argument [for the use of manure] being that it was not the custom among them to have recourse to any manure’s for their soil, and they would adhere to their old fashioned ways [presumably by applying silt].70 The idea of emphasizing deltaic inundation as a geomorphologic process rather than calamitous event helps us to read against the grain of colonial reportage on floods. Instead of an agrarian world devastated by recurring hydraulic volatility, it appears that many cultivators in the delta were attempting to harness floods rather than shut them out from their fields. These flood-utilizing strategies, can be divided into two broad types. One, largely defensive, involved coping with temporary dislocations in crop output by adopting risk-distribution cropping Page 22 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm practices. Second, were attempts to actually harness silt-laden flood waters by leaching the latter onto their fields at appropriate moments in the inundation cycle. Flood-dependence as agrarian practice, more significantly, seemed to be able to sustain itself without fundamentally unsettling the equation between hydraulic volatility and geomorphologic process. The colonial dispensation, on the other hand, persisted with hydraulic strategies that forced the transformation of the delta from being a flood-dependent agrarian regime to instead dominantly becoming a flood-vulnerable landscape. This massive and unprecedented ecological rupture, as I will subsequently argue, turned chiefly on the colonial quest for physically reorganizing the Orissa Delta as a new social and economic reality. But, as will be argued in the next chapter, this primary task of British colonial rule to impose property in land and protect soil as the only source of wealth soon trapped the administration in many troubled calculations, brought on by the need to unequivocally confine the rivers to the margins of the delta’s economic destiny. In other words, by separating land from water the colonial administration caused the ‘calamity of season’. Notes:

(1) . For broad surveys of ecological theories, I have consulted the following two essays: Bruce Winterhalder, ‘Concepts in Historical Ecology: The View from Evolutionary Theory’ in Carole L. Crumley (ed.), Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes (Santa Fe, New Mexico 1994), pp. 17–41; and Donald Worster, ‘The Ecology of Order and Chaos’ in Hal Rothman (ed.), Out of the Woods: Essays in Environmental History, (Pittsburgh 1997), pp. 65–85. (2) . E.P. Odum, ‘The Strategy of Ecosystem Development’, Science, vol. 164, 1969, pp. 262–76. (3) . Mark Sagoff, ‘Ecosystem Design in Historical and Philosophical Context’ in David Pimental, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss (eds), Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health (henceforth IECH) (Washington DC 2000), p. 62. (4) . Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (New York 1990). (5) . ‘The Patch is problem and organism defined relative to the behaviour, size, mobility, habits and perceptive capability of the population being studied’. Definition in Bruce Winterhalder, ‘Concepts in Historical Ecology’, p. 33. (6) . Sagoff, ‘Ecosystem Design in Historical and Philosophical Context’, p. 62. (7) . Mark Sagoff, ‘’, WMLR, 38(3), 1997, p. 900. His critique of the classical ecology position is covered in pp. 877–989.

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm (8) . Ernest Partridge, ‘Reconstructing Ecology’ in IECH, pp. 79–97. (9) . See the introductory essay in William Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, 1996), p. 35. (10) . For a scathing critique of Cronon’s introduction in Uncommon Ground, see Michele Soul–, ‘The Social Siege of Nature’ in Michele Soule and Gar Lease (eds), Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington DC 1995) pp. 137–70. (11) . Kate Soper, What is Nature? (Oxford 1995), pp. 249–78. (12) . Donald Worster, ‘Nature and the Disorder of History’ in Soule and Lease (eds), Reinventing Nature?, p. 70. (13) . Since 1992, the Global Integrity Project has assembled a number of leading scientists and thinkers for the joint task of addressing the problems of a) threatened human well-being, b) unsustainable economies, and c) degradation of the ecosphere. (14) . Laura Westra, Peter Miller, James Karr, William Rees, and Robert Ulanowicz, ‘Ecological Integrity and the Aims of the Global Integrity Project’ in IECH, pp. 19–41. (15) . Peter Miller and William E. Rees, ‘Introduction’ in IECH, p. 11. (16) . W.W. Hunter, Orissa or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province under Native and British Rule, vol. 2 (London 1872), p. 176. (17) . Not all rivers create deltas. See Andrew Goudie, The Nature of the Environment (London 1993), p. 344. (18) . Hunter, Orissa or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province, vol. 2, p. 178. (19) . P. Mukherjee, Irrigation Inland Navigation, and Flood Problems in North Orissa During the British Rule (Bhubaneswar 1967), p. 1; P. C. Mahalanobis, Report on Occurrences of Floods in the Orissa Delta (n.p., 1941), p. 60; S.N. Banjdeo, ‘Flood Problem in Delta Region (Orissa)’, Speech delivered in the Parliamentary Committee Seminar, Delhi 4 September 1962, pp. 1–3. (20) . P. Dhir, ‘Flood Problems in Deltaic Areas’ in Proceedings of the Fourth Regional Technical Conference on Water Resources Development in Asia and the Far East (Bangkok 1962), p. 107. (21) . This point has been stressed in the celebrated Report of the Orissa Flood Committee of 1928 in which it was argued that; ‘It must be clearly grasped that in a deltaic area there must be flooding; it is natures method of land

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm formation…’. See Report of the Orissa Flood Committee 1928 (Patna 1929), pp. 7–9. (22) . Ibid., p. 107. (23) . The following description of the Orissa Delta, its geography and river system has been culled from several sources. See M. Sambasiva Rao, K. Nageswara Rao, and A. Vaidyanathan, ‘Morphology and Evolution of Mahanadi and Brahmani–Baitarani Deltas’ in Symposium on Morphology and Evolution of Landforms, Department of Geology, University of Delhi, 22–3 December 1978; A.S. Thompson, The Rivers of Orissa (Calcutta 1905); Mahalanobis, Report on Occurrence of Floods in the Orissa Delta; B.N. Sinha, Geography of Orissa (Delhi 1971); D.K. Ganguly, Historical Geography and Dynastic History of Orissa (Calcutta 1975); Mukherjee, Irrigation, Inland Navigation and Flood Problems; Report of the Orissa Flood Committee 1928; Dhir, ‘Flood Problems in Deltaic Regions’; S.N. Banjdeo, Flood-control and Allied Problems of the Orissa Rivers, part 1 (Bhubaneswar 1979); O.H.K. Spate et al., India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography with a Chapter on Ceylon (London 1954); S.D. Misra, Rivers of India (Delhi 1970). (24) . Banjdeo, Flood-control and Allied Problems of Orissa Rivers, p. 6. (25) . Andrew Stirling, An Account, Geographical Statistical and Historical of Orissa Proper or Cuttack (Cuttack 1822), pp. 9–10. (26) . SSR, vol. 1, p. 105. (27) . The following account is extracted from SSR, vol. 1, pp. 105–8 and N.N. Banerjei, Agriculture of the District of Cuttack (Calcutta 1898), pp. 62–70. (28) . Sinha, Geography of Orissa, p. 86. (29) . Lt J.W. Ottley, ‘Note 10th December 1874’ in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883 (Calcutta 1884), p. 75 (30) . SSR vol. 1 p. 99. (31) . In 1894, for example, after the Brahmini flooded, the Bayang Pargana of Balasore District, the cultivators sowed a ‘large area’ with dalua paddy: Noted in SSR, vol. l, p. 108. (32) . The following accounts are collated from S.L. Maddox, ‘Physical and Statistical Accounts of the Cuttack District’, SSR, vol. 1, pp. 98–9; D.H. Kingsford, ‘Report on the Settlement Operations in the District of Balasore’, SSR, vol. 2, p. 419 and H. McPherson, ‘Report on the Settlement Operations in the District of Puri’, SSR, vol. 2, p. 556.

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm (33) . In the deltaic tracts of Bangladesh (formerly pan of the Province of Bengal under colonial rule), ‘adjustment’ practices to reduce potential losses from floods or droughts are still widely resorted to. Villagers, with their knowledge and experience on the timing and periodicity of floods, have developed elaborate adaptations of different crops to varied flood depths. See M.Q. Zaman, ‘Ethnography of Disasters: Making Sense of Flood and Erosion in Bangladesh’, EA, 47(2), 1994, pp. 140–1. Zaman records several such practices m Kazipur, Serajganj District. (34) . In the doabs in northern India around Benares, a typical cultivating holding in the early nineteenth century, consisted of a number of plots dotted over tracts containing a variety of soils. The idea was to offset seasonal uncertainty by growing a variety of cereals, pulses, and oilseeds with different capacities for surviving the vagaries of climate. The cultivators of Benares in this period were in fact, noted for their aversion, so to speak, of putting ‘all their eggs in one basket’. See Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in Northern India (Berkeley, 1972), p. 25. (35) . Note by FT. Haig, officiating chief engineer, Bengal Irrigation Branch, 29th May 1873 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, p. 56. (36) . Stirling records the following crops: mung (Phaseolus Mungo), mash kalai biri (Phaseolus Radiatus), chena (Lathyrus Aphaca), khisari (Lathyrus Sativus), massur (Cicer Lens), arhe (Cuticus Cajan), kulthi (Dolichos Biflorus) and Palma Chisti/Castor Oil (Ricinus Communis). See Stirling, An Account, Geographical Statistical and Historical of Orissa Proper or Cuttack, p. 10. (37) . A.S. Thomson, The Rivers of Orissa (Calcutta 1905), pp. 3–4. (38) . Ibid., p. 13. (39) . Banerjei, Agriculture of the District of Cuttack, p. 18. (40) . Report of the Committee on the Effects of the Inundations in Orissa in 1866, P.W.D. Irrigation (1867–1886), nos 60–66, September 1871, p. 12, NAI. (41) . Note by Lt J.W. Ottley, 10 December 1874 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, p. 80. (42) . Ibid., p. 80. (43) . Harun Rashid and B.K. Paul, ‘Flood Problems in Bangladesh: Is there an Indigenous Solution?’, EM, 11(2), 1987, p. 168. (44) . Ibid.

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm (45) . ‘For a brief account of Willcocks’ experiences in Egypt, especially his bitter fight with Sir Murdoch Macdonald on the question of the flow data records of the Nile River see Herbert Addison, Sun and Shadow at Aswan: A Commentary on Dams and Reservoirs on the Nile at Aswan, Yesterday, Today, and Perhaps Tomorrow (London 1959), pp. 69–78. For an autobiographical sketch see Sir William Willcocks, Sixty Years in the East (London 1935). (46) . Sir William Willcocks, Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal and its Application to Modern Problems (Delhi 1984), p. 32. (47) . Ibid., p. 60. (48) . ‘The ancients by increasing the supplies of muddy water, steadily improved the lands as time went on, and also decreased the danger of an inundation’. See Willcocks, Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal, pp. 35–6. (49) . See C. Addams William, Note on the Lectures of Sir William Willcocks, on Irrigation in Bengal Together with a Reply by Sir William Willcocks (Calcutta 1931), pp. 4–6. Also see Willcocks’ reply especially pp. 37–9. (50) . Arabinda Biswas, ‘The Decay of Irrigation and Cropping in West Bengal, 1850–1925’ in Bondhayan Chattopadhyay and Pierre Spitz (eds), Food Systems in Eastern India, United Nations Research Institute for Social Department, Report no. 87.3, Geneva, 1987 quoted in Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain (eds), Dying Wisdom: Rise, Fall and Potential of India’s Traditional Water-harvesting Systems (Delhi 1997), p. 101. (51) . According to Willcocks, kanwa is derived from the Persian or Arabic word to dig. Willcocks, Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal, pp. 7–8. (52) . Willcocks, Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal, pp. 21–2. (53) . See Chapter 3 for the growth of the embankment system in the delta in the latter half of the nineteenth century. (54) . Memorandum submitted by Captain W.D. Short, officiating superintendent of embankments, pointing out the causes of the evils existing in the Cuttack Province, 17 June 1857 in Papers Relative to the Rivers of Cuttack, part 1 (Calcutta 1860), p. 136. (55) . Captain C.B. Young, officiating chief engineer Lower Provinces, to the secretary to the Government of Bengal, Fort William, no. 5364, 1 December 1857 in Papers Relative to the Rivers of Cuttack, part 1, p. 159. (56) . W. Conan, superintendent engineer, Orissa Circle, to the chief engineer Bengal, no. 5250, 22 October 1892, ERP, LRD, EMB, File no. 3 (Floods in Orissa), p. 30. Page 27 of 29

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm (57) . Babu Jagannath Das, OLAP, vol. 1, nos 12 and 13, 16 September 1937 (Cuttack 1937), p. 686. (58) . E.S. Bellasis, River and Canal Engineering: The Characteristics of Open Flowing Streams and the Principles and Methods to be Followed in Dealing with Them (London 1931), p. 40. (59) . Lt J.W Ottley, ‘Note 10th December 1874’ in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883 (Calcutta 1884), p. 75. (60) . D.B. Grigg, The Agricultural Systems of the World: An Evolutionary Approach (London 1974), p. 77. (61) . James Thorp, ‘Soils’ in J.L. Buck (ed.), Land Utilisation in China (Shanghai 1937) quoted in Francesca Bray The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies (Oxford 1986), p. 28. (62) . H. Brammer also concedes that ‘very little factual information is available at present’ on the issue of the relative importance of biological and alluvial material in enhancing soil fertility. See H. Brammer, ‘Floods in the Agroecology of Bangladesh’, Relief and Development Institute, London, Mimeo quoted in James K. Boyce, ‘Birth of a Mega-project: Political Economy of Flood-control in Bangladesh’, EM, 14(4), 1990, p. 424. (63) . Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 4, part 3 (Cambridge 1971), pp. 224–30. (64) . Ch’ao-Ting Chi, Key Economic Areas in Chinese History: As Revealed in the Development of Public Works for Water-control (New York 1963), pp. 15–24. (65) . Indu Agnihotri, ‘Ecology, Land Use and Colonisation: The Canal Colonies of Punjab, IESHR, 33(1), 1996, pp. 42–5. (66) . C.H. Hutton, Report on the Utilization of Silt in Italy (n.p, 1909), pp. 3–6. (67) . Emilio Sereni, History of the Italian Agricultural Landscape (Princeton 1997), pp. 247–8. (68) . Federic Newhouse, M.G. Ionides, Gerald Lacey, Irrigation in Egypt and the Sudan, The Tigris and Euphrates Basin, India and Pakistan (London 1950), pp. 11–13. (69) . W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. XVIII (Delhi 1973[1877]), p. 146. (70) . Banerjei, Agriculture of the District of Cuttack, p. 52.

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Delta’s Integrity and Agrarian Rhythm

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter describes how the Mughal-Maratha agrarian order was comprehensively dismantled and replaced by the colonial zamindari tenure system. It also reviews how flood vulnerability became integral to colonial capitalist appropriation and the latter, in turn, hinged vitally on the British East India Company’s zamindari system. The British East India Company’s formal bureaucracy was oriented towards recognizing ownership, ascertaining the liabilities of property, and sought to assess rent on the presumed average productive capacity of the cultivated plot. Its introduction of the zamindari tenure or exclusive ownership produced an immediate rupture. For the Company, the need to impose a standardized rental instalment, based ideally on an assumed average output of the season’s crop, required land to be decisively insulated from the inevitable variability brought on by recurring hydraulic action. In effect, these changes changed the landscape from one that was flood dependent to one which became prone to seasonal calamities. Keywords:   zamindari tenure system, flood, East India Company, crop, agrarian order, colonial capitalist

Typically, after the annexation of the Orissa Delta in 1803, the British East India Company turned its entire energies towards a drastic reorganization of the region’s revenue administration.1 On the one hand, the pre-colonial mechanisms for revenue collection in the delta, established by the Mughals (1568–1751) and continued by their successors, the Marathas (1751–1803), had to be dismantled and dissolved. On the other, a new social and political order had to be crafted Page 1 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ and assembled to consolidate Company presence. Earlier, in the adjoining province of Bengal, the Company, through the rubric of the Permanent Settlement of 1793, had sought to transform land into a pure economic form: a commodity, alienable, individuated, monopolized, exclusively held, and its price to be regulated chiefly by a market imperative. Capitalist private property in land was intended to implant on the soils of Bengal the ‘improving landlord’ — zamindar. As entrepreneur and rural magnate, Company officials presumed, the zamindar would sit at the apex of a new agrarian order and affirm private property, generate economic surpluses, and ensure political stability.2 Establishing capitalist property in land, however, is not limited to only instituting means and measures to organize private property in its legal precision, clarity of ownership, and the exactitude of its physical boundaries. Rather, grappling with land as a substance of nature and as part of an ecological matrix became equally critical to the quest for reconstituting it as a unit capable of substantiating capitalist appropriation. In other words, the attempt to realize capitalist private property in land was as much an exercise in social and economic transformation as it was tied to establishing and consolidating a particular ecological context. In the case of deltaic Orissa, I argue, the Company could implant the landed zamindar only by recasting the previously flood-dependent agrarian regime into a flood-vulnerable landscape. That is, the zamindari system (p.52) required land to be realized in a manner that compelled the Company administration to treat deltaic inundation as a calamitous event rather than a geomorphologic process. This leads us to reconsider, with fresh emphasis, Karl Marx’s dictum that the ‘capitalist mode of appropriation which springs from the capitalist mode of production produces capitalist private property’.3 In effect, to socially structure land as the antithesis to the collective and as a monopolized means of production, a particularly capitalist type of rationality is required to realize land as capitalist private property. Which in turn, I argue, can alienate or disenchant land—a substance of nature—from its ecological milieu in specific and unique ways. This chapter will seek to outline how flood vulnerability became integral to colonial capitalist appropriation and the latter, in turn, hinged vitally on the Company’s zamindari system. But to follow this tortuous route of how colonial capitalist property came to be, one needs to take a sharp detour to explore the Mughal–Maratha context, when land was more than possession and less than property.

The ‘Predatory’ Maratha Reconsidered Soon after the Maratha rout in the delta, the Company’s administration, not unexpectedly, set about vigorously enquiring into existing tenures and fiscal mechanisms that had enabled indigenous elites to appropriate surpluses. However, the information thus generated, from ‘minute local inquiries’ into the ‘resources’ and production regimes in the Orissa districts, was embedded in a peculiarly colonial narrative in which British administrative coherence and order was posed to ‘Maratha rapacity’ and political chaos. The leitmotif being the Page 2 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ notion of the ‘predatory’ Maratha, with his unremitting oppression of the Oriya cultivator. Recovering the pre-colonial agrarian and political world from chiefly extant colonial accounts, hence, requires us to read against the grain of colonial reportage. Which, not surprisingly, was visibly slanted by the narrow bias for private property, contract, and by colonial agendas for maximizing their revenue gains in Orissa. Orissa under Maratha rule (1751–1803) was demarcated into two distinct political divisions, the Garjat and the Mughalbandi. Whilst the former, towards the west, comprised the hilly and forested tracts ruled by independent feudatory chieftains, the latter region, hugging the Bay of Bengal in the east, encompassed the alluvial plains or the coastal deltaic (p.53) tracts.4 These geographically contrasting zones (hill/delta) were further marked by different and distinct administrative systems and revenue collection regimes. The Garjat, with its sparse population, was controlled by tribute paying chieftains whose petty kingdoms were ensconced in the inaccessible forested hills. The Mughalbandi, with its broad alluvial plains, on the other hand, was administered through a number of predominantly hereditary revenue collectors, termed chaudhuri/ qanungo or taluqdar and the amil.5 These tracts also had a number of tributepaying chieftains, like the rajas of Aul (pronounced Ali), Khurda, Kujang, and Kanika, who were settled as ‘powerful and formidable chiefs, commanding troops and possessing forts’.6 Since the time of the Mughal revenue settlement, the Mughalbandi was predominantly held khas lands that were under direct imperial rule with a salaried bureaucracy enforcing and realizing the revenue claim.7 Colonial accounts, as mentioned earlier, overwhelmingly portrayed the Maratha administration in the region as being extortionate, ruthless, and arbitrary in its demands on the cultivators or raiyat. Andrew Stirling (1822), the author of the first comprehensive report on Orissa after its conquest by the British, described the Maratha presence in the delta as having ‘exhibited a picture of misrule, anarchy, weakness, rapacity and violence’.8 Several decades later, G. Toynbee (1873), a British administrator, alleged that villages in the Mughalbandi were regularly put to the highest bidder and sometimes the crops were simply seized by government officials ‘without any pretence’. In fact, if one were to accept colonial accounts, ‘rapine and violence’ was such in the delta that poverty was often the Oriya raiyats’ most effective protection against oppression.9 In a similar vein, Maddox, in his settlement report, published in the final years of the nineteenth century, asserted that the Marathas regularly put up lists for the auctioning of Oriya estates at Nagpur (situated in contemporary Maharashtra) and oftentimes a single estate was simultaneously farmed to two or three assamis; who apparently went on to force higher rents.10 Maddox, however, remains unclear on whether these assamis were revenue collectors or revenue contractors, the difference being that the former could be a mere official saddled with the task of collecting revenue demand, while the latter could be Page 3 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ termed as some sort of speculator in land revenue, with administrative functions as well.11 Maddox, also claimed that defaulting taluqdars were subject to dispossession, imprisonment, and severe fines, which ended up spurring (p.54) them to put a squeeze on the Oriya cultivators through the levy of extraordinary cesses. To top it, harassment and plunder of the countryside by roving bands of Maratha cavalry was supposedly a frequent occurrence as well.12 This onslaught of Maratha oppression, in the colonial view, not only made the Oriya peasantry refractory in the extreme, but also dislocated agrarian production. Ostensibly, cultivators in large numbers’ would render their villages be-chirag (without light) and flee to the forests, where the Maratha cavalry was apparently then rendered ‘powerless’.13 In time, peasant militias, according to W.W. Hunter, a late nineteenth century chronicler, were also organized, and they defied the Marathas by using the complicated river network to conduct a guerrilla campaign.14 Interestingly enough, some of the colonial commentators also chose to portray the Mughals as being relatively more benign than the Marathas. W. Ewer (1818), one of the earliest Company officials in the delta, claimed that the Mughal collections from Orissa, according to the Ain-i-Akbari, was recorded as yielding Rs 34,00,000 which was ‘very light and moderate’. In contrast, he argued, the Marathas were able to collect only Rs 21,20,415 (reported as the sadar jama for the year 1768–9 for Cuttack). This paltry collection, he suggested, clearly indicated an economic collapse engendered by Maratha rapacity and administrative inefficiency.15 The Cuttack Collector, W. Trower (1816–18), in one of his despatches to the Board of Revenue, reported that between 1790–1 and 1801–2 Maratha revenue assessments averaged Rs 13,78,000 gross, while net collections stood only at Rs 11,63,000. This would again point to a sharp decline relative to the Mughal collections. Trower’s estimate, however, ignores the fact that Midnapore District in the north, which was clubbed with the Orissa Province during the Mughal period with a revenue averaging Rs 10,00,000, was not part of the Maratha Mughalbandi.16 The ‘sharp decline’, therefore, does not appear as steep or as abrupt as Trower’s calculations make it out to be. The figures, moreover, do not take into account the kauris–rupee exchange rate.17 Historian, R.D. Banerji, calculating at 4 kakans to the rupee (which was the Company’s exchange rate in 1803), puts the revenue collections during the reign of four of the nine Maratha subahdars in the Mughalbandi as follows (see Table 2.1). (p.55) Table 2.1 Maratha Collections Maratha Governor

Collection

Sivaram Bhatt Sathe (1760–4)

Rs 10,78,144.

Sambhaji Ganes (1768–71)

Rs 15,60,811–7–0.

Rajaram Mukund Pandit (1778–82)

Rs 14,44,740–2–0.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’

Maratha Governor

Collection

Vynkaji Sakader (1792–?)*

Rs 15,95,991.

Source: R.D. Banerji, History of Orissa, Calcutta, 1931, p. 244. *Vyankaji Sakader was the phar navis (record keeper) during the reign of the last Maratha subahdar Sadashiv Rao (1793–1803) in the Orissa Mughalbandi. In contrast to the colonial opinion, therefore, R.D. Banerji concluded that the slow rise in collections indicated that a gradual recovery in the finances and economic position of the Mughalbandi had been occurring under the Marathas. A recovery that was also particularly significant in the light of the ten-year war of attrition in the region between the Marathas and the nawab of Bengal (1741– 51). Banerji, however, fails to specify the type of the rupee in use, whether the Arcot or Sicca. This makes comparisons across periods suspect and inaccurate.18 Emphasizing only on revenue figures, as indicators of agrarian expansion or decline for seventeenth and eighteenth century India, can, nevertheless, also be very misleading. These figures were generally notional and often a wide discrepancy existed between the potential and the actual collections. Assertions about so called collapses or wide fluctuations, therefore, in revenue yield, could just as well result from shifts in the boundaries of the revenue unit, or it could even indicate the emergence of a new elite with a greater ability to appropriate revenue collections.19 Nonetheless, though the British East India Company, having displaced the Marathas from Orissa, were keen to characterize the latter’s rule as being particularly oppressive, their own reportage at times could point the other way as well. Consequently, despite a fairly consistent claim that the Marathas in the Mughalbandi were oppressive and predatory, one still finds many references suggesting the opposite. Ewer noted, for example, that the net receipts conveyed to Nagpur by the Marathas always fell short of the stated demand. Large balances were regularly left outstanding, which he concluded was due to a policy of ‘indulgence’. Besides, the Marathas also allowed several deductions to the intermediaries and local magnates, to cover the transaction costs involved in collections. Thus, (p.56) a surplus of barely Rs 4,00,000, from the total demand, was remitted to Nagpur, the capital of the Bhonsle raja.20 In effect, a substantial part of the revenue actually realized tended to remain within the Mughalbandi itself. Similarly, in Khurda (Puri District), Major Fletcher, the Company’s officer-in-charge of determining the assessment in 1803, noted that the Maratha demand was pitched at a ‘light’ Rs 70,606, which amounted to barely 5 Annas a bigha for the cultivator. Of this demand, only Rs 15,000 was transmitted to Nagpur, while the remaining Rs 55,606 was retained for the raja of Khurda’s personal establishment and that of his retainers21 Evidence also exists which suggest that the Marathas maintained an intricate system of ferries, which provided cheap transport. Some of these ferry owners were granted jagirs Page 5 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ in several instances to keep the boats in functioning order and provide troops, public officers, the poor, and pilgrims free transport around the delta.22 John Beames (1875) believed that trade along the Orissa Coast during the time of the Marathas was ‘considerable’, with ships from Madras, Lakshadweep, and Maldives frequenting them for procuring rice.23 Stone bridges, vital for communication and transport in the delta, were constructed as well, which were intended to complement an extensive postal network, allegedly consisting of tappis (runners) and kasids (mounted postmen).24 Religious patronage in the form of land grants for the maintenance and upkeep of both temples and mosques was another important feature of the Maratha administration.25 The Marathas also directed considerable attention towards sustaining the conditions for agrarian production in the delta. They were apparently regular in giving taqqavi (agricultural loans) and granting deductions for losses sustained from sudden inundations, droughts, or other calamities. Though this evidence does not necessarily overturn the impression sustained mostly by colonial reportage of an oppressive Maratha presence in the Orissa Delta, it does suggest that they were perhaps far from simply predatory. Recent scholarship on the period, moreover, has been dismissive of the thesis that Maratha rule was premised entirely on a combination of extortion and plunder. These notions, it is argued, were largely constructed by the early colonialists in a bid to secure legitimacy for their then tenuous possessions in the Indian subcontinent.26 Significantly enough, in the Orissa Delta, despite certain innovations, the Maratha revenue bureaucracy appears to have essentially retained the basic tenets of the elaborate and well articulated pan-Indian Mughal revenue administration. To understand the pre-colonial agrarian (p.57) world in the Orissa Delta, therefore, requires a further detour into the Mughal period in the region.

Mughal Intermediaries and the Collection Strategy As early as 1580, Todar Mai had been deputed by the Mughal emperor, Akbar (1556–1605), to organize a revenue settlement for the Mughalbandi tracts in Orissa. His attempts proved to be preliminary and the first advance in a Mughal settlement had to await Raja Man Singh’s intervention around 1590. Man Singh’s settlement, however, became operational only as late as 1627, during the reign of Jahangir (1605–27).27 Thus, by 1751 when the subahdar or governor of the Bengal province Alivardi Khan, ceded the revenue of the Mughalbandi to the Maratha raja Raghuji I of Nagpur, the Mughal administration had been functioning in the delta for over a century.28 The delta’s broad alluvial plain under the Mughals, as previously mentioned, was held khas, while its marshy woodlands on the margins of the Bay of Bengal had several zamindars or rajas settled on a peshkash (tribute).29 Foremost amongst whom was the raja of Khurda who received the rank of commander of 3,500 and was assigned thirty-one zamindaries of Hindu sardars (chiefs) containing 129 killas (forts).30 The integration of these fairly independent zamindars or rajas Page 6 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ into the Mughal fold was part of a well-tested political strategy, termed by John F. Richards as ‘political socialization’; the aim being to entangle and transform, through the revenue system, truculent warrior-aristocracies into quasi-officials of empire.31 In the Mughalbandi, the lowest administrative rung was the village headman titled the muqaddam. Collections from the village were sent to the taluqdar—a pargana (fiscal unit) level official also referred to as qanungo or chaudhuri. From the taluqdar, the revenue was despatched to the office of the sadar qanungo, an official who was responsible for the collections of several parganas. From the sadar qanungo, the revenue was then routed to the amil, the highest executive officer and in charge of the entire sarkar (roughly translates as a district). The three sarkars of the Mughalbandi were Cuttack, Bhadrak, and Jellasore (later Balasore), which, in turn, were under the overall administration of the subahdar of Bengal.32 In the larger scheme and design of the Mughal administration, in most parts of the empire, the qanungo, chaudhuri, and the taluqdars occupied (p.58) different levels in the revenue administration and were entitled to several types of rights and perquisites.33 In the Orissa Mughalbandi, however, the parganalevel taluqdar (qanungo, or chauduri) appears to have referred to a single office and perhaps accounts for the fact that the three terms were used interchangeably. The taluqdar, holding transferable office, was remunerated by deductions (rusum) from the gross collections and possessed a privileged tenure (nanker) in land. He could also generate income by imposing abwabs (fines, cesses) and sair duties (octroi, market dues). The Mughals termed the taluqdar of native and local origins as vilaity, and distinguished them from the predominantly Bengali taluqdars, who they imported into the delta for supervising and managing revenue collections. These taluqdars were also sometimes promoted to the rank of zamindar.34 The zamindar of Kotdes, for example, was drawn from the rank of an amil. These ‘officially created’ zamindars, while taking the title of old royal families, nevertheless, effectively, assumed the rights and liabilities of the pargana rank official. Even the Marathas chose to recognize and confirm such zamindars, sixteen of them in Cuttack and one in Puri.35 In the office of the muqaddam locality met imperial governance. On the one hand, he was firmly embedded in the interests of the village by virtue of being the man on the spot; on the other, he served as the representative and vital pivot of the imperial administration. His office was of two types, the mouassi (hereditary) or the kharidgi (purchaser of a muqaddami right from a taluqdar). Both the tenures were able to exercise similar functions at the village level, which included the power to mortgage and even alienate village lands.36 Clearly, the Mughal administrative hierarchy at the local level was dense with layers of officialdom, all of whom, furthermore, were tied to the provincial and central authorities through gradations of privilege, rank, and service. Maddox, however, argues that the system was largely a replication, if not a continuation, Page 7 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ of the previous Hindu regime’s administrative apparatus.37 It was, in fact, not an unusual practice for the Mughals to absorb into their folds, upon conquest of a territory, the existing administrative infrastructure of the previous regime. John F. Richard’s study of the Mughal land-tax system in Golconda, for example, revealed their ability to efficiently incorporate administrative elements from the previous Qutb Shahi empire.38 Nevertheless, whatever the origins of the Mughal administrative and revenue system in the Mughalbandi, it appears to have been particularly well anchored in the locality and village. (p.59) The basis for sustaining an overwhelming imperial presence through a myriad number of officials locked in a system of checks and balances, however, appears to have been crafted not merely as part of the administrative logic of the Mughal state but also as a function of the agrarian context in the Mughalbandi. Two aspects of the revenue system make this particularly apparent. One, that the demand and collections in Orissa were made mainly in kind (rice), in a cropsharing arrangement. The tax burden hence was a claim or demand made as a share of the gross produce and not as a fixed cash rent.39 The demand, according to the letters (Muraqati-i-Hassan) of Abul Hassan (1655–70), who was the secretary to several of the Mughal subahdars of Orissa, was usually a half of the gross produce.40 Irfan Habib has argued that ‘harvest failure was automatically allowed for in crop-sharing’, as any decline in the total produce correspondingly affected the share available for revenue.41 The Mughal revenue administration could, therefore, incorporate a degree of flexibility, even if it pitched its demand at an exorbitant level.42 Such a collection strategy, nevertheless, had to rest on an ability to minutely monitor and chase reliable information about agrarian resources and production possibilities on the ground. Crop division required a constant and intensive surveillance of the peasant’s output from season to season. This possibly supports the point made earlier and explains why the Mughal revenue administration was concentrated in overwhelming numbers at the local level. The ambit of Mughal official concern, however, was not restricted to only ascertaining seasonal variations in agrarian output. Their role, in fact, appears to have been crucial in sustaining many of the conditions for agrarian production itself. The representation of the zamindar/intermediary, prior to Company rule, as being merely part of a ‘tribute collecting structure’ with only ‘rent receiving administrative functions’, notably the views of Rajat Ray, has been entirely upturned in recent scholarship.43 Ranajit Sen, for example, described these Mughal intermediaries in Bengal as a ‘fiscal buffer’, who simultaneously cushioned imperial finances against deficits while providing a fiscal umbrella to the peasantry in times of devastation and distress. Sen further asserts that the Mughal dispensation allowed for ‘pockets of wealth’ to accumulate ‘behind the notice of the State’, presumably in the hands of these intermediaries, so that they were able to support agricultural activities.44 Satish Chandra has also pointed out that the Mughal administration was keen to allow enough to Page 8 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ accumulate at the (p.60) village level in order to ensure ‘normal cultivation and limited agrarian expansion’.45 C.A. Bayly similarly suggests that since ruling elites in the Indian subcontinent, prior to Company rule, often functioned in volatile ecological contexts, they were required to infuse capital, organize labour, and ensure investments in order to keep agricultural productivity viable.46 According to him, ecologically-unstable areas were particularly dependent on these inputs and were liable to a rapid economic collapse in the event of withdrawal of such support. Thus, intermediary intervention in sustaining the conditions for production made the critical difference between a zone either remaining productive or slumping interminably into decline.47 Strikingly enough, the views expressed here resonate well with Stirling’s description of the Mughal intermediaries (i.e., the taluqdars and the muqaddams) in the Orissa Mughalbandi. Stirling suggests that the role of the intermediaries extended well beyond that of merely collecting revenue for the state. Accordingly, these officials granted leases to encourage new settlers in the villages and could also waive taxes of those raiyats who brought unoccupied and unassessed lands under cultivation. These intermediaries were furthermore invested with judicial authority and maintained order.48 This estimate of the Mughal intermediary in the Mughalbandi, in fact, seems to also correspond with Nurul Hasan’s notion of the ‘second category of zamindari right’ in which intermediaries were attached to the Mughal administration on the basis of a service obligation but without proprietary rights and their tasks required them: … to submit the full revenue returns, to maintain law and order through their troops, to keep ferries and irrigation works in good order and to ensure that assessments were reasonably made and complaints properly looked into.49 Since these intermediaries did not possess any title or property in the soil itself, they could, at best, alienate their office or a portion of it along with its privileges and perquisites. Stirling, further noted that in the Mughalbandi, the taluqdars and muqaddams were entitled to almost 5 per cent of the revenue collection, besides being granted perquisites on fishing, orchards and forest produce (jalker, phalker, and banker respectively). They were also allowed a percentage on the taxes collected from trade (muteharfa) and given incentives to expand the agrarian frontier.50 There is, thus, a strong case for challenging the view that the (p.61) Mughal intermediary in deltaic Orissa was simply parasitic and a mere revenue collector. Instead, it appears that he was someone akin to an entrepreneur or magnate of sorts, who could generate income for himself by intervening in agrarian production, while also sustaining rural society and its economy by operating as a fiscal buffer.51 The Marathas, while carrying many administrative innovations in the Mughalbandi, seem to have nevertheless

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ retained the intermediary’s critical role as an active agent for sustaining agrarian production conditions on the ground.

Administrative Continuity and Maratha Innovations The Marathas divided the Mughalbandi into four chaklas or divisions (Bhadrak, Soro, Cuttack, and Balasore) encompassing 150-odd parganas under the management of thirty-two amils.52 Each pargana was further divided into mahals (a sub-fiscal unit).53 The Mughalbandi continued to be predominantly held under direct rule termed khas, and like the Mughals, the Marathas accommodated independent tribute-paying chieftains within their administrative folds. Two decisive alterations were, however, introduced in the revenue administration — the Marathas began farming or auctioning revenue collections rights, though the spread and intensity is unclear; and they sought to circumvent the Mughal intermediaries at the pargana level by dealing directly with the muqaddams. Colonial reportage, understandably, had been singularly and severely critical of the Maratha administrative changes, which, on closer scrutiny, as indicated earlier, reveal a much more complicated picture. The Maratha practice of auctioning the Mughalbandi’s revenue collection to the ‘highest bidder’, for example, need not necessarily be viewed as being entirely extortionate and debilitating to agriculture.54 The Maratha revenue collector or kamavisdar, who obtained rights to a particular revenue unit by bidding and paying a lump sum in advance (rasad) to the peshwa (Maratha chief), was a peculiar fiscal instrument fashioned to cope with the economic realities of the late eighteenth century. Stewart Gordon’s discussion of the Maratha administration in Malwa, provides an insightful description of the complex role and position of the kamavisdar in that period.55 According to Gordon, the introduction of the kamavisdar in the Malwa region was, in fact, an advance over the previous Maratha strategy of using the rakhwalla (a tribute collecting agent), who usually employed the Maratha cavalry to seize surpluses and wealth from the rural (p.62) populace. Revenue extraction through military forays, however, tended to be inefficient as it ‘tied down the army, demoralized the population’, and allowed the looting and capture of only immediately movable wealth. The kamavisdars, it was hoped, would remedy the situation by formalizing collection procedures and judiciously distributing the tax burden. A kamavisdar was a part of the civil administration, usually a Chitpavan brahmin. He assessed no land, heard no cases, put down no rebellions, nor administered the area. He generally reported directly to the peshwa (Maratha chief), with no bureaucracy above him nor did he have the right to make appointments to serve him. He had the sole function of realizing the amount assigned to him by contract through the salaried officials of the state. The personal pay of the kamavisdar was not a percentage of the jama (assessed revenue), but rather a fixed percentage on the rasad (advance) he had made to the peshwa. He, nevertheless, was entitled to a full refund of his

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ advance in the event the revenue unit proved to be refractory or ungovernable.56 In sum, the farmed tenure of the kamavisdar was intended as part of a strategy to systematize revenue collections in a new territory and not a means for tightening the fiscal screw on the peasantry. Andre Wink suggests that the khoti (farmed) tenures, created in the Konkan by the Marathas, appears to have been similarly designed for the purpose of restoring and ameliorating the revenue collection procedures in the farmed tract. The khot (revenue farmer) was involved in repopula ting the pargana and often invested considerable sums to revive production. The khot was sometimes even a valuable buffer between levels of the revenue administration and the peasantry, when he resisted higher rates of assessment and promoted cultivation.57 In other words, Wink sees revenue farming as a Maratha tactic to obtain ‘settled revenue from unsettled territory’. The farmed tenures, in effect, were introduced to draw frontier territories into the Maratha revenue net by substituting the cumbersome procedures of a formal bureaucracy with entrepreneurs willing to indulge in a degree of risk and speculation. Thus the claim by Stirling and Maddox that ‘villages were put to the highest bidder’ and subsequently the revenue demand ‘knew no limits’ could well be an oversimplified understanding, if not an entirely motivated description. It is significant, that the kamavisdar, in principle, could make no exaction above his stipulated rasad, while the khot, on the other hand, appears to have played an important role in reviving or promoting cultivation. The Maratha policy of farming (p.63) revenue collections in the Mughalbandi, therefore, could have been, in all likelihood, a standard response to frontier conditions and may have also involved attempts at agrarian restoration and expansion.58 On the policy of dealing directly with the village-level muqaddams, at the expense of the erstwhile Mughal intermediaries, the Marathas were clearly attempting to engineer a new system of social and political alliances.59 The interstitial period between conquest and consolidation, moreover, was also a time when local magnates and men of substance could attempt to renegotiate revenue terms in their favour and also hide surpluses from the authorities of the new dispensation. Consequently, in a context where loyalty was crucial to the process of rule, the Maratha’s bid to incorporate village headmen into their administrative folds held obvious strategic appeal. By placing the village muqaddams firmly on their side, the transaction costs involved in locating and appropriating agrarian surpluses could, therefore, be much reduced. Not unexpectedly, many of the Mughal intermediaries in the higher rungs of the administration, with their loyalties suspect in the eyes of the Marathas, were given short shrift—a fact attested to by several colonial observations on the subject. In 1804, for example, the then collector of Cuttack, Robert Ker, reported that the zamindars in the district were found in a state of the ‘most abject

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ poverty and depression’, owing to the fact that for years they had not been allowed by the Marathas to: …interfere in the management of the zamindaree concerns and had lost nearly all their influence and much of their knowledge. In a report on the balances due from the Asseressur Chulekh [Assarur Chakla], dated 1804, that officer ascribes the arrears outstanding in some of the large talooks entirely to the ignorance, incapacity and mismanagement of the holder, who had never been allowed possession of their estates under the preceding [Maratha] administration.60 The policy of weakening and eliminating certain levels of the Mughal intermediary apparently began during the tenure of the Maratha subahdar Raja Ram Pandit (1778–92).61 In the Maratha scheme of revenue organization, the muqaddams and the vilaity qanungo’s were now encouraged to settle directly with the amils.62 Those muqaddams who paid directly were titled mazhuri, and were granted rights similar to those possessed by the taluqdar, though ‘carrying less dignity’.63 By 1792, even the office of the sadar qanungo, the chief assistant of the amil (p.64) and the person who usually dealt with the taluqdar, was permanently abolished.64 The anchoring of the regime at a more primary level of the collection chain, however, did not offset the principle of keeping a ‘fiscal buffer’ between the state and the mass of the peasantry; the mazkuri muqaddam, in fact, now became the Maratha version of the Mughal intermediary. The evidence for this possibility appears evident in one of the early despatches of Collector Charles Groeme (1804–5), in which he suggested that the muqaddams under the Marathas made investments and took decisions to sustain and enhance agrarian production in the delta. In a note on pargana Limbai (Khurda, Puri), he records that over two hundred padhans (headmen) and their bhois (accountants) put forward a deed of relinquishment stating that: … [should we] fail in discharging the public dues either from calamity of season or other causes, as we have no funds of our own whence to discharge balances, we should be liable to be dispossessed of our ‘meeras’ [holding] and to become ‘bewatun [landless or dispossessed]… by degrees lose the inheritance of our fathers He [Nilmony Choudree] will be the malik [owner] of the nafa and noqsan [profit and loss]…he will give takavee [loans] and grant pottahs [leases].65 As is evident from the above petition, their obligations involved the granting of agricultural loans for relief and the granting of leases (pattas) for the cultivation of lands. And much like the Mughal intermediary, it appears that they were entitled to the profits or suffered the losses on account of their interventions in the agrarian economy. What Collector Groeme understandably did not mention was that the muqaddam’s poverty and failure to ‘discharge balances’ as also recorded in the petition had in large measure been aggravated by sweeping Page 12 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ changes in the revenue administration introduced by colonial rule in the delta. The muqaddams and the Maratha intermediary were, in fact, in the early period of British rule completely marginalized by a new class of zamindars that had been instituted on the hitherto unprecedented principle of absolute and exclusive property. The systematic phasing out of the Mughal–Maratha fiscal buffer’ by colonial rule, as will be argued next, marked a decisive and clear rupture from the past.

Colonial Imperative: Property and Regularity With the fall of the Barabati Fort in Cuttack in October 1803, the East India Company formally began the task of consolidation and establishing the finer mechanisms of administration.66 The initial forays into revenue (p.65) collection, however, quickly floundered upon the Company’s ignorance of the delta’s complex ecology and perplexing tenurial arrangements. This was in large part, further aggravated by what John Beames termed as ‘passive resistance’ by the officials of the previous Maratha regime. Well aware of our ignorance of the country, they [Maratha officials] all in one accord abstained from helping us in any way, no open resistance was ventured upon, but all stolidly sat aloof, papers were hidden, information withheld, boats, bullocks and carts sent out of the way, the zamindars who were ordered to go into Cuttack to settle for their estates did not go, and on searching for them at their houses could not be found, were reported as absent, on a journey, no one knew where. But if from ignorance the English Officers committed any mistake, then life suddenly returned to the dull inert mass, and complaints were loud and incessant.67 The lack of information consistently plagued the incipient administration. In 1808, two members of the Board of Revenue, who were sent to organize procedures for estimating and arriving at the revenue demand for the region, complained helplessly of their: …[the officers] want of knowledge of the boundaries and extent of a province [deltaic Orissa] of which we came in possession in 1803, their ignorance of the quantity of land liable to assessments, of its product, and value of the estate and extent of the cultivation, [and] of the nature of the tenures by which property is held….68 Even as late as 1813, an exasperated, member of the Board of Revenue, I. Richardson, sent to Cuttack to superintend the revenue settlement, wrote ‘that no Revenue documents are procurable that can be depended upon whereby to ascertain the former revenue or the present assets and capability of the lands’.69 Despite its palpable ignorance, the Company persevered in its efforts towards formulating a revenue demand. The first settlement of 1804–5 was arrived at on the basis of some assessment papers obtained from the pharnavis or record keeper along with some more papers from one of the Maratha sadar qanungo.70 Page 13 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ These papers were further supplemented by documents called the Gopal Pandit Devidhi and Narendra Ray Mahashai Papers, which it was claimed was found in the Barabati Fort.71 The demand arrived at, in the first settlement (1804–5), by Charles Groeme and Robert Ker was 11,80,870, sicca rupees. According to Ewer, (p.66) in his report of 1818, this revenue demand marked a fundamental break from the Maratha practice in one important aspect. The gross demand of the Marathas was always inclusive of all deductions allowed to the various collecting officials, whilst the British demand or jama was exclusive even of the 10 per cent that the intermediaries were entitled to as collection expenses. The new British demand, therefore, though purportedly approximating the Maratha gross demand, was in excess of the Maratha net receipts, that is, the actual amount collected, by over a hundred thousand rupees.72 Thus, while the Maratha gross demand was in several ways a nominal sum that varied from the actual collections, the colonial administration recognized no such gap.73 This does not, however, suggest that the Maratha gross demand was always higher than its full realization nor that they pursued benign policies of collecting well below their capacity. Rather, it is important to underline that the difference in the manner the British and the Marathas assessed and realized their respective revenue demands stemmed fundamentally from dissimilar property regimes and processes for rule. The Mughal–Maratha dispensation, as a non-capitalist social formation, organized its tax base and routines for collection around an emphasis on creating and renewing its social alliances and political infrastructure. The agrarian surplus as assessed and realized was not only chiefly a negotiated quantity but was also qualified by a number 01 intermediary claims. The Mughal–Maratha revenue bureaucracies, moreover, were geared towards taxing the gross produce, based on the perceived output of the harvested crop of a particular season. They thus tended to concentrate means and men on monitoring output on the ground and on recovering minute information about surpluses in rural society. The peasant’s cultivated land was treated as comprising an ensemble of politically-determined rights, duties, obligations and, claims. On the other hand, for the colonialists, cultivated land was a distinct unit of production that was exclusively owned and chiefly characterized as a monopolized means of production, which principally bore rental income. In other words, cultivated land was to be administered as a pure economic quantity that had to be protected from non-economic demands on it. Only through the optic of private ownership was cultivated land to be made legible to the Company bureaucracy.74 In striking contrast, therefore, to determining the tax demand through seasonal negotiations over the gross produce, the colonial bureaucracy (p.67) sought to institute formal administrative procedures to translate estimates on rental income into a revenue demand. In thus transforming the direct producer from a Page 14 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ peasant in hereditary occupation, surrendering a share of his output to the state via an overlord or official, to now being a tenant paying rent to a landlord, caused the previous collection strategy of land revenue to be altered in three fundamental aspects. Flexibility

The Marathas continued the Mughal practice of allowing considerable leeway while realizing the revenue demand. For one, they based their demand on the produce of the land that was actually under cultivation.75 Second, the demand treated all the cultivated lands in the village as a single revenue unit, that is, the demand was made in general and not assessed on every individual strip of the cultivated portion.76 Consequently, it made it possible for the village unit to offset indifferent yields of certain strips with exceptional performances on others. Lastly, the assessment was not concluded as a fixed amount which held across seasons. Rather, the total demand on the village, as mentioned earlier, was always determined on the perceived gross output of that season. Moreover, the Marathas were usually not able to translate their claims into a consistent demand. Thus, those who for whatever reason could not pay or be made to pay their full share were rarely subject to further proceedings, let alone being deprived of their cultivated lands.77 Company officials, on the other hand, were the exact opposite in the manner they pitched and pursued the revenue demand. Through Regulation XII of 1805 (comprising sixteen clauses), the Company sought to establish an administrative organization in the Orissa Delta that largely drew upon their experiences with the Permanent Settlement of 1793 in Bengal. The Bengal Code was, in fact, deemed to be enforceable in all situations where the Orissa Regulations were perceived to be unclear.78 Through Regulation XII, the colonial administration effected several short settlements in the Mughalbandi. Between 1805 and 1817, the demand pitch was gradually scaled up from Rs 13,14,825 in 1805–6 to a peak of Rs 16,37,924 in the 1816–17 settlement. Though the rise in the demand of approximately 25 per cent, in barely a decade, suggests that the demand was screwed upwards very steeply, it is difficult to conclude, especially in the absence of figures on average rents for the period, that the burden fell on the cultivator in the form of a higher rent. H. McPherson, the (p.68) settlement officer for Puri, for example, contended that in spite of the overall increase in the absolute demand for the deltaic district, a substantial part of it was from resumed-tenures (that is tenures previously held free were now subjected to rent or revenue demand). The income of these tenures that were now taken over by government, McPherson alleged, in former times had flowed to the Maratha officials. He also asserted that the British merely worked up the revenue demand to the level of the Mughal assessment, which the Marathas as a consequence of their depredations had caused to decline.79 In the absence of reliable figures on the amount of land under cultivation and the number of cultivators in the delta for the period, and given that the former Maratha Page 15 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ officials either withheld or supplied incorrect information to the colonial administrators, it would be difficult to conclude that an increase in the total revenue demand necessarily translated into a higher rent on the peasant. Rather, it appears that a decisive rupture in the revenue administration was brought about following the introduction of a new format and mode in which the Company pitched its demand and carried out its collections, with the procedures and rules now premised chiefly on the notion of private property and exclusive ownership. Clause 13 of Regulations XII stipulated that engagements for rent were to be concluded only through a written obligation, involving the issuance of a patta, which delineated and specified the land to be taxed.80 The plot of land that was thus demarcated, numbered, classified, and with its ownership exclusively identified now became the revenue administration’s object of focus.81 The shift from the pre-colonial emphasis on ascertaining the gross produce to that of arriving at a rent on the quantity of land owned caused the colonial revenue administration to also initiate new procedures and protocols for assessing the taxable worth of the holding. Instead of expending their energies on a close monitoring of the seasonal output, the colonial administration now directed their attention towards arriving at the cultivated plot’s presumed productive possibilities. In the words of Irfan Habib, this sharp rupture in revenue practice, that followed the introduction of landed property, was based on an altogether new set of principles and rules for assessment. The land revenue under the preceding Indian regimes was fixed as a share of the crop, and varied according to the crop cultivated. The land revenue under the British, (p.69) whether directly imposed on the ryots [raiyats] or assessed on the zamindars, was a true tax on land. The assessment was on the basis of what and how much it ought to produce, not on what crop it actually raised.82 Given the fact that the colonial revenue officers had to contend with ‘defective information’ on the productive capabilities of the estates, the task of settling an acceptable rent rate proved perplexing and contentious.83 Though, in the initial short settlements, the Company found it expedient to recognize a few rent-free tenures and some of the estates were even allowed to pay quit-rents (a tribute of sorts), over most of the Mughalbandi a demand was fixed in complete disregard to prevailing customs and local production contexts.84 Furthermore, once the estimate was arrived at, no deductions of any sort were entertained on grounds such as abandonment or non-cultivation of the lands that were capable of bearing a crop.85 In sum, the demand once arrived at was non-negotiable. Rent, in effect, was intended to be blind to fluctuations in output and to peculiarities in production contexts, such as that brought about by shifts in precipitation.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ Thus, the Company’s formal bureaucracy was oriented towards recognizing ownership, ascertaining the liabilities of property, and sought to assess rent on the presumed average productive capacity of the cultivated plot. This fixed demand and clearly defined rights in property were, furthermore, backed up with a rigid collection schedule, which required the prompt and punctual realization of the kist (revenue or rent installment).86 The sale laws, based on the Bengal Code, further reinforced and gave sharp teeth to the Company’s collection strategy. Failure to meet an installment that was due, invited immediate seizure of the estate, which was then put up for sale. Between the period 1806 and 1818, several such ‘defaulting estates’ in the Mughalbandi were put up for auction and sold. In Cuttack District alone, out of a total of 3000 Oriya proprietors who were registered in the first settlement, barely 1449 remained in possession of their estates by 1818. In effect, more than half of the original proprietors, paying some 78.5 per cent of the total revenue, were dispossessed.87 According to Maddox, seventeen estates in the same district with a revenue of over Rs 50,000 were auctioned in 1806 at Fort William in Calcutta alone. In 1807, the number sold touched 266 estates, paying over Rs 300,000 in revenue.88 The harsh sale laws and the insistence that the proprietor pay his rent installment on the day it was due could make the tenure particularly (p.70) vulnerable to any variability in output caused by drought or inundation. The account of Birjoo Maunty a proprietor of an estate in pargana Oldhar (Puri District), poignantly sums up the manner in which crop losses from inundations, with a rigidly enforced demand, could precipitate a distress sale. According to the collector, W. Trower, in 1807, the cultivated fields of Birjoo Maunty along with three other proprietors of pargana Oldar, suffered from an inundation. Subsequently, they represented their plight to one Chunderpersund Singh at the collector’s office in Cuttack, with the plea that they could not pay the revenue without borrowing at a high interest from a mahajan (moneylender). On the assurances of Chunderpersund Singh, that their case would be forwarded to the collector and their lands would be saved, they returned to their village. However, as their lands continued to be in the register for sales, they made the necessary borrowings and despatched the amount, only for it to be sent back by Chunderpersund Singh because their estate had already been purchased by him for a sum of Rs 1291 in the name of Luckenarran Rai.89 Clearly, Birjoo Maunty and his fellow villager’s fate was precipitated as much by the non-negotiability of the terms of the rent and the requirement for its prompt payment as it was brought about by the inundation of his lands and the wiles of Chunderpersund Singh. The Company’s rigid revenue collection policies, however, need not necessarily be considered as being overwhelmingly determined only by notions about managing the juridical and economic character of capitalist private property. The Company was, on several occasions, not averse to showing latitude and taking measures to mitigate distress, while Page 17 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ still adhering to the notion of exclusively held property. Rather, the revenue administration’s inability to ride the recurring peaks and troughs in agricultural output was more fundamentally rooted in the manner they sought to implant capitalist private property in the person of the improving landlord—the Company zamindar. In other words, I argue, the manner in which property was recast for rule, order, and economic organization sustained the administration’s distinctive style of inflexibility towards seasonal variability in the delta. Intermediaries

Confronted with the absence of a landowning stratum in the Mughalbandi, the colonial administration acted quickly to constitute one.90 According to Andrew Stirling, the East India Company in the Orissa Delta drew its (p.71) class of landowning zamindars largely from the ranks of the petty officials and revenue collectors of the previous Maratha regime. Nothing can be more obvious, on a cursory view of the subject than the want of all previous title on the part of some of those engagers to be considered [as] malikan zemeen [proprietors of the land]…for instance the surberakars [revenue farmers] of several of the muzkooree mouzahs [specified villages on the rent roll], who were merely the kharjees or putwarries [accountants] entrusted temporarily with the collection of the public revenue assessed on them after their [the villages] separation from some other management, and the poorsettees or head men of a particular class of putnas [homestead land], whose office [was] as then, as It still is in parts of the district, purely elective and depending entirely on the goodwill of his constituents, the inhabitants of the putna. I might extend the observation also to several of the gomastahs [agents] of the sudder canoongoes, who held the subera [revenue farm] of a village or two (afterwards their zamindars) merely on condition of service….91 These former revenue officials, who previously ‘merely held interests or rights in the revenue’, in the colonial dispensation were now, as exclusive proprietors and owners of the soil, simultaneously raised above and made to stand apart from agrarian production and rural society itself. In sharp contrast to the Mughal– Maratha intermediary, the Company zamindar was not embedded with the rural cultivator or peasant in a complex and intertwined weave of rights, duties, and obligations. Tenurial contract took precedence and rapidly began to disengage the landed zamindar from any of the earlier dense entanglement with multilayered and historically established set of claims and counter-claims on issues of investment, production, and the supervision of agrarian activities. To reveal how yawning this rupture was, we briefly discuss the role of the intermediary in agrarian society prior to the institution of the Company zamindar.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ The intermediaries of the pre-colonial period, were bound by certain obligations and duties towards the peasants and encouraged to sustain the minimum conditions for agrarian production, for which they often made investments in irrigation works, bunds, and advanced taqqavi.92 Abul Fazl’s instructions in the Ain-i-Akbari (compiled in the last decade of the sixteenth century), on the duties of an ideal revenue official, for example, stipulated that the official was to make advances to the needy husbandman and ‘remit somewhat’, when necessary, parts of the assessment with a view (p.72) to its augmentation at a later period.93 The ideal revenue official, at least in theory, was supposed to nurture his revenue unit and keep it productive. The Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s famous farman of 1665 issued to Rasikdas, in which he discussed various problems then confronting the Mughal revenue administration, also reiterated the importance of the intermediary’s role in sustaining agrarian production.94 Though practices on the ground were certainly different from the ideals spelt out either in official instructions or in the imperial rhetoric on governance, the latter, did, in terms of a general thrust, comprise an officially endorsed insistence of sorts that the revenue official had to be integral to keeping rural society productive and viable and was not to be a mere parasitic collector of revenue. This, of course, is not to suggest that the pre-colonial intermediary was in any way essentially a benign arm of the administration. If anything, both the Mughal and Maratha intermediaries, oftentimes could and did make demands on the peasantry that were extreme and debilitating.95 The intermediary in this period, nevertheless, unlike his colonial counterpart, was expected to be a font of patronage in rural society and had to exercise managerial and supervisory skills for regulating and sustaining agrarian production. In fact, in several regions in the immediate aftermath of colonial rule, the elimination of the pre-colonial intermediary resulted in the abrupt dislocation of agrarian production regimes. Eric Stokes, in his study of the taluqdars in the Aligarh region (North West Province), for example, concluded that they played a vital role in maintaining irrigation wells by advancing taqqavi to cultivators. According to Stokes, these taluqdars had kept the overwhelmingly parched and drought prone region a ‘green oasis’, throughout the famine of 1803–4 and their role and worth was only realized much later by the colonial administration: Not until the British had dismantled many of these smaller taluks in the later 1830s and early 1840s, and the number of working wells fell off alarmingly in consequence, did they come belatedly to appreciate how important the magnates role had becn.96 In the Sarada River Basin of Vizagpatnam District (northern Circars, today’s Andhra Pradesh), Benedicte Hjejle, has similarly highlighted the importance of the raccavaru—men of substance. The raccavaru, who farmed revenue collections rights from the Vizianagrarn Court, resided in the village, cultivated large tracts of land, and possessed a (p.73) large number of cattle. Their role Page 19 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ not only included the maintenance of grain-pits and the task of marshalling a labour force for various works, but, significantly as well …ensured the ploughing of lands in the early season…. They offered takavi [loan] and maramat at the appropriate moment. They kept a keen eye on the state of the irrigation works and arranged for repairs.97 Upon the elimination of the raccavaru and the mooring of British power in a new landowning class of brahmins and peddakapus (large landed peasant proprietors), by the early nineteenth century ‘the good dry land went out of cultivation, the delta lands became flooded and drought ridden and the community feeling within the village was broken’.98 According to Hjejle, the British decision to remove the raccavaru arose chiefly from the colonial official’s misconceptions about the regions prevailing agrarian reality. They apparently assumed that the Sarada Basin’s agrarian economy was reasonably stable and given to only limited fluctuations in harvests. A small class of landowners with clearly stated revenue demands, it was argued, would suffice and serve the colonial administration more efficiently than if it maintained innumerable raccavaru and entertained? their claims on the revenue. The actual situation on the ground, however, was vastly different. Hjejle’s indicates that in the Sarada Delta, heavy fluctuations in output usually occurred and the colonial bureaucracy was too inflexible and cumbersome to match the expertise and knowledge of the raccavaru in dealing with the peculiarities of a variable environment.99 Clearly, the raccavaru in the Sarada Basin, like the Mughal– Maratha intermediary in the Orissa Delta, were a layer of officialdom who sustained agrarian production in an unstable hydraulic context by functioning as some sort of fiscal and administrative buffer, while similar misconceptions about the agrarian context possibly also dogged the colonial administration in Orissa, unlike Hjejle, we reiterate that their administrative inflexibility was structured, so to speak, by the manner in which they sought to consolidate capitalist private property in the person of the Company zamindar in the delta. Essentially, two instruments were central to the Mughal–Maratha intermediary’s ability to confront, cope, and even, on occasion, harness hydraulic volatility. First, was the practice of granting remission; (a total waiver on the revenue demand), in the event the cultivator suffered a crop loss from climatic extremes.100 Though the issue of remission was often (p.74) subject to negotiation and had to be confirmed at higher levels of the administration, it was nevertheless one of the most significant means that was employed towards adjusting the imperial demand on the cultivators, such that agrarian production was not permanently dislocated.101 The second, as mentioned earlier, was the officially sanctioned policy of granting taqqavi to the cultivator. Working these instruments, however, was a tricky affair. It required the pre-colonial establishment to have credible information on that season’s crop loss, the administrative ability to sift through and establish the validity of the various Page 20 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ claims cultivators made about their output and within a certain margin of error be effective in either allowing leniency or recalibrating the demand. In other words, in order to enable a close reading of production conditions on the ground a strict control over and loyalty of the official had to be ensured and yet, on the other hand, the latter also had to be allowed latitude to deal with the cultivators and the volatile hydraulic environment. These imperatives possibly explain some of the distinctive features of the Mughal–Maratha intermediary and their functions and responsibilities. As discussed earlier, the intermediary was tied to the imperial administration through a whole series of incentives such as privileged tenures, perquisites, deductions, and entitlements. These positive inducements in turn were counterbalanced by the threat of force from the central authonties, who were often ruthless in putting down recalcitrance and any show of defiance. Intermediaries were also entangled with other intermediaries in a web of checks and balances in which revenue receipts and statements needed to be signed, countersigned, and passed through various levels of administrative scrutiny.102 The bureaucracy, nevertheless, essentially functioned as a political association rather than a formal rule-bound organization. That is, it turned on the politics of constantly refurbishing, renewing, and reproducing alliances and allegiances through negotiations over the surplus. Most significantly, the whole apparatus, in several ways, rested critically on retaining the loyalty and control of the manon-the-spot—the village headman or muqqaddam.103 To enable an intense monitoring of the cultivator and his output, the intermediaries needed to be densely packed into a given territorial or fiscal unit. In the Mughalbandi as well, the Maratha officials or intermediaries, according to one British estimate, numbered close to 3000, which they considered a fairly large number for such a ‘thinly populated and not half cultivated province as Orissa’.104 In sum, the pre-colonial dispensation (p.75) was uniquely structured to cope with sharp fluctuations in output in the delta because of the specific responsibilities and role of the intermediary in sustaining the conditions for agrarian production. The Company’s introduction of the zamindari tenure or exclusive ownership produced an immediate rupture in two significant ways. First, was the systematic dispossession and phasing out of the Maratha intermediary and their various offices for administration and governance.105 In a sense, the imposition of exclusive and private property in land was simultaneous with the dissolution and elimination of an entire corpus of competing claims on the surplus that had previously been integrally tied to the regulation of the peculiar conditions for sustaining agrarian production. The mazkuri muqaddams, for example, who served as village headmen under the Marathas, were ‘generally annihilated’ and those permitted to retain the management of their villages by the Company zamindars were reduced to a situation of ‘mere lease-holders’.106 The pargana Page 21 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ officials fared no better. Though many were initially reinstated as Company zamindars, the overall momentum of sundering the intricate connections between land and office, supervision and cultivation, and patronage and production meant that the erstwhile intermediary’s skills, expertise, and interventions that helped mitigate the impacts of the volatile environmental context were phased out.107 The consequences of implanting the Company zamindari system in the Orissa Mughalbandi was, in fact, similar to the colonial administration’s experiences in other parts of India, where the pre-colonial intermediary’s interventions and influence in sustaining the conditions for agrarian production was decisively ended.108 In other words, capitalist private property in the person of the Company zamindar acted as some sort of a solvent of the pre-colonial organization and regulation of agrarian activity. Not unexpectedly, the need to exalt exclusive property in land as a pure economic quantity and administered through a rent-seeking formal bureaucracy, required an altogether new accounting procedure for monitoring and ascertaining agrarian productivity. Towards this, the colonial administration settled chiefly on determining agrarian productivity as a function of the quantity of land presumed to be under cultivation, which further rested on the presumed ability to calculate the cultivated plot’s potential productive capacity, often sought out as the average yield generated over a period of time. Determining the revenue (p.76) demand essentially as an economic quantity was markedly different from the primarily political nature of the Mughal–Maratha demand, which was realized through a system of social alliances and premised on the need for sustaining the latter. That is, while the colonial revenue estimate was assessed as a financial obligation arising from the monopolization of land as private property and a means of production, the Mughal–Maratha revenue demand was claimed as a gradation of shares of the presumed gross output. In effect, for the Mughals and Marathas, it could perhaps be claimed that seasonal negotiations over the demand was integral to the collection strategy, while for the colonial administrators the demand arrived at was fundamentally nonnegotiable. To the colonialists, hence, the drive to institute land as a pure economic form was simultaneous with attempts to prevent non-economic or political claims and a firm insistence on non-negotiability. Thus, amongst the twenty-one defining features of the colonial proprietary tenure, in the Orissa Delta, it was categorically stated that the zamindar could neither claim remissions for revenue on account of’drought, inundation or other calamity’, nor could he grant the same on the rents of the raiyats in his zamindari.109 In the Mughal period, as possibly during Maratha rule in the Mughalbandi, the largest share of the tax was collected from the harvest of the sarad rice, which was also the crop most susceptible to frequent damage from inundation or drought.110 While the Mughal–Maratha intermediary was always permitted leeway in dealing with such fluctuations in the course of making the demand on the peasant’s surplus, for the Company zamindar the new proprietary tenure Page 22 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ permitted no scope for making concessions or flexibility. In time, the colonial administration in the Orissa Delta, soon realized that the reality of crop losses was leading to a loud clamour amongst the cultivators for remissions. Many administrators had, in fact, already began to take note that the colonial insistence on keeping the issue of remissions inflexible had clearly effected a very sharp change in the revenue collection strategy from that of the previous regimes. This decisive shift in taxing routines, was visibly compounding the oppression of the cultivator. …the most unfavourable points of comparison between our [British] revenue system and that of our predecessors [Marathas] who, it is asserted, and I believe with truth made continual deductions from the rent roll proportional to the damage sustained.111 (p.77)

Even the Company zamindars, in the period of the initial settlements, suffered from the administration’s parsimonious remission policy and led several to default on their revenue obligations.112 Over time, however, the Company zamindars appear to have developed ways to transmit the seasonal losses from inundation largely onto the backs of the cultivators This is evident from the observation of the Inundation Committee, set up to report on the effects of the floods of 1866 in the Orissa Delta: …it will be evident that the losses [from inundation] fall almost wholly on the cultivators, that the zemindars not only shield themselves from direct losses of income, but can even turn their calamities to account as means of increasing their gains prospectively by exaction of usurious interest on advances.113 Despite the colonial administrator’s awareness of the need for a decentralized policy in ascertaining and granting remissions, the zamindari system was kept inflexible towards seasonal variability. Land revenue realized as rent, intended to be a pure economic quantity and pitched at a fixed and invariant demand, could not permit Company intermediaries any latitude for subtracting noneconomic claims from the surplus. In essence, the colonial administration, through the optic of capitalist private property, intended the cultivator to yield a non-negotiated rent to the landlord and the latter then was expected to surrender a contractually determined tax. Non-economic claims, based outside the calculus of the stated economic surplus, could not only undermine the colonial administration’s exclusive focus on the tax demand, but could fundamentally undermine capitalist property itself. This sharp contrast between rent as an economic quantity and the relatively amorphous realm of noneconomic claims was most dramatically played out by the colonial administration

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ on the issue of the Maratha practice of regularly imposing cesses and abwabs (fines and impositions). Against Exactions: Ending Cesses and Abwabs

In Regulation XII of 1805, it was stipulated that levying of abwabs, a practice frequently resorted to by officials of the Maratha regime, was to be incorporated into and consolidated with the land rent.114 Thus, the colonialists assumed that the arbitrariness in the Maratha mode of revenue collection was being rightly substituted by the Company’s just and standardized demand. The Maratha intermediary’s practice of levying extra impositions, however, has to be viewed against the grain of the (p.78) colonial rhetoric on the arbitrariness of the precolonial dispensation. The Maratha official’s capability to levy abwabs and cesses hinged, as pointed out earlier, on their careful monitoring of the locality’s assets and resources.115 In fact, because they could take recourse to imposing cesses and abwabs, Maratha officials often sought to keep the land revenue low, much of which in any case comprised the share of the state. Through the imposition of cesses and abwabs, thus, he was in a position to capture some of the surplus behind the back of the state, as it were. The cultivators and revenue payers, oddly enough, often found it in their interest to comply with these temporary demands and exactions, than having to part with a larger share of their surplus on a permanent basis.116 The historian Surendranath Sen listed over fifty types of taxes, cesses, and abwabs that were supposedly in operation under Shivaji (1674–80). Most of them, however, were realized barely once in a person’s lifetime and the others only on very specific occasions. Sen adds that all taxes were not necessarily exacted, nor did they all prevail in the same revenue area and never would the same person necessarily be subjected to all the cesses and other financial obligations in his lifetime.117 In effect, the variety of cesses and abwabs were intended, on the one hand, to prevent the intermediary from weighing heavily on the cultivators through the land revenue, while, on the other, it gave the former an initiative to police rural society, reaffirm alliances by discriminating in the application of patronage and coercion and, most significantly, locating nodes where surpluses were accumulating. Thus, in the event that either the state or the intermediary required a sudden influx of finance or wealth for war-making, for example, impositions could always be employed to squeeze out the perceived excesses. The Mughals in the Bengal subah (province), in fact, kept the standard assessment of the land revenue at a relatively low pitch, knowing that they could meet extraordinary expenses by imposing abwabs.118 Moreover, as opposed to an unvarying and oftentimes grinding regular and rigid demand (such as the British land tax), abwabs and cesses could be imposed with greater flexibility by extracting during peaks and being held back in times of a drop in the available surplus. This is not to suggest that the abwabs or cesses in any way fell lightly on the cultivators; these impositions could often be very severe as well. On the flip side, however, one cannot ignore its peculiarly flexible nature, which enabled Page 24 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ the pre-colonial intermediary and state to skim off surpluses in a context of fluctuating agricultural yields. Having (p.79) thus outlined the distinct differences in the manner the Company and the Marathas organized property and revenue collection in the delta, we now place in perspective the colonial administration’s experiences with and response to deltaic inundation in Orissa.

From Deltaic Inundation to ‘Calamities of Season’ The introduction of capitalist property, by shifting the tax demand from the previous emphasis on the gross output to a rent on the land, initiated a drastically new administrative response to the delta’s hydraulic volatility. On an immediate impression, however, it appears that the Company merely followed the Mughal and Maratha practice of attempting to mitigate the effects of seasonal inundation by, on some occasions at least, either granting a suspension of the demand or by allowing a total remission to those who had engaged to pay revenue. While in the former, the revenue demand was carried over to the next season, in the latter case the claim was entirely written off. Attempts to implement these measures, however, soon pushed the Company against the very logic of the property system it sought to secure in the delta. Having eliminated the Mughal–Maratha intermediary and disallowed the Company zamindar from making fiscal interventions to mitigate the effects of seasonal inundations, the Company administration, devolved onto itself the sole prerogative of granting remissions or suspensions on the revenue. By default, the colonial administration, therefore, also became the primary and only agency for monitoring and assessing production conditions on the ground. In effect, a formal rule-bound bureaucracy that sought to administer land by contract, took upon itself the task of regulating production contexts, formerly carried out by the tactile role of a dense layer of Mughal–Maratha intermediaries. Given the Company official’s lack of information on the delta, their insistence on the nonnegotiability of rent and the skeletal nature of their bureaucracy, the process of granting remissions was oftentimes exasperating and self-defeating. In the first twenty-seven years of Company rule (1803–31), a total of £65,094 was written off as damages caused by ‘calamities of season’.119 Though the amount appears significant and suggests that the Company was responsive to cultivator distress, revenue correspondence in this period indicates an altogether different picture. These remissions were (p.80) apparently in many instances neither based on an accurate estimate of the damage nor were they necessarily a source of comprehensive relief for the cultivators First, the task of ascertaining the damage and evaluating the cultivators claims devolved entirely onto the singular shoulders of the British collector’s office in the district. The opinion of the collector, in all instances, after a ‘local enquiry’ and ‘ocular observation’ of the affected tract became final.120 The task of ascertaining flood ravages or drought-induced scarcities over vast stretches of the Orissa Delta was, thus, centralized in a single office or rather in a single person. Not Page 25 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ surprisingly, often a ‘very bad crop’ was recorded as a ‘very good one’.121 On other occasions, the ‘very simple process of refusing remissions’ was followed.122 Trower, Collector of Cuttack, in a despatch recorded one such instance wherein: …this district [Cuttack] suffered heavier than had been experienced for many years and the crops 1217 [Amli] (1809–10) were greatly injured. I am informed that many petitions written and verbal were presented to the Commissioner praying for suspension and remission but the Commissioner declined making enquiries on the plea of his having concluded a permanent settlement on the district.123 Similarly, the zamindars who were granted a revenue suspension for that season, though relieved in an immediate sense, found themselves running into debt in the succeeding years. In 1814–15 (1222 Amli),124 for example, several of the northern parganas of Cuttack suffered severely from a most ‘violent and sudden inundation ever remembered’. On granting temporary relief to the zamindars in the form of a revenue suspension, it was found later that: The demand…for an undischarged portion of the arrears then suspended is still impending over some of the landholders of the Northern Division with a heavy accumulation of interest in addition125 Undoubtedly, a substantial number of claims for remission were also dismissed because of the Company’s overriding need to maximize its collections, especially in the early decades of the nineteenth century.126 In a more fundamental sense, however, the manner in which the administration had been structured to sustain and secure capitalist property in land, underpinned both its routines for ascertaining damage and the frequency with which miscalculations were made with regard to the granting of remissions. These structurally-generated errors, (p.81) so to speak, are, palpable, in one of the earliest reports on flood damage in the Orissa Delta, submitted in 1815 by G. Ward, the then assistant collector of Balasore. Ward’s inspections were conducted by ‘personal observations and enquiries made on the spot’ and the report, typically enough, reflecting the Company’s revenue concerns, was organized in three parts: 1) a list of estates that ‘suffered’ from the inundations, the quantity of land affected, and the amount of the collections and losses represented by the zamindars; 2) a list of estates in which losses were not ‘very severe’; and, 3) estates where inundation was felt severely.127 The survey, by Ward’s own admission, was, however, not conducted ‘as soon as possible after the inundation’. The delay, therefore, compelled him to restrict the enquiry to an ‘examination of the zemindaree accounts of the proprietors, or from the statements of the Ryots [raiyats or cultivators] themselves’.128 The need to take an indirect route in the inspection via the zamindars and tenants Page 26 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ rankled Ward, as there was strong grounds for suspicion that their claims could be unreliable. The accuracy of the accounts [the] zemindars might deliver to me could not be depended upon nor could I think, information from the ryots (tenant, cultivator) themselves as I have no doubt, were taught by their zemindar to tell a doubtful story….129 Even when he demanded the ‘original accounts’ of the zamindars, to be produced immediately to prevent any fabrication, many of the papers were made available only after a gap of ten or twelve days. Of these, Ward claimed, many were incorrect and incomplete. On the other hand, several of the zamindars ‘simply’ did not comply with his instructions at all.130 For the assistant collector, these zamindars not only acted as a barrier against the Company’s bid to acquire information on the ground situation but also sought to transfer the weight of the losses onto the raiyats. In Kundi Pargana, for example, Ward observed that: The proprietors have already collected 8/16 [of the rent] and altho I am convinced they [zamindar] have sustained some losses, 1 do not think if your Board were to allow them any longer period to pay up the current year’s revenue that they would grant the same indulgence to their ryots…. their ryots were in attendance and complained severely of the manner in which they were oppressed by their zamindars.131 (p.82)

Clearly, the colonial response to the deltaic inundation was constrained by the skeletal nature of their administration. Monitoring the delta with few officers, amidst a sea of ‘unreliable’ or at best uncooperative zamindars, hindered the Company from acquiring an accurate picture of the varied impact and timing of the inundation. The investigation by G. Ward in 1815, for example, was actually conducted for the inundation that wreaked Balasore District in the month of September 1814. No application having been made [about the inundation] the matter remained unnoticed until January [1815]. when the acting Collector of Cuttack forwarded to us a representation from several of the landholders in the neighbour-hood of Balasore…praying relief… that notwithstanding the serious and heavy losses which individuals are stated to have suffered the arrears [were] paid up without murmur.132 The Company officers oftentimes also completely erred in their assessments on crop damage. Collector Trower, for example, in one of his despatches recorded a gross miscalculation on the part of one G. Martindell, who had been sent out to assess the damage caused by drought:

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ …no claims on the score of drought in 1224 [Amli] can be admitted as he [Martindell] witnessed that the rains in June 1817 were very severe and that June 1817 corresponds with 1224 [Amli] It escapes the notice of [Martindel] however, that in June 1817 the crops of 1224 has long been off the ground and consequently would have derived no benefit from the rain which fell at that period.133 With the Company administration unable to credibly judge the various claims made to them for relief, they, not unexpectedly, began to view with utmost suspicion petitions for remissions and dismissed many of them as arising from the ‘disposition of the people to avoid payment’, W. Ewer, in fact, noted that colonial officials consistently maintained, that outstanding balances allegedly due to inundations were actually from the Indifference’ of the cultivators and zamindars and not from ‘want of means’ to pay.134 Though we were unable to locate comparable investigations carried out by the Marathas in the delta, some idea of their methods in conducting investigations for granting remission can be gleaned from the Malwa and Khandesh region. Stewart Gordon’s excellent study describes the Maratha response as a standard appeal-and-remission procedure.135 Whenever a revenue territory was struck by a calamity, the village headman initiated the first move by approaching the kamavisdar, (p.83) who then made a recommendation to the peshwwa for a remission. The kamavisdar’s recommendation, in turn, always involved a ‘face-to-face’ interaction with the muqaddam and other such revenue officials. The judgement, however, on the amount and terms of remission remained with the peshwa.136 Hari Trimbak, a kamavisdar, during a famine in Kalabag (Malwa) in 1745, is reported to have visited all the affected villages and their fields and interacted with the patils (headmen), qanungos, and raiyats.137 This thoroughness in following up any claim for remission, though indicating the kamavisdar’s keenness to realize as much of the demand as possible, more significantly, reflected his ability to monitor the resources and productivity of the revenue territory. As discussed earlier, both the Mughals and Marathas based their administrative emphasis on an intensive surveillance of the productive potential of their possessions. The British, on the other hand, concentrated on administering land extensively through contract, a formal bureaucracy, and landed zamindars In effect, capitalist private property in land committed the colonial bureaucracy towards focusing their energies on enforcing the non-negotiable obligations of exclusive ownership rather than acquiring tactile administrative depth to respond to variable production conditions on the ground. This paradoxical dilemma of the Company, about the need for and difficulty of acquiring comprehensive knowledge on production contexts was made particularly plain by Holt Mackenzie, then assistant secretary to the colonial government: The principle indeed on which the permanent settlement was formed in Bengal was in general hostile to minute enquiry into the assets of estates and some modifications of the rules passed on that occasion [Decree of Page 28 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ 1793 on the permanent settlement] may be expected to be required in order to render them fully conformable to the different situation of the District of Cuttack.138 In sum, the Mughals and Marathas were perhaps relatively more efficient in dispensing taqqavi and granting remissions in the Orissa Delta because their rule was premised in large part on a dense rootedness within rural society and by extracting a negotiated surplus, which, in turn, was calibrated and hedged by a system of social and political alliances. For the East India Company, however, rule was anchored in bourgeois landed property based on a rigid realization of a non-negotiable rent and on sustaining exclusive ownership. Both of these latter factors tended to militate against the Company acquiring administrative depth in the delta (p.84) and therefore it repeatedly found itself miscalculating on its interventions to mitigate the impacts brought on by hydraulic volatility.139 On the other hand, for the Mughals and Marathas the practice of granting remission and taqqavi comprised an ensemble of measures and routines through which they sought to conduct negotiations over the revenue demand. In effect, the precolonial political formations were able to treat the recurring inundations as part of a broader process in which it was understood that the destruction of one season was often compensated by the abundance of the next. As pointed out in the earlier chapter, as much as inundations caused temporary disruptions, they nourished the land with fertilizing silt and thereby enhanced the productive capacity of the revenue territory. Deltaic inundations are, in fact, an integral feature of the delta’s ecology and prior to colonial rule in eastern India, they were tapped for irrigating crops and fertilizing soils. To the colonial bureaucracy, however, the recurring ‘calamities of season’ merely possessed the negative attributes of causing destruction, imperilling revenue collection, and entangling the administration in a mire of conflicting claims for remission. In effect, through the narrow optic of capitalist property, the colonial administration in its revenue deliberations began to recast the phenomenon of inundations as chiefly a calamitous event rather than a hydraulic process. By thus constituting and organizing its interests in the delta through the rubric of capitalist private property in land, the East India Company was unable to adjust its taxing strategies to the peculiarities of the agrarian rhythm. For the pre-colonial Mughal and Maratha formations, on the other hand, it appears, that they could draw upon and digest agrarian surpluses in uneven waves. This, however, is not to suggest that these pre-colonial ruling elites were in any way benign or less exploitative. Rather, I have sought to emphasize that the Mughal and Maratha revenue demand was chiefly a political claim, oriented towards sustaining a system of social alliances on the ground. For them, therefore, assessing and appropriating the cultivator’s agricultural surplus, was premised as an oppressive non-economic demand, which took on the character of being relatively flexible and negotiable. This, perhaps, also explains why the Mughals Page 29 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ and Marathas favoured a dense administrative embeddedness in the locality. It enabled intensive surveillance of productive contexts on the ground, chiefly through loyalty and coercion. Their revenue strategy, therefore, could be relatively far more supple in tackling hydraulic volatility by (p.85) forgoing demands during crop losses while intensifying collections during seasons of abundance. For the British East India Company, however, land was legible only as an economic form; a rent-yielding alienable commodity and as a monopolized means of production. This compelled them to adopt formal and rigid administrative practices for assessing and extracting revenue. Here, it is important to reiterate that capitalist property in land was not merely about instituting exclusive ownership, but more significantly, it required the enforcement of new routines for assessing, monitoring, and evaluating land’s productive and surplus yielding potential.140 In other words, the colonial administration’s attempt to operate the zamindari system, required them to read the delta’s ecology differently from previous ruling practices in the region.141 Thus, for the Company, the need to enforce a standardized rental instalment, based ideally on an assumed average output of the season’s crop, required land to be decisively insulated from the inevitable variability brought on by recurring hydraulic action. Thus, the ecological context for the existence of capitalist property in land was that of structuring it to relate to deltaic inundation as natural calamity rather than as hydraulic process. Consequently, an extremely rigid and inflexible revenue collection strategy was locked into the colonial administrative design and in several ways caused a marked disconnect between landed property and the delta’s fluvial process. But, as the next chapter will argue, the attempts to separate land and water into two distinct and antagonistic domains did not result in the silencing of the delta’s many truculent rivers. Instead, the ‘protection of property’ led to the swelling of water and the increasing frailty of land. Notes:

(1) . By deltaic Orissa we refer to the tract administratively described by both the Mughals and the Marathas as the Mughalbandi. The colonial government reclassified the area administratively as the Temporarily Settled Areas. According to Ewer (1818), the Mughalbandi comprised all the ‘plain and open part of Orissa from the Subarnarekha to the border of Khurda’, which by his calculations approximated 6300 sq. miles. S.L. Maddox calculated the area of the districts Cuttack, Balasore, and Puri as being roughly 6000 sq. miles which included the Khurda estate at roughly 1000 sq. miles. J.W. Ottley (1874) arrived at the figure of 4,592 sq. miles. (2) . Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement (Delhi 1982).

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (3) . Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London 1990), p. 929. (4) . K.M. Patra, Orissa Under the East India Company (Delhi 1971), p. 1. For an elaboration of the differences in social and political organization between the Garjat and the Mughalbandhi refer to Biswamoy Pati, Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in Orissa, 1920–50 (Delhi 1993), pp. 1–59. (5) . B.C. Ray, Orissa Under the Marathas (1751–1803) (Bombay 1960), p. 132. (6) . A. Stirling, ‘Minute on Tenures in Orissa, 10 October 1821’ in G. Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa from 1803–1828 (Calcutta 1873), p. ix. During the Maratha regime, the title of zamindar was given only to the holders of one or more parganas and to the rajas of killas. In the later sanads, however, the terms zamindar and taluqdar were used synonymously. Refer to K.M. Patra, Orissa Under the East India Company, p. 2. (7) . SSR, vol. 1, p. 159. For an account of the revenue administration during the Mughal period see M.A. Haque, Muslim Administration in Orissa (1568–1751 A.D.) (Calcutta 1980), pp. 226–42. (8) . Andrew Stirling, An Account, Geographical, Statistical and Historical of Orissa Proper or Cuttack (Cuttack 1822), p. 137, NAI. (9) . Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa from 1803 to 1828, pp. 28–36. (10) . In the Mughal and Maratha administrative lexicon the word ijaradar refers to revenue contractor while assamis refers to an ordinary peasant cultivator. S.L. Maddox seems to have been unaware of this distinction. (11) . According to Satish Chandra, the weakening of the Mughal imperial authority and the crisis of the jagirdari system in the eighteenth century led to the abandonment of the old Mughal system of checks and balances in which the faujdar held the administrative power and the jagirdar merely collected the revenue. The collapse of this arrangement gave a powerful fillip to a process of ‘refeudalization’; wherein revenue collection rights, which included administrative powers, were regularly auctioned to revenue contractors (ijaradars). See Satish Chandra, The Eighteenth Century in India. Its Economy and the Role of the Marathas, the Jats, the Sikhs and the Afghans (Calcutta 1982), p. 22. The revenue collector, on the other hand, had no administrative powers. (12) . SSR, vol. 1, p. 161. (13) . L.S.S.O’Malley, District Gazetteer of Puri (Patna 1929), p. 44.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (14) . W.W. Hunter, ‘Orissa Under Foreign Government, Mughal and Maratha (1568–1803)’ in N.K. Sahu (ed.), A History of Orissa, vol. 1 (Calcutta 1956), p. 176. (15) . He does not specify, however, the areas or estates from which this amount was drawn nor does he clarify the exchange rate for the rupee with regard to the kauris; the currency in which the collections were made. W. Ewer, commissioner to B. Bayley, acting chief secretary government, 13 May 1818, Selections from the Correspondence on the Settlement of the Khoordah Estate in the District of Pooree, vol. 1 (Calcutta 1879), p. 20. Henceforth Ewer’s Report. (16) . Sushil Chandra De, Guide to Orissa Records (Bhubaneswar 1961), p. xvi. (17) . During the Mughal and Maratha period, the chief currency in Orissa was the kauris which was a sea shell imported from the Maldives. See B.C. Ray, Foundations of British Orissa (Cuttack 1960), pp. 187–203. Also see Sushil Chandra De, ‘The Cowry Currency in India’, OHRJ, 1(2), 1952, pp. 10–21. (18) . For an enumeration of the various types of rupees in use consult Yule and Burnell, Hobson–Jobson (London 1985), pp. 774–6. Also see Shubra Chakrabarti, ‘Intransigent Shroffs and the English East India Company Reforms in Bengal (1757–1800)’, IESHR, 34(1). 1997, pp. 72–8. (19) . C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Delhi 1992), p. 77. (20) . W. Ewer, commissioner to B. Bayly, acting chief secretary to government, 13 May 1818 in Ewer’s Report, p. 21. (21) . Major Fletcher, an army officer from Madras, was deputed to Khurda to draw up an assessment for the estate for a period of two years 1803 to 1805 in P. K. Patnaik, A Forgotten Chapter of Orissa History: With Special Reference to the Rajas of Khurda and Puri (1568–1828) (Cuttack 1979), pp. 143–5. (22) . E. Watson, 4th Judge, Calcutta Court of Circuit, to W.B. Bayley, secretary to government in the Judicial Department, 3 May 1817 in De, Guide to Orissa Records, p. 7. The owner of the Mahanadi Ferry was granted a jagir of 240 begahs of land and the grant for the Kathjuri Ferry was 200 beghas. (23) . J. Beams, ‘The History of Orissa under the Mohammedan, Maratha, and English Rule’ in N.K. Sahu (ed.), A History of Orissa, vol. 2 (Calcutta 1956), p. 310. (24) . Manmath Pandey, ‘Maratha Rule’ in P. K. Mishra and J.K. Samal (eds), Comprehensive History and Culture of Orissa, (1568 A.D.–1994 A.D.), vol. 2, part 2 (Delhi 1997), p. 28.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (25) . Ibid., p. 27. (26) . Andre Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society in Politics under the Eighteenth Century Maratha Svarajya (Cambridge 1986); Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth Century India (Delhi 1994); Frank Perlin, ‘State Formation Reconsidered’, MAS, 19(3), 1985, pp. 415–80. For a view challenging the predatory thesis in Orissa, see R.D. Banerji, History of Orissa (Cuttack 1931), pp. 90–115. (27) . John Beames, ‘Notes on Akbar’s Subahs with reference to the Ain-i-Ahbari’ in B.P. Ambashthya (ed.), Beames Contributions to the Political Geography of the Subahs of Awadh, Bihar, Bengal and Orissa in the Age of Akbar (Patna 1976), p. 95. (28) . For a detailed account of the Mughal–Maratha conflict in the Orissa Delta see R.D. Banerji, History of Orissa. (29) . A peshkashi zamindari was not subject to a detailed assessment of land actually under cultivation while a mal-wajib zamindari was expected to pay revenue on the basis of actual measurement of land under cultivation. See N.A. Siddiqi, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals (Delhi 1989), pp. 22–4. (30) . SSR, vol. 1, p. 159–60. According to Beames, the word killah though referring to a fort was in actual fact a much ‘humbler affair’. It was for the most part merely the house of a zamindar surrounded by an earthen rampart or breastwork and occasionally a rude moat. These skeletal defences were then ‘girdled by a thick belt of bamboo and rattan jungle’, which was intended to prevent incursions from the Mughal cavalry. See John Beames, ‘Notes on Akbar’s Subahs’, p. 96. (31) . John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire, The New Cambridge History of India (Cambridge 1993), p. 284. (32) . SSR, vol. 1, pp. 159–60. According to the Ain-i-Akbari, Orissa in its greatest dimensions when attached to the subah of Bengal in 1592 included five sarkars The sarkars of Kalinga and Rajamundry were later amalgamated with the subah of Hyderabad. The Marathas in fact, were only in control of the remaining three sarkars that is Jellasore, Bhadrak, and Cuttack. See John Beames, ‘Notes on Akbar’s Subahs’, pp. 94–114. (33) . The qanungo essentially maintained records relating to the interests in the land. The chaudhuri attested revenue papers and was also associated with the tasks of collecting the revenue. In Bengal the title taluqdar generally referred to a small zamindar or holder of a zamindari which was recently purchased and was not of long standing. See N.A. Siddiqi, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals, pp. 25–8 and 87–91. Page 33 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (34) . In the eighteenth century, the appellation taluqdar could refer to either a revenue-farmer or a petty zamindar. In certain instances even this distinction was collapsed. On the whole a taluqdar was lower in the pecking order than the zamindar and referred to a person who had contracted to pay revenue not only of his own zamindari but also for the zamindaris of other persons as well. In effect, the taluqdar contracted for only a part of the revenue while the zamindar was responsible for his entire holding. On the pre-colonial zamindar see Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556–1707) (Aligarh 1963), pp. 172–3. (35) . SSR, vol. 2, p. 456. (36) . D.H. Kingsford, ‘Report on the Settlement Operations in the District of Balasore’ in SSR, vol. 2, p. 456. (37) . The early Hindu rulers grouped the revenue villages into khands or bisis which was then allegedly transformed into the Mughal pargana. The divisional accountants—khandpatis or bhoimuls—became the chaudhuri and qanungos, while the village padhan was retitled the muqaddam. See SSR vol. 1, pp. 158–9. (38) . John F. Richards, Mughal Administration in Goleando (Oxford 1975), pp. 135–73. (39) . Irfan Habib, ‘Agrarian Relations and Land Revenue’ in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1 (Hyderabad 1984), p. 239.: See also MA. Haque, Muslim Administration in Orissa, pp. 230–9. (40) . M.A. Haque, ‘Muslim Rule in Orissa’ in M.N. Das (ed.), Sidelights of History and Culture of Orissa (Cuttack 1977), p. 141. (41) . Irfan Habib, Agrarian Systems, p. 249. Also see Asiya Siddiqi, Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State: Uttar Pradesh 1819–1833 (Oxford 1973), pp. 54–65. Siddiqi confirms Habib’s observation that the volume of produce rents was automatically lowered in bad seasons. (42) . N.A. Siddiqi has argued that, for crop-sharing, one-half was a maximum demand, rarely implemented, while most rates were pitched at one-ninth, onefourth, and one-third. This pattern of crop-sharing made a wide accommodation for variations in soil types, nature of crops grown, amount of labour, and capital involved, etc. In effect, local contexts and circumstances went into the determination of the share. See Siddiqi, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals, pp. 47–8. (43) . Ramalekha Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society 1760–1860 (Delhi 1979) and Ratnalekha Ray and Rajat Ray, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars: A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal’, MAS, 9(2), 1975; B.B. Chaudhuri has underlined the Page 34 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ importance of these zamindars in the agrarian economy of Bengal by identifying a number of their vital functions, such as the maintenance of embankments, irrigation works, and even the distribution of water. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Power Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Eastern India, 1757–1947’ in Meghnad Desai, et al. (eds), Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia (Delhi 1984), p 107. Rajat Datta, similarly, has noted some of these indispensable links in rural Bengal; wherein the zamindars were the sources for agricultural credit (taqqavi) and flood works (pulbandi). Rajat Datta, ‘Agricultural Production, Social Participation and Domination in Late Eighteenthcentury Bengal: Towards an Alternative Explanation’, JPS, 17(1), 1989, p. 87. (44) . Ranajit Sen, Economics of Revenue Maximization in Bengal 1757–1793 (Calcutta 1988), p. 25. (45) . Satish Chandra, ‘Some Institutional Factors in Providing Capital Inputs and Expansion of Cultivation in Medieval India’, IHR, 3(1), 1976, pp. 89–92. (46) . Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 74–109. (47) . Ibid., p. 86. (48) . Stirling, An Account, Geographical, Statistical and Historical, pp. 74–5. (49) . Saiyid Nurul Hasan, Thoughts on Agrarian Relations in Mughal India (Delhi 1973), pp. 29–32. Hasan listed the following as comprising the intermediaries: muqaddam, chaudhuri, taluqdar, and qanungo. All of these officials were present in the Orissa Mughalbandi. (50) . Stirling, An Account, Geographical, Statistical and Historical, pp. 74–5. (51) . B.C. Ray, Orissa Under the Mughals: From Akbar to Alivardi: A Fascinating Study of the Socio-Economic and Cultural History of Orissa (Calcutta 1981), pp. 117–20. (52) . B.C. Ray, Orissa Under the Marathas (1751–1803) (Bombay 1960), p. 132. (53) . Toynbee, A Sketch of The History of Orissa from 1803 to 1828, p. 25. (54) . W.H. Moreland has argued that revenue farming during the Mughal period was concentrated on the financial rather than the ameliorative side of administration. Consequently, revenue farming was a purely extractive arrangement independent of any reciprocal obligations for ensuring conditions of productivity through investments etc. See W.H. Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India (Delhi 1968), pp. 10–11 and W.H. Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb: A Study in Indian Economic History (Delhi 1972), pp. 236–45.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (55) . Stewart Gordon, ‘The Slow Conquest: Administrative Integration of Malwa into the Maratha Empire 1720–60’ in Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth Century India, pp. 23–63. (56) . Ibid., pp. 38–45. (57) . Wink, Land and Sovereignty, p. 362. Also see Wink, ‘Maratha Revenue Farming’, MAS, 17(4), 1983, pp. 591–612. (58) . Some historians of Mughal India, however, view the practice of ijara or revenue farming as having been detrimental to agrarian production. N.A. Siddiqi argues that the rise of the ijaradars in the eighteenth century adversely affected both agriculture and the land revenue administration of the Mughals. Siddiqi, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals, pp. 97–9. See also Irfan Habib, Agrarian System, pp. 234–6. Habib, however, does note that despite the Official disapproval’ of ijara individual villages that had fallen into ruin were sometimes farmed with the express condition that the revenue farmer was to restore them to prosperity. (59) . Andre Wink has argued that the Mughal and Maratha form of sovereignty relied on a ‘balancing system of continually shifting alliances and rivalries’. See Andre Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India, p. 34. For an insight into the various tensions of the intermediary zamindars against the primary zamindars and their shifting loyalties between the Mughals and Marathas see Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Zamindars and Mughal Power in the Deccan, 1685–1712’, IESHR, 11(1), 1974, pp. 74–91. (60) . H. Ricketts, collector Balasore, to G. Stockwell, commissioner of revenue Cuttack, 20 October 1831 in G. Toynbee, A sketch of the History of Orissa, Appendix, p. li. (61) . Pandey, ‘Maratha Rule’, p. 21. (62) . D.H. Kingsford wrongly gives 1773 as the year for the changes introduced by Raja Ram Pandit. See D.H. Kingsford, ‘Report on the Settlement Operations in the District of Balasore’ in SSR, vol. 2, p. 429. (63) . SSR, vol. 1, p. 161. (64) . Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa, p. 25. (65) . H. Ricketts, collector Balasore to G. Stockwell, commissioner of revenue, Cuttack, 20 October 1831 in G. Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa, p. xlvii. (Appendix). (66) . Ray, Foundations of British Orissa, p. 44.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (67) . Beames, ‘The History of Orissa’, p. 317. (68) . Extract from a letter from the Court of Directors in the Revenue Department, 16 June 1815, CDR, RD, vol., January 1816 to December 1816, p. 89, OSA. (69) . Ibid., p. 91. (70) . As mentioned earlier, the office of the sadar qanungo was abolished in 1792 by Raja Ram Pandit. The reference, therefore, to the sadar qanungo’s papers suggests either a revival of that office or the early British confusion with regard to the title, status, and role of members of the Maratha bureaucracy. (71) . SSR, vol. 2, p. 591. (72) . Ewer’s Report, p. 21. (73) . The Marathas seem to have followed the Mughal practice of maintaining a difference between the jama and the hal-i-hasil. While the former referred to the estimated gross income, the latter was the net actual revenue realized. (74) . Legibility is described by James Scott as relating to aspects of statecraft directed at rendering societies accessible and malleable to state functions such as taxation, conscription, and the prevention of rebellion. See James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven 1998), pp. 1–47. (75) . Pandey, ‘Maratha Rule’, p. 25. (76) . Usha Ray, ‘Maratha Revenue Administration in Orissa’ BPP, LXXLV (138– 9), 1955, p. 63. (77) . Ibid. (78) . SSR, vol. 1, pp. 162–4. (79) . H. McPherson, ‘Report on Settlement Operations in the District of Puri’ in SSR, vol. 2, pp. 591–2. (80) . SSR, vol. 1, p. 163. (81) . ‘…change from social relationships based on “interests” to those based on exclusive claims of ownership has been one of the greatest consequences of the period of British rule’. Ainslie T. Embree, Imagining India: Essays on Indian History (Delhi 1989), p. 7. (82) . Irfan Habib, ‘Studyinga Colonial Economy without Perceiving Colonialism’, MAS, 19(3), 1985, p. 309. Page 37 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (83) . Ewer’s Report, para. 75, p. 27. In fact, such was the poor level of information on the ‘resources’ of the districts that until 1837 a permanent settlement could not be arrived at. (84) . Patra, Orissa Under the East India Company, p. 7. (85) . D.H. Kingsford, ‘Report on the Settlement Operations in the District of Balasore’ in SSR, vol. 1, p. 430. (86) . For a discussion on the kist timing and the collection schedules, refer to SSR, vol. 1, pp. 240–2. (87) . Sakti Padhi, ‘Land Relations and Agrarian Development: A Comparative Historical Study of Two Districts in Orissa’, PhD thesis, (Centre for Development Studies 1986), p. 73. (88) . SSR, vol. 1,’p. 164. (89) . W. Trower, collector, to A. Stirling, secretary to the commissioner, Cuttack, CDR, RD, vol. 16 December 1817 to 30 September 1818, pp. 2–6. Several cases are listed in this volume with detailed description of sales, OSA. (90) . Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa, pp. 26–7. (91) . Andrew Stirling, ‘Minute on the Tenures in Orissa’, 10 October 1821 in G. Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa, p. vii. (Appendix). (92) . While Abul Fazi viewed taqqavi as loans for extending cultivation, Todar Mai argued that it was to be given to cultivators only during ‘distressed circumstances’. The taqqavi loans were interest free and usually made available through the chaudhuris and muqaddams. See Irfan Habib, Agrarian System, pp. 253–5. (93) . Ain-i-Akban (translated by Col. H.S. Jarrett, vol. LI, pp. 43–4) quoted in Surendranath Sen, Administrative System of the Marathas (Calcutta 1925), p. 595. (94) . In a farman to Rasikdas, the Mughal officials were impressed upon to strive for ‘progressively populating the desolate villages’, to get the cultivable land cukivated and even repair old wells and dig new ones. See Shireen Moosvi, ‘Aurangzeb’s Farman to Rasikdas: On Problems of Revenue Administration, 1665’ in Irfan Habib (ed.), Medieval India: Researches in the History of India, 1200–1750 (Delhi 1992), pp. 197–206. (95) . Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System, pp. 136–89 and ‘The Social Distribution of Landed Property in Pre–British India: A Historical Survey’ in Irfan Habib (ed.), Essays in Indian History (Delhi 1995). For an approximation on the zamindar’s Page 38 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ share of the surplus see Shireen Moosvi, ‘The Zamindars share in the Peasant Surplus in the Mughal Empire: Evidence of the Ain-i-Akbari Statistics’, IESHR, 15(3), 1978. (96) . Eric Stokes, ‘Agrarian Society and the Pax Britannica in Northern India in the Early Nineteenth Century’, MAS, 9(4), 1975, p. 508. (97) . Benedicte Hjejle, ‘Indian Reality and British Conceptions: The Agrarian Scene in South Vizagapatnam in the 18th and 19th Centuries’ in Peter Robb (ed.), Meanings of Agriculture (Delhi 1996), p. 159. (98) . Ibid., p. 161. (99) . Ibid., pp. 132–3. (100) . CM. Agrawal, Natural Calamities and the Great Mughals (Bodh Gaya 1983). According to Habib ‘…under all methods of revenue assessment [of the Mughal administration] there was some provision for relief in the case of bad harvests’, Irfan Habib, Agrarian System, pp. 249–56. For the Marathas see Stewart Gordon, ‘Recovery from Adversity in Eighteenth Century India: Rethinking “Village”, “Peasants” and Politics in Pre-Modern Kingeoms’ in Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth century India, p. 102. (101) . In the district of Nanchilnadu (Tamilnadu), remission given by local lords apart from enabling the peasantry to overcome bad harvests was also directed at reproducing the political power structure of ‘personal dominance and deference’ between tenants and their local landlords. See M.S.S. Pandian, The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: Nanchilnadu 1880–1939 (Delhi 1990), pp. 64–8. (102) . On the Mughal provincial administration see N.A. Siddiqi, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals. And for the Marathas see Surendranath Sen, Administrative System of the Marathas. (103) . Sakti Padhi terms the village headman as a ‘Janus-like entity’, who was simultaneously the representative of the state and the embodiment of the collective interests of the village. See Sakti Padhi, ‘Property in Land, Land Market and Tenancy Relations in the Colonial Period: A Review of Theoretical Categories and Study of a Zamindarl District’ in K.N. Raj, Sumit Guha, and Sakti Padhi (eds), Essays on the Commercialisation of Agriculture (Delhi 1985), pp. 10–11. (104) . Letter of collector of Cuttack to the Board of Revenue on 17 November 1808 quoted in K.C.Jena, Socio-economic Condition of Orissa (Delhi 1978), p. 12.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (105) . By 1837, these middle tenure holders or sub-proprietary tenure holders were collecting barely one-fourth of the annual revenue in the erstwhile Mughalbandi. See Pradipta Chaudhuri, ‘Peasants and British Rule in Orissa’ in Social Scientist, 19(7), 1991, p. 30. (106) . Andrew Stirling, ‘Minute on Tenures in Orissa, 10th Oct 1821’ in G. Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of the Orissa, p. xlv (Appendix). (107) . Sumit Guha’s study of the Deccan is illuminating in this regard. He noted that the colonial regime by turning land into a ‘divisible salable and qualitatively differentiated factor of production’, effectively ended up separating land from office and properly from privilege. Consequently instead of strengthening the previous elites with new privileges, the colonial regime ’penetrated and disjointed’ a variety of local institutions, wherein, the ‘Paul’s office ceased to be that of a village manager and became merely the lowest rung of the administrative ladder and hereditary officials ceased to be magnates and gradually were reduced to landlords only’. Sumit Guha, ‘Society and Economy in the Deccan, 1818–1850’ in Burton Stein (ed.), The Making of Agrarian Policy in India, 1770–1900 (Delhi 1992), pp. 187–214. (108) . David Ludden noted that, whereas the pre-British zamindars had been founts of patronage and authority for the provision of public goods, the new landlords instituted by the decree of 1793 became the ‘focal point for the local accumulation of capital in cash and kind’. David Ludden, ‘Productive Power in Agriculture: A Survey of Work on the Local History of British India’ in Meghnad Desai, et al. (eds), Agrarian Productivity in South Asia (Delhi 1984), pp. 64–5. Thomas Metcalf’s essay on the Oudh taluqdar, concludes similarly, that the taluqdar, following British rule, was transformed from being a ruler of men (petty rajas) to a landlord, and was hence bound to those beneath him only by ‘ties of rent and revenue’. These taluqdars, consequently, found it expedient to seek tangible gains by increasing cash rentals and exploiting their powers as landlords. Thomas R. Metcalf, ‘From Raja to Landlord: The Oudh Taluqdar, 1850–1870’ in Robert Frykenberg (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Delhi 1979), p. 137. For Bengal, Amit Bhaduri has argued that the introduction of the zamindari system initiated, amongst many other changes, the commercialization of sub-tenurial rights. This then led to a proliferation of intermediaries below the zamindar and choked off investment in land; there being no viable mechanism for sharing the costs and benefits between the zamindar and his innumerable tenants. Amit Bhaduri, ‘The Evolution of Land Relations in Eastern India under British Rule’, IESHR, 12(1), 1976, p. 48. (109) . SSR, vol. 2, p. 596. See especially Clause 5 and 6. (110) . L.N. Raut, Socio-economic Life in Medieval Orissa (1568–1751) (Cuttack 1988), p. 120. Page 40 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (111) . Ewer’s Report, p. 33. (112) . Ewer’s Report, pp. 28–9. Ewer writes that many ‘floods and inundations’ (whether he distinguishes between the two and how is unclear), as well as droughts, occurred from 1804 in the delta. (113) . Report of tile Committee on the Effects of the Inundation in Orissa in 1866, part 1, September 1871, PWD, nos 60–6, p. 15, NA1. (114) . See Clause 12 in SSR, vol. 1, p. 163. (115) . For a survey of the ‘Indo-Islamic’ intelligence and surveillance systems operative in pre-colonial India’ see C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge 1996), pp. 10–55. According to Bayly, often in the Rajput courts in the eighteenth century, when the right to collect tax was farmed, the revenue farmers soon established their own information order and rapport with the village accountants and revenue overseas. These magnates then inevitably choked the information flow to the rulers. Ibid., p. 31. (116) . Ray, ‘Maratha Revenue Administration in Orissa’, p. 62. (117) . Sen, Administrative System of the Marathas, p. 80. (118) . Sen, Economics of Revenue Maximization in Bengal, p. 9. (119) . Hunter, Orissa or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province under Native and British Rule, p. 181. In the next twenty years (1830–52), a total of £91,889 was remitted, while the figure for the next fifteen years (1852–67) was £397,088. Hunter calculated the average annual sum remitted for 1852–67 at roughly £26,472 per annum, which, by his estimate, approximated nearly 16 per cent of the total annual land tax of that period for the Orissa Delta. (120) . W. Trower, collector, Jugannath, to Andrew Stirling, secretary to the comissioner, Cuttack, 1 June 1818, CDR, vol. 16 December 1817 to 30 September 1819, p. 89, OSA. Trower records that the duty and right to assess crop failure due to natural calamities lay ‘in the power of the Collector to ascertain by local inquiry and ocular observation’. (121) . Henry Ricketts, Report on the Districts of Midnapore (including Hijelee) and Cuttack (Calcutta 1858), p. 68. (122) . Arthur Cotton, Report on the Mahanuddy River, (Calcutta 1858), p. 8. He based this observation on his study of the early papers of the Company’s administration in the Orissa Delta.

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ (123) . Trower to Stirling, 26 November 1818, Bengal Revenue Consultations, 13 May 1819 quoted in B.C. Ray, Foundations of British Orissa, p. 168. (124) . Amli was the local era of Orissa, it began from the twelfth day of the second half of the lunar month of Bhadra—between 27 August and 26 September of the English year. The British authorities calculated the era from the middle of September. Amli era 1211, for example, was equivalent to the English year September 1803 to September 1804. (125) . W. Ewer, commissioner, Cuttack, to H. Mackenzie, secretary to government, Territorial Department, Fort William, 26 March 1818, BRP, RD, vol. 6 December 1817 to 20 May 1818, p. 28, OSA. (126) . The East India Company underwent a financial crisis in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The Fourth Mysore war (1789–99), the Second Maratha war (1803–5) and administering the new territorial acquisitions in the Carnatic, Awadh, and the Central Provinces, severely strained the Company’s internal organization and finances. This period, therefore, witnessed an attempt by the EIC to ‘extract the maximum of India’s resources with the minimum effort…’. See Michael Mann, ‘A Permanent Settlement for the Ceded and Conquered Provinces: Revenue Administration in North India, 1801–1833’, IESHR, 32(2), 1995, pp. 250–67. (127) . G. Ward, assistant collector, Balasore, to R. Rocke, Member Board of Revenue, 14 April 1815, CDR, RD, vol. 4 April 1815 to 29 August 1815, pp. 5–6, OSA. (128) . Ibid., p. 6. (129) . Ibid.. (130) . Ibid., pp. 6–7. (131) . Ibid., p. 12. (132) . G. Ward, assistant collector, Balasore, to A.B. Edmonstone, vice president and deputy governor, Fort WiUiam, 25 April 1815, CDR, RD, vol. 24 January 1815 to 24 December 1815. p. 188, OSA. (133) . W. Trower, collector, to Andrew Stirling, secretary to the commissioner, Cuttack, 1 June 1818, CDR, RD, vol. 16 December 1817 to 30 September 1818, pp. 92–3. (134) . Ewer’s Report, p. 31. (135) . Gordon, ‘Recovery from Adversity in Eighteenth-Century India: Rethinking “Villages”, “Peasants”, and Politics in Pre-modern Kingeoms’ in Page 42 of 43

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Capitalist Property and the ‘Calamity of Season’ Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in EighteenthCentury India, p. 102. (136) . Ibid., pp. 102–3. (137) . Gordon, ‘The Slow Conquest: Administrative Integration of Malwa into the Maratha Empire, 1720–60’ in Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India, pp. 46–7. (138) . Holt Mackenzie, assistant secretary to gbvernment, to R. Rockee and N.o. Salmon, Members of the Board of Revenue, Fort William, 11 October 1816, CDR, RD, vol. January 1816 to December 1816, p. 535, OSA. (139) . The British principle of’non-interference’ or rather lack of administrative penetration in the early period of their rule in the doab districts of north India had a debilitating effect on rural credit and on remission policy, while taqqavi loans were increasingly siphoned off as ‘emoluments’ by the lower levels of the ‘native officials’, remissions could not be effectively directed at providing genuine relief. See Sanjay Sharma, ‘Famine, State and Society in North India, c. 1800–1840’, PhD dissertation (School of Oriental and African Studies 1996), pp. 144–50. (140) . Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 931. (141) . I have here not dealt with the specific aspect of the manner in which capitalist rents reinforce the monetary valuation of nature. See Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (New York 1999), pp. 90–8. Also see Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3, pp. 751–950 and David Harvey, The Limits to Capital (Chicago 1982), pp. 330–72

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Embankments and its Discontents

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Embankments and its Discontents Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords This chapter outlines the various debates over the embankments, which were prolifically constructed in this period across the length and breadth of the delta as the technical means for ‘protecting’ cultivated land as property. The British East India Company administration realized that embankment repair and maintenance had become a source of considerable contention and dispute and required a far more forceful administrative approach. The military engineers were presenting alternate views and questioning the decisions of the revenue administration even though the pace for embankment construction in Orissa continued to be set by the imperatives for revenue collection. Both the revenue and engineering were tested over the rising maintenance costs of the bunds, the tedium of regular repair, and popular resistance against flood-control measures. It also discusses the Naraj Spur which was installed with primary objective of redirecting the waters of the Mahanadi back into its main channel. Keywords:   embankments, British East India Company, repair, maintenance, Orissa, Naraj Spur, delta, Mahanadi

Colonial attempts at creating exclusive ownership in land and implementing a rigid realization of the revenue demand remained at the very heart of their early administrative endeavours. Nevertheless, the frequent falls in revenue collections caused chiefly by seasonal hydraulic volatility, as pointed out earlier, strained the Company’s ability to keep rent recovery schedules reliable and oftentimes, unsettled the entire administrative calculus on tenure and rule. The need to secure the land payment from the river’s temperamental depredations therefore became a consuming administrative preoccupation. The Company Page 1 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents administrators turned for inspiration and solace to the adjoining province of Bengal, which had tried and tested the strategy of constructing protective embankments—structures designed to permanently insulate cultivated land from river spill. Soon enough, to the official colonial mind in Orissa, the idea of running protective embankments to separate field from river soon became an administrative fetish in which only by positioning land against water could property be defended and revenue realized.

In Search of the Embankments The earliest colonial revenue correspondence on the Orissa Delta, records the existence of ‘huge mounds’, which the authorities assumed were embankments or bunds that had been constructed to insulate lands from seasonal inundations. In the first half of 1805, Lieutenant Steel from the Corps of Engineers was appointed to ‘superintend’ the repair of some embankments in Cuttack. Their large size (see Table 3.1) suggests that they had been built long before Company rule was established in the region.1 (p.98) Table 3.1. Dimensions of Three Embankments in 1805 Pargana

Length (feet)

Breadth (feet)

Height (feet)

Kotdes

3,000

16

5

Ruhang

1,300

30

12

Bakrabad

2,301

16

7

Source: Compiled from a series of letters. See G. Groeme, Collector, Juggernaut to Thomas Fortesque, secretary to the commissioner, Cuttack, letters dated 10, 15 and 21 May 1805 in CDR, Revenue Department, Volume 23 January 1805 to 10 July 1805, pp. 64, 68 and 77, OSA. In these initial years, the colonial authorities were, not unexpectedly, illinformed about the number and location of what they termed as mounds or bunds. Collector G. Groeme, for example, had to depute a person ‘to point the embankments out’ to Lieutenant Steel.2 Repairs on the mounds was further complicated by the fact that the incipient colonial administration remained somewhat at a loss over how to keep the structures in ‘working order’. Such exasperation is evident in a despatch sent by Groeme to the commissioner in 1805: I am not sufficiently acquainted with works of this kind, I can neither pledge myself for the accuracy of the Estimate [for the repairs] or consider myself answerable if the sum required should hereafter exceed that which I now submit to the Board. I likewise enclose an account of some new Embankments which the Tuhseeldars [Tehsildars] of these places in which

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Embankments and its Discontents they are situated have forwarded to me and which they represent as necessary to be made.3 The mounting confusion about deciding on issues concerning embankment repair and maintenance, however, was soon surpassed by an altogether fresh dilemma. This followed the Company’s growing realization that the embankments were not only constructed in several shapes and sizes but appeared to have been deployed for various types of functions and were therefore perhaps not exclusively designed only for insulating lands from seasonal river inundation. In an 1838 report on the status of the embankments in Cuttack District, an enquiry committee chose to classify the innumerable types of structures under eight broad groups, based largely on the latter’s location and presumed functions.4 According to the committee, the embankments or bunds served a number of purposes such as—excluding saltwater during spring tides, damming mouths of (p.99) khalls (hollows) in order to retain fresh water, diverting water for irrigation, leading excess water into drainage channels, and protecting lands that adjoined river channels from flood spill. Many of these structures, they further concluded, were intended to perform different functions in different seasons or situations; a protective structure for excluding the saltwater of spring tides, for example, was often also used to retain fresh-water for irrigation. Cultivators, furthermore, often made ‘cuts’ into the bunds to allow or quicken the passage of water for drainage or irrigation, and in certain circumstances, they were not averse to either abandoning some embankments altogether or constructing a bund or two for a single season only. Lastly, the colonial authorities noticed that the ‘native’ bunds were more like a patchwork of haphazard constructions that often ran perpendicular to the river rather than parallel to it and did not comprise a ‘uniform’ or ‘continuous’ system. And yet, the virtual kaleidoscope in bund types and their innumerable functional possibilities, nevertheless, appeared to have also been harmonized by the cultivators to complement an intricate system for irrigation and drainage.5 This use of embankments for a multitude of tasks, that varied seasonally and by location, was not restricted to the Orissa Delta; similar arrangements and practices appear to have been the norm for cultivators in the adjoining deltaic tracts in Bengal.6 Clearly, the colonial view that bunds were exclusively part of a system of permanent structures for insulating lands from floods was not necessarily the shared view on the ground. Even the so-called ‘large mounds’ that the Company administration had repeatedly maintained to be flood-control embankments, became the subject of dispute in later years. Lieutenant Harris, after completing a series of ‘scientific surveys’ on the Mahanadi River between 1857 and 1860, argued that the mounds were not structures designed to insulate fields from inundation but:

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Embankments and its Discontents …that from the most remote, up to comparatively recent times, the country has been exposed to inundations, and that its inhabitants have habitually sought safety in villages raised on these mounds, well above the level of the floods to which they found the country subjected.7 The colonial attempt to simplify and limit the role of the embankments in Orissa as being exclusively flood-control structures, not surprisingly, stirred up a host of dilemmas about the latter’s origins and efficacy. Since the initial rules for administering the embankments in (p.100) Orissa were directly transplanted by the Company from the existing regulations in the Burdwan Division (which then included the district of Midnapore) in Bengal, it would be helpful to briefly discuss the role and experiences with inundation in the latter tracts.

Burdwan and Regulation VI of 1806 In the course of formulating the revenue demand for Bengal, as part of the exercise for the Permanent Settlement elaborated in 1793, the incipient Company administration declared that certain estates were to be granted allowances on the revenue demand (jama) as compensation for maintaining their bunds.8 In 1796, the Board of Revenue received a report that the neglect of the bunds by the zamindars or landlords of Kasijorah Pargana in the district of Midnapore had resulted in ‘serious inundation’. After another report of allegedly similar zamindari laxity and indifference in the pargana of Mynachour, the Company administration realized that embankment repair and maintenance had become a source of considerable contention and dispute and required a far more forceful administrative approach. In March 1798, the Board of Revenue authorized the collector of Midnapore to undertake embankment repairs in the parganas of Kasijorah and Shahpore, and recover the expenses from the zamindars in ‘proportion to the interest which they respectively possess [ed] in the bunds’. The decision immediately drew the ire of several zamindars, who insisted that rather than pay potentially higher costs to the Company for repairs that the latter might carry out, the estate owners should be allowed to do it themselves. Some zamindars, however, even chose to refuse to undertake any repairs altogether. This caused the Board of Revenue to extend an order passed earlier in January 1798 to the parganas, specifying that if the zamindars failed to repair their bunds the Company administration would then carry them out on its own initiative and forcibly recover the expenses from the intractable landlords.9 In the adjoining district of Murshidabad, as well, the Company found itself ‘habitually compelled’ to carry out repairs because of what was perceived to be zamindari recalcitrance. In 1800, for example, the collector of Mushidabad was directed by the Board of Revenue to spend Rs 32,788 on the bunds in the district and was authorized to put up for sale the lands of the ‘defaulting’ zamindars to recover the costs of the repairs.10 The Company’s sale laws brought into effect in the permanent settlement territories, however, further frustrated the admin (p.101) istration Page 4 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents as frequent changes in estate ownership and regular dismemberment of large holdings into smaller plots defeated attempts to stabilize procedures that clearly fixed responsibilities for bund maintenance.11 Thus, throughout the early tumultuous years of rule, Company officials found themselves increasingly, on the one hand, arrogating to themselves the right to determine the need for and to carry out embankment repair, while, on the other, they were being entangled in the fairly sordid task of ascertaining and recovering from the concerned zamindars the costs for restoring the ‘protective’ works. Not unexpectedly, in the subsequent enactment of Embankment Regulation VI of 1806, the Company’s first directives on the subject of floodcontrol in Bengal, the administration sought to endorse their then ongoing efforts to enforce private responsibility in the maintenance of bunds.12 Through Regulation VI of 1806, embankment committees were set up and empowered to act: …if the zemindars neglected their duty, [the embankment committees had] to call upon them to make the repairs, and, if they still persisted in their neglect, to submit an estimate to Government, and after approval to carry out the repairs, and recover the amounts from the zemindars or farmer bound to keep the embankments in a proper state of repair.13 But in attempting to compel the zamindars to bear the financial costs for protecting their estates, the Company inadvertently also devolved onto itself the task for monitoring and ascertaining the nature of the supposed threat posed by the deltaic rivers. In effect, the incipient Company bureaucracy through the embankment committees and armed with Regulation VI of 1806 ended up singularly acquiring the onerous responsibility of defining, maintaining, and interminably perpetuating the separation of land and water.

Arrival of the Specialists In the Orissa Delta, the Company’s initial investigations led them to conclude that ‘no pools [pulbandi, or, embankments] were repaired by the zameendars’ and hence the responsibility was entirely that of government.14 Later, in a seemingly complete turnaround, it was held that in the Maratha period (1751– 1803) the embankments were kept up by the zamindars, who apparently even received allowances or deductions (p.102) (pulbandi abwabs) for carrying out repairs.15 Consequently, it was decided that the Orissa zamindars would be charged for the repairs carried out by the administration, as was also the then prevailing practice in Bengal. These arrangements in the Orissa tracts, however, quickly proved to be unpopular and in 1808 a petition was forwarded to the colonial administration signed by a number of zamindars, complaining that government supervision was far costlier and they ‘begged that the repairs might again be entrusted to them and a deduction made on their account from their Jama [revenue demand]’.16 Page 5 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents In the following year, Regulation VI of 1806 was implemented in the Orissa Delta and the issue of the repair and management of the embankments was now brought under the direct charge of an Embankment Committee. The Embankment Committee initially comprised the judge, the collector, and the salt agent of Cuttack District.17 For the general administration of the works, two superintendents were appointed and under their charge a number of bund darogahs carried out the actual task of repair and maintenance.18 In 1818, a post for the surveyor of the embankments was instituted, charged with the new assignment of monitoring the work of the superintendents and reporting to the commissioner on the status of the embankments.19 On the operative level, however, the superintendents, who were military engineers, were still required to essentially coordinate and consult with the collector of the district on the routines of embankment repairs, construction, and maintenance.20 In a short period of time, however, the Embankment Committee and the Collector’s office in Orissa appear to have suffered an irrevocable parting of ways on virtually every aspect dealing with the administration of the embankment system. While the committee accused the collector of not keeping them ‘duly informed’, the latter in turn alleged that the former actually ‘distracted’ the revenue office from effectively executing work.21 An indication of the intense acrimony between the two is, evident in Collector W. Trower’s despatch to the commissioner in August of 1818, in which he claimed that: The records of the late [Embankment] Committee will sufficiently prove to you that their proceedings were conducted without any regular system and perhaps with not much decorum. The Collector was not considered as the executive office and it would be difficult to say who was, I myself considered Mr Becher the President [of the Embankment Committee] as having taken on himself all responsibility and management and therefore troubled myself little about the (p.103) Embankments, those excepted when situated in the Khas Mahals as the efficiency of which my collections thereon greatly depended.22 The growing tensions and disagreements between the collector’s office and the Embankment Committee, however, were far from simply provoked over issues of inter-departmental coordination. In all likelihood, and here we can only speculate, the embankment superintendents probably began to pursue investigations or plotted strategies about the efficacy of the embankment system that were perhaps at sharp variance with solely revenue concerns. Unlike the collector’s office, which concentrated on the revenue implications of protection, the Embankment Committee had to also contend with the consequences of tampering with drainage patterns or the hazards of irremediably altering the hydraulic integrity of the river systems. This possibly explains why Trower’s limited concern for his ‘collections’ was not shared with equal zest by the Embankment Committee. The colonial administration’s views on the subject of Page 6 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents protection from inundation in Orissa, appears to have, in fact, begun undergoing a gradual but perceptible shift towards making far more complex assessments and responses to the phenomenon of deltaic inundation. In 1818, for example, Collector Trower, rather than directly ascertaining the request of the zamindar for constructing an embankment on an estate, directed the task instead to the Embankment Committee, who in turn made short work of dismissing the zamindar’s plea: …there is not the smallest apprehension of the estate of Ootikund suffering from inundation unless the river should rise sufficiently high to run altogether over the bund in which case of course the country at large would suffer and that…the object of the zamindar in petitioning to be merely an excuse for the non-payment of his revenue.23 The exchange given here, it could be surmised, suggests that the embankment establishment was perhaps being called upon to supply a technical assessment rather than simply a revenue calculation on the Ootikund zamindar’s petition. That is, it is probable that the Embankment Committee had, in the short period of a decade, acquired the status of a specialist department, who were increasingly becoming the most credible opinion on the hydraulic complexities of the delta. Consequently, despite the tension between the revenue authorities and the Embankment Committee, the latter had perhaps rapidly become the most significant (p.104) body for evaluating the validity of claims for protection. By 1828, military engineers concerned with the upkeep and repair of the embankments were also evolving criteria and accumulating information for even more complex judgement on the nature and role of the embankment system. An extract of a letter from R.J. Rose, assistant surveyor of the Cuttack embankments, illustrates the manner in which information on the bunds moved beyond debates about their location and instead also became involved in other concerns such as the flood line. …the dimensions of these Embankments together with such other information as you may be enabled to gain on the subject of the utility of each of the embankments, of their liability to injury, of the height of the rise of the different Rivers on which they are situated and of the means of effecting the improvement of such Embankments as are essential to the protection of the cultivation of the country and the expediency of dispensing with any which you may see reason to believe are not indispensable and which are maintained at an expense inadequate to the advantage derived from them.24 Although the pace for embankment construction in Orissa continued to be chiefly set by the imperatives for revenue collection, the military engineers were nonetheless repeatedly presenting alternate views and questioning the decisions of the revenue administration. In time, the mounting disagreements and Page 7 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents disputes congealed into two wholly opposed views. On the one hand, those wishing to pursue embankment construction solely to secure revenue interest, while, on the other, made up mostly of military engineers, who advocated the idea of dealing with drainage and flooding as aspects of an organically interconnected hydraulic environment. Both, the revenue and engineering frameworks, however, internally came under various strains and were soon Severely tested over three issues—the rising maintenance costs of the bunds; the tedium of regular repair, and popular resistance against flood-control measures.

Rising Costs, Repair, and Resistance Since the inception of the embankment system, the colonial administration sought to explain the constant rise in the annual expenses for repair and maintenance as a consequence of large-scale corruption of the bund darogahs. In 1815, in a report, the Embankment Committee in Orissa concluded that, (p.105) …not withstanding the large sums which have been annually appropriated by Government to the repairs of the Bunds these works have been shamefully neglected that the money which should have been applied to their construction and maintenance had [been] embezzled by the Darogahs….25 In the adjoining district of Midnapore, these pulbundy or bund darogahs were hired at wages ranging between Rs 12 to 20 a month and carried out work on the bunds ‘practically uncontrolled’. Allegedly, according to the colonial authorities, the darogahs were only constrained by the need to procure certificates from the zamindars, which stated that the work had been done and that the expenses were reasonable. In 1845, the collector of Midnapore having enquired into the subject stumbled onto what appeared to him as a virtual industry by itself: …it is the custom of the zemindars to avoid the trouble of signing receipts for works done and to delegate powers to the mooktears [clerks]. These people connive with the darogahs, and in cases where a darogah had been ordered to lay down Rs 7000 worth of earth, he expends but a small proportion, gives a doucer [bribe/tip] to the mooktear and sends in his bill for the whole amount; but the receipts testify that the work had been done. There are instances…where the zemindars have sold their mooktearships to the agents of the darogahs themselves, and there being such an immense extent of bunds, it is impossible that the executive officers can personally superintend the execution of the works.26 In Orissa, the Embankment Committee even proposed that the procedure of using darogahs be abandoned altogether and the responsibility for the upkeep of the bunds be instead saddled entirely onto the landlords. The recommendation, however, was categorically rejected by the governor general in 1815, who Page 8 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents probably feared that the zamindars would not only be equally unreliable but would also resist any extra financial charges for protection.27 However, such was the conviction within the administration that the bund darogahs were the sole cause for the high financial outlay on the embankment system that in 1852, for the Bengal districts, a proposal was placed for the hiring of European overseers, who, it was argued would effect greater economy through ‘honest’ supervision.28 Subsequent to which, the Embankment Act of 1855 was enacted in order to enable the embankment superintendents to enlist a staff of European subordinates to monitor more closely the activities of the darogahs.29 The hopes for effecting a drastic reduction in costs were soon belied, as the construction (p.106) of numerous bungalows, sluices, spurs, and training works, as part of the infrastructure of the new embankment establishment led to a ‘most rapid’ increase in expenditure.30 In deltaic Orissa, as is evident in Table 3.2, the rise in embankment expenditure did not abate in any significant manner. Table 3.2. Average Annual Expenditure on Embankments for Different Time Periods Year

Rupees

Year

Rupees

1803-30

17,308

1860-66

59,247

1831-45

10,794

1867-76

88,357

1846-52

13,700

1876-86

48,813

1853-59

40,807

1886-96

53,900

Source: S.L. Maddox, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement of the Province of Orissa (Temporarily Settled Areas) 1890 to 1900, vol. 1, Calcutta, 1905, p. 15. Although the decades between 1876–96 do indicate a fall in expenditure, Maddox attributes the drop to the administration’s decision to suddenly abandon many miles of bunds as being ‘superfluous embankments’. In addition, a large number of the bunds formerly maintained by the embankment establishment was transferred onto the charge of the canal department of the Orissa Scheme of 1863, who were also required to protect the irrigated tracts (on the Scheme see the next chapter). Amidst attempts to reign in the alleged corruption of the bund darogahs, the colonial administration also found itself having to contend with the perplexing problem of frequent acts of sabotage against the embankments, claimed, ironically enough, to being carried out chiefly by villagers and zamindars, the apparent beneficiaries of the works. As noted in an earlier chapter, Captain W.D. Short, officiating superintendent of embankments, had recorded that a very organized system for breaching or making cuts into the embankments prevailed; with the zamindars, in many instances, paying the darogahs, to carry them Page 9 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents out.31 In another investigation, Captain C.B. Young, officiating chief engineer of the Orissa Provinces, recorded an equally elaborate strategy, on this occasion by the villagers, to breach the embankments: This practice is even systematized by the villagers, that is they insert a hollow trunk of a tree in the embankments where they wish to obtain water, and carefully (p.107) conceal it from the executive officers with earth and turfing…the darogahs are paid to connive at the practice, while in case of discovery, some one villager, whose family is during his punishment and imprisonment supported by the rest, is voluntarily made the scapegoat. This I am informed by the Superintendent is common, and that he has discovered many such hidden sluices at places where it appeared to him strange that breaches were constantly occurring at the same spot.32 Another source of tension between the native populace in the deltaic tracts in Orissa and the embankment staff erupted over the issue of the forced requisitioning of coolies (unpaid labour, perhaps) from the villages for the purpose of carrying out the seasonal repairs on the bunds. The darogahs often in attempting to ‘collect’ coolies would repeatedly encounter resistance from the villagers that sometimes even turned violent. …[a petition] presented by one of the Pool Bundee Darogahs stating that Ally Jumma [a zamindar ?] positively refuses his proportion of coolies to work on the Bunds and that he has turned out several times the peons deputed to collect Coolies and Hackeries [and] if they come again to beat them….33 Similar sorts of antagonisms and tensions were played out in the embanked tracts along the Damodar River (Bengal Delta). In a report to the Military Board in 1853, Lieutenant Colonel Goodwyn noted with exasperation that the bund lines around Edilpore and Catgolah villages were breached in several places by the villagers and that at Hatsimul and at another village beyond Chotespore eastward, …the huts are close to the heel of the embankment, and the villagers have been in the habit of taking earth from the berm for the repair of their houses, a practice which in addition to the various other evils, under which the embankment labours, calls for remedial Regulations.34 In the same report, Goodwyn, also enumerated, for good measure, an exhaustive list of what he considered to be the six ‘evils’ that had thus far undermined the effective functioning of the embankments—cutting or injuring the embankments and dams; cultivating within the limits assigned to the embankments; the trespass of cattle; erection of huts on the embankment limits; interfering with the sluices without permission from the embankment officer; and neglect of Page 10 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents zamindar lines.35 However, (p.108) on placing this list of so-called evils against the grain of the official view, the administration’s complaints about local neglect could just as well suggest that the system of embankment protection was clearly not only unpopular but seems to have begun to incite active resistance as well. In effect, despite the colonial administration’s several assertions that the embankments were vital for agrarian production and that such protection would be unhesitatingly embraced by the cultivators and zamindars, a very different picture seems to have prevailed on the ground in both the Bengal and Orissa Deltas. The embankment establishment, in fact, in both the deltas, were constantly harassed by the local populace and had to maintain a constant vigil over the bunds to either ‘entrap cutting parties’ or counter the ‘negligence’ of the zamindars and the villagers Furthermore, along with the burden of literally policing the entire length of the embankment system was added the administration’s general frustration with their repeated inability to acquire reliable information on the impact and nature of the seasonal inundations in the delta as: The villages, whose word is often the guide, are sometimes interested one way or the other, and are so apathetic as to give statements wide of the truth, whilst the native establishment [darogahs] can be as little relied upon for data of such importance.36

The Second Offensive With tension on the boil between the military engineers and the revenue administration, a decisive show down of sorts in the Orissa Delta was imminent. Soon enough, in a follow up to yet another skirmish, the revenue administration scored a partial victory by having the colonial government promulgate Regulation XI of 1829. Through Regulation XI, the embankment committees appointed previously under Regulation VI of 1806 were abolished and the responsibility for the construction and location of the embankments were now turned over entirely to the charge of the collectors of land revenue The collector’s office was now expected to superintend the works on a day to day basis.37 The final authority on embankment expenditure was, nevertheless, vested in the Military Board and the collector was still expected to report to the revenue commissioner and the supervisor general of the embankments; the latter office was responsible for the entire embankment system in the deltaic tracts of Bengal and Orissa.38 The Military Board was originally established (p. 109) to ‘watch and control’ the expenditure of money on public works but essentially remained an accounting body with no executive powers.39 Thus, while the Military Board could scrutinize the costs involved in the construction of the bunds, the actual power to sanction and initiate the works continued to lie with the civil administration and in the final instance with the Court of Directors, the highest executive authority of the colonial government.40

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Embankments and its Discontents Following the implementation of Regulation XI 1829, a dramatic spurt in the construction of embankments occurred in the Orissa Delta. According to Lieutenant Harris, from 1831 ‘progress onwards’ was the motto of every executive engineer, who, ‘urged on by the revenue authorities’, steadily extended the embankment system.41 Lieutenant Harris, in his second report of 1860, gives a vivid description of the manner in which embankments were rapidly added across the delta: Zemindar A had embanked his little plot of land originally to the detriment of B. B to enable him to pay his enhanced revenue had appealed to the Collector for an embankment calculated to protect his land—to the detriment of C and D-E, F, G, H and indeed more letters that the world can supply…in this way, in every portion of the district…embankments becomes the rule rather than the exception.42 The indiscriminate expansion of the length of the system of protection soon, however, caused the costs on maintenance to spiral. Thus, while the executive engineer was compelled by the revenue authorities to ‘construct the maximum amount of embankments, in order that the country might pay the maximum of revenue’, the Military Board began to push the engineer in the opposite direction; wherein he was to ‘show a minimum of expenditure’. In the words of Lieutenant Harris, the fate of the military engineer became akin to that of a deltaic river—‘accelerated by one force’ (revenue department) and ‘retarded by another’ (Military Board).43 In 1847, the Military Board finally decided on choosing a path of direct confrontation and prohibited expenditure on ‘all but the repairs necessary to prevent actual breaches’. In the meantime, they also called for a debate over the question of whether it was expedient to abolish or retain the innumerable embankments that had been so haphazardly constructed all over the delta. According to Captain Short, during the period of the debate conducted by the Military Board, all attempts at ‘annual repair and (p.110) every kind of improvement’ was effectively stopped.44 In 1849, Captain MacLeod with support from Colonel Sage (the then superintendent of embankments) decided on dismantling 438 miles of embankments, out of a total of 774 miles then under government charge, as being fictitious or useless bunds.45 While the Military Board sought to end the rising spiral of expenditure on repair and maintenance by having the embankments, as far as possible, be either dismantled or abandoned altogether, the revenue department, on the other hand, feared that they would not only suffer substantial financial losses, but would also be dragged into countering a vast number of litigious claims, which the zamindars and cultivators would undoubtedly bring up. Commissioner A.J. Moffat Mills, in a note, summed up the administration’s dilemma:

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Embankments and its Discontents The system [of the embankments] has too long prevailed to admit of so sweeping a remedy as the levelling of all bunds…the question cannot and should not be entertained until the present [revenue] settlement [concluded for the period 1837–67] expires, as in estimating the assets of each estate, regard has been had to the continuance of the embankments which protect them.46 Clearly, the colonial administration’s routines and procedures for revenue assessment and collection had become inextricably entwined with the continuance of the embankment network and, therefore, any attempt by the administration to suddenly abandon the entire system of bunds would, in the words of Major W.E. Baker, consulting engineer to the railways, lead not only to the destruction of property, but, more significantly, cause the ‘confusion of private right’.47

The Nominal against the Permanent The colonial administration’s drive to rapidly multiply the number of embankments in the delta was not simply effecting a quantitative change placing greater parts of the delta under protection from seasonal inundation but, rather, as it increasingly became evident, a qualitatively different notion of flood-control was simultaneously being introduced as well. In actual operation, the colonial administration was, therefore, implementing a hitherto unprecedented scale and type of protection in which lands were being comprehensively and entirely sealed from deltaic inundations. H.L. Harrison, the collector of Midnapore, for example, following an inquiry into the history of the bunds in Bengal noted: (p.111) Not only have the embankments [built by the colonial administration] been added to as regards number and length, they have also been totally modified as regards quality…. Instead of the simple earth works, presided over by a darogah on Rs 12 a month, which were cut through whenever water had to be let out or let in, and which rarely stood any moderate flood, we have now embankments much enlarged, skillfully, sectioned, sluiced at frequent intervals, protected by training works, with inspection bungalows every six or eight miles….48 Colonel F.T. Haig, close on the heels of Harrison’s inquiry, observed similarly that the colonial administration, in the Bengal Delta, had systematically replaced all the earlier ‘native’ embankments, which kept out only minor inundation, with instead ‘really efficient’ embankments that were now directed to completely insulate lands from every type of flood.49 The ‘nominal’ nature of the native embankments, however, did not necessarily Indicate an ineffective or obsolete system for protection against deltaic floods. On the contrary, from a reading of the colonial accounts itself, these native structures appear to resemble, in function and built, either diversionary bunds or temporary dams that seem typical and widely prevalent in other parts of India. In the Indus Basin, several Page 13 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents types of such bunds, which simultaneously negotiated floods and enabled irrigation were still in extensive use throughout the nineteenth century, especially in the great alluvial plains below the junction of the Punjab rivers— roughly from Mithankot downwards. These deltaic plains comprised the khadir (also known as bet) lands, which were low-lying tracts regularly fertilized with silt deposits from the innumerable meandering rivers. In these areas, diversionary bunds were regularly built across river beds and after its level was suitably raised in the channel, a rough and sinuous canal leached the water gradually onto cultivated fields. The diversionary bunds never extended over the entire bed of the river and easily gave way during the next year’s flood, thus requiring intensive labour for reconstruction and maintenance. Even though inundation canals could function only for limited periods and competed for labour use at a time when ploughing, levelling, and seeding operations were carried out, they remained for millennia, with hardly any innovations in material and technique, the chief form of irrigation in the Punjab region. Even as late as 1872, it was reported that inundation canals in the Punjab alluvial plains aggregated some 2,500 miles in length and irrigated more than a million acres.50 Similarly, in the Madras Presidency, in the south, temporary dams known as korambus were built across the river bed during the dry season (p. 112) when flows were weak. These korambus, made of sand, earth, bamboo, wood, and grass, were designed to impound the low river supply and then divert it into an irrigation channel that had been cut into the river. The korambus, however, were invariably washed away at the lime of the flood season, often in the first freshet itself.51 For the Orissa Delta as well, some colonial observers described the native embankments not as flood-control works but as diversionary structures for irrigation. The superintending engineer, Captain J.P. Beadle, in one of his inquiries into the functioning of the embankments in the Orissa Delta, for example, unambiguously equated the pre-colonial Orissa bunds with the Madras korambus: There are many isolated embankments scattered throughout the District, which are dams retaining the rainfall and keeping it on the higher Lands, which without these aids would drain off the water too rapidly for the growth of crops…. There is a temporary cross dam constructed annually in the bed of the Byturnee [Baitarani]…[and] in Ungool [Angul], the agriculturists cultivate with the aid of temporary dams for irrigation and it appears that temporary dams formed like ropes of sand across the beds of rivers are made of similar purposes on the Madras side called Courumboos [Korambus].52 Although Beadle’s observations were made as late as 1860, by which time substantial qualitative changes had already been effected, his statements took significant note of the fact that in Orissa embankments were used primarily for Page 14 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents irrigation rather than for shutting out flood spill. Second, given the fact that in the deltaic tracts of Bengal and Orissa, the British administration neither encouraged nor patronized the construction of embankments for irrigation, their existence can only be explained as being the product of the initiative of the cultivators, who, in all probability, fashioned such structures as part of a tradition that originated in times prior to colonial rule. It stands to reason, from these observations, that some of the embankments inherited by the British in the deltaic tracts of Orissa, like similar structures in the Indus Basin and southern India, were intended to primarily divert river flows for irrigation. Hence their deployment on an expansive scale as exclusive barriers to the seasonal inundations comprised a qualitative transformation of the use of embankments from that of the pre-colonial period.

(p.113) Military Engineers Rethink the Delta In contrast to the view overwhelmingly held and sustained by the revenue administration that native hostility and corruption had undermined the system for flood-protection, the mili1ary engineers, by the 1850s, also began to link the recurrent failure of embankments to the hydraulic properties of the delta. In possibly the first salvo by a military engineer on the subject, Captain W.D. Short, officiating superintendent of the embankments, submitted a report on 3 August 1857 which sought to explain the causes for the constantly occurring breaches in the bunds in Cuttack District.53 Short argued, much in line with the then prevailing orthodoxy, that the blame lay in negligence and a general financial squeeze on expenses brought on by the Military Board’s indecision on the question of retaining or abandoning the embankments. Consequently, he went on to add, in the years 1850–1, not even patch-work was ventured upon and the ill-kept embankments, not surprisingly, easily caved in following the floods.54 Although the inundations of 1852–3 and 1855, once again, revived the policy of filling up breaches and strengthening sections, in his opinion, the system had collapsed to such an extent that the task had become one of attempting to ‘fill broken pitchers’.55 Not unexpectedly, given the prevailing mood on the issue of protection in the delta, Short’s report caused an uproar. Captain C.B. Young, then officiating chief engineer of the Lower Provinces (Orissa), was sufficiency provoked to make a detailed critique of Short’s claims, in which he vigorously pointed out what he perceived to be were various inconsistencies in the argument. Though Young’s response was a long and laboured one, it would be appropriate to briefly recapitulate and summarize in some detail the main thrust of his criticisms. First between the years 1847–8 and 1848–9 an average of Rs 18,929 and Rs 20,132 per annum respectively were spent on embankment repairs. These averages approximated the average expenditure of Rs 20,000 per annum under the same head between 1840 and 1846–7. Thus, Short’s claim that the government ignored the embankments for the above mentioned period was unsubstantiated. Second, for the years 1849–50 and 1850–1, though expenditure on the embankments slipped to Rs 3,979 and Rs 604 per annum respectively and Page 15 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents several miles of ‘fictitious bunds’ were dismissed, these were drought years. And finally, on the other hand, the sharp rise in expenditure on the embankments during Short’s tenure (1853–4), with (p.114) an average of Rs 25,000 per annum spent on repairs, was provoked by heavy and extraordinary inundation. Much of the expenditure was, in fact, incurred from repairing the breaches (912 in 1853 and 878 in 1854). The season 1855–6, witnessed a devastating inundation that resulted in 1365 breaches. The repairs for 1855–6 involved the addition of as much as 26 miles of new embankments, averaging 10 to 15 feet in height and an expenditure of roughly Rs 1,20,789. Thus, in Young’s opinion, the increase in expenditure in these years was due to a reflex reaction to extraordinary circumstances and was not a deliberate policy directed towards enhancing the efficiency of the embankment system.56 In effect, the upshot of Young’s retort, backed, as is obvious, with an array of carefully marshalled statistics, was that Short had wrongly made a neat equation between the efficiency of the embankment system and the amount of money being spent on its maintenance, rather than linking their performance to seasonal circumstances and other natural contingencies. By arguing thus, that financial outlays on the embankments did not necessarily imply efficiency, Young’s dismissal of Short’s claims, probably also helped stir several other contrary opinions on the question of protection in the Orissa Delta. In 1859, Captain Beadle, the superintendent of embankments, for example, commenting on the 1855 flood, opined in complete opposition to views that had thus far been expressed: With a knowledge of the fact that the great floods have an excess volume calculated at 9,00,000 cubic feet per second, one can only feel that it was a mercy that the embankments had not been continuously raised and strengthened up to the period of the great floods [1855] arriving. The catastrophe would only have been the more disastrous and the loss of life, of which we have not heard, might have been very great indeed, for the flood level would have risen higher, and the city of Cuttack must have been swept across by a flood from the Katjooree rushing into the lower level of the Hood in the Mahanuddy.57 In claiming so, Beadle was, in fact, reiterating views that had earlier been expressed by Lieutenant Harris (later Captain), who had, following his surveys on the Mahanadi River, become a vehement critic of the embankment system. Over a period of four years, beginning in 1856, and with the submission of as many reports, Harris had begun vigorously calling for the total abandonment of the embankments in the Orissa Delta.58 In his second and third report, he underlined that embankments repeatedly prevented ‘natural inundations’, which, in the course of time, would silt (p.115) up the river’s bed and thereby severely deteriorate the latter’s capacity to discharge flows into the sea. Clogged drainage in the alluvial tracts, in turn, would end up raising the flood Page 16 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents level and cause unusually high and ‘unnatural inundation’ within the delta.59 Alongside such observations, Harris, was also simultaneously helping recast the administration’s then existing views on the phenomenon of deltaic inundation in Orissa. Prior to his reports, floods were predominantly discussed and represented through the limited optic of crop losses, embankment expenses, and policies for granting remissions (a complete waiver of the revenue demand). Harris by producing quantifiable measurements on the Mahanadi’s physical features (such as its sinuosity, depths at various points, velocity, discharging capacities, the heights of the water-line during floods, trends in its divagations, and silt load) enabled, for the first time, the search for patterns of predictable behaviour. Military engineers, consequently, were now able to study and discuss seasonal inundations as elements integral to the delta’s unique hydraulic character and process, rather than as arbitrary events which devastated and then retreated.

Curing the Root of the Evil Lieutenant Harris’ views found ready approval especially amongst a host of military engineers, who were involved in the tedium of maintaining the embankments in Orissa. These engineers, with years of experience in filling breaches, monitoring the rivers, and strengthening sections were, by the 1850s, beginning to search for solutions beyond the immediate 10-cality. To them, the recurrent deltaic inundations needed to be understood as aspects of an organic hydraulic process in which the delta’s rivers and their innumerable bifurcations and branches were inextricably linked. Any strategy for containing the wrath of seasonal inundations, in their opinion, could no longer be limited to isolated interventions in which only certain localities were protected. Even Captain Short, for example, as early as his detailed note of 3 August 1857, concluded that the ‘root of the evil’ was not in the repeated failure of the embankment system but caused by the unchecked leakage of a vast amount of the Mahanadi’s flows into its adjoining arm—the Kathjuri (see Fig. 3.1). This burdening of the Kathjuri, he surmised, gradually weakened the erosive capacity of the Mahanadi River, rapidly depositing detritus on the latter’s bed and the inevitable deterioration of its channel. The Mahanadi, therefore, because it was increasingly unable to carry its flows across the delta repeatedly burst (p.116) its banks and inundated the surrounding country instead of discharging its flows into the sea. On the other hand, the Kathjuri’s channel could not handle the vast volume of water that was draining into it head and was in turn directing those rushing torrents to the south and south-east of the delta, and devastated Puri District. Hence, for Short, the long term solution lay in rerouting the Kathjuri’s waters back into the Mahanadi. However, once the waters were thus regulated, he argued, the entire embankment system had to be constantly realigned to match the fluidity of the river’s shifting channels as ‘no list of embankments can be permanent as long as the banks of the rivers are not so’.60 To further ensure

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Embankments and its Discontents success for his strategy, Short, went on to argue, quite forcefully, for the abandonment of the town of Cuttack and its cantonments: Every view appears to have been limited to the protection of the town and cantonments, which are not, either from their position or intrinsic value, worthy of consideration, when compared with the permanent interests of a great province; thus, one object [the protection of the town of Cuttack] to be reported upon yearly has cramped the character of all measures….61 Another set of engineers, Captain C.B. Young and T.W. Armstrong, argued for the complete abandonment of all the bunds/embankments in (p.117) the Cuttack District. While Armstrong underscored his recommendation with the plea that the embankments had become hazardous because of their faulty construction and bad supervision, Young argued for restoring natural inundations so that river deposition would gradually raise the lands to the level of the river beds and thereby blunt the ferocity of any

Fig. 3.1 : Erosion and Enlargement of the

Kathjuri River Head overflow. Such objections from Short, Armstrong, and Young Source: Memorandum submitted by evoked strong support from the Captain W.D. Short, officiating Military Board as well. superintendent of embankments, 17 June Increasingly, a momentum of sorts 1857 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack was emerging for redirecting Rivers, part 1, Calcutta, 1860, p. 127. efforts to control the vast volume of water at the head of the Mahanadi Delta itself. The idea was to confront recurring inundation as hydraulic process rather than merely as calamitous event. The embankment question, therefore, got involved in the larger complication of engineering a new ratio in the distribution of flows between the Mahanadi and its vexatious off-shoot—the Kathjuri. Towards which, between the years 1855–9, a rash of proposals were put forward by engineers (see Table 3.3). 62

The Naraj Spur: Restoring the Mahanadi’s Equilibrium In his first report submitted in 1856, Harris proposed that a stone spur or groyne be constructed at Naraj, that lay several kilometres upstream of Cuttack town (see Fig. 3.2).63 This suggestion was based on Harris’ view that the waters coming downwards from Naraj had cut away the original

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Embankments and its Discontents (p.118)

Figure 3.2 . Captain Shorts’ Masonry Groyne at Naraj Source: Extract from a letter, 7 July 1855, to the executive engineer Cuttack in Papers Relative to the Cuttack River, part 2, Calcutta, 1860, p. 195.

Table 3.3. Recommendations for Controlling the Mahanadi (1856–9) Officer

Recommendation

Date

Captain W.D.

Groyne or stone at Naraj but from the north-

February

Short

easterly bank.

1855

Lieutenant J.C. Harris

Stone spur or groyne at Naraj and brushwood spurs along the revetment.

5 June 1856

Captain J.P.

Weir across the head of the Kathjuri River. Also

21 August

Beadle

touched on the question of irrigation.

1856

Captain W.D. Short

Removing rocks from the bed of the Mahanadi along with permanent works to distribute the flood between the Mahanadi and the Kathjuri.

3 August 1857

Captain C.B. Young

Weir across the Mahanadi and Kathjuri. Brushwood spurs and cutting sandbars.

14 September 1857

Captain J.C. Harris

Escape channel from the Mahanadi to Banki.

May 1858

Captain W.D. Short

Reservoirs in the hills. Mouth from the Chilika Lake to the sea to be opened.

6 June 1858

Captain J.C. Beadle

Reservoirs in the upper valleys of the Mahanadi.

21 August 1858

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Embankments and its Discontents

Officer

Recommendation

Date

Captain J.C. Harris

Banki as storage reservoir. Dam at Kundlepur and the Daltola cut as escape channel.

31 August 1859

Source: Compiled from W.A. Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal (Calcutta 1909), pp. 205–16. (p.119) banks and altered the currents of the Mahanadi from a rectangular to a direct line and rushed onto the Cuttack revetment at a higher velocity.64 Besides pounding the revetment and weakening it, the waters then bounced off the structure with greater force and caused the abrasion of the southern banks of the Mahanadi, which, in turn, caused the head of the Kathjuri to enlarge at an unusually rapid rate.65 Harris calculated that the head of the Kathjuri widened by almost one-third of a mile in fifteen years and that its entrance below Naraj had become altogether disproportionate to its channel, with more water entering the former than the latter could effectively discharge or carry.66 The Kathjuri, therefore, frequently over-topped its banks and became the prime source for severe floods in the Pun District, which lay south to Cuttack. On the other hand, the reduced flow into the Mahanadi increased the rate of sediment deposition on its bed and severely deteriorated its channel, thus making it even more furious and flood prone.

The Naraj Spur, it was hoped, would restore the vitality of the Mahanadi by redirecting the waters back into its main channel. Harris reasoned that with the increased volume of water flowing down the Mahanadi, its bed would be scoured and deepened by the current and the river’s channel could once again be able to carry its entire now, without over-topping, to the Bay of Bengal. Correspondingly, the decrease in the intake of the Kathjuri would result in its wide head gradually silting up and the reduced volume of water entering it would no longer burden its channel.67 Work on the spur commenced in 1856, with a few thousand feet of rough stone being positioned at a strategic point at the head of the delta to divert the flow. Severe floods interrupted work in 1857 and only after a revival of operations the next year, the spur, aggregating some 3000 feet, was finally completed in 1859.68 But within a few years of operation it became evident that the Naraj Spur failed to be the elegant solution.69 The delta, thus, despite the surgical stab of a spur into its clotted head remained rancorous and in mourning. Clearly, the differences over the viability of the embankment network between the revenue administration and several military engineers did not result simply from inter-departmental rivalry nor from the intransigence of respective institutional mindsets.70 Rather, these discontented military engineers increasingly argued that deltaic inundations were not merely calamitous events but that such extreme hydraulic behaviour was essentially part of a broader unfurling of geomorphologic process.71 The (p.120) tedium of annual defensive activity, such as filling breaches and lengthening sections of the embankments, would therefore, in their opinion, quickly degenerate into an irresolvable Page 20 of 27

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Embankments and its Discontents exercise in futility. Consequently, protective embankments, they asserted, would end up interfering with the delta’s natural drainage and inevitably warp its hydraulic character. For the revenue administration, on the other hand, the delta’s hydraulic volatility needed to be bent to colonial rule’s most overriding imperative the systematic and timely collection of the land revenue. Recurring hydraulic variability in such a dispensation had to be contained, neutralized, managed, or, in a best case scenario, entirely prevented. The revenue administration consequently was compelled to resolve, through protective embankments, to separate the spasmodic and muddy seasonal overlap of the alluvium plain and the flooding waters into neat and distinct spheres of immobile land and nomadic river. These flood-control embankments strung across the delta, however, were as much about physically halting heavy turbid overflows as they were meant to affirm capitalist private property in land and enable administrative certainty. But these labyrinthine structures intended to sustain revenue-paying lands in opposition to the river and define inundation as calamitous event began to fatally unhinge. The strategy for flood-protection had acted to check mate itself. By the late 1850s, the administration was staring down a forked road; either stage an impossible retreat or vigorously regroup with new sets of logics and calculations. Colonial capitalism, in effect, sought to bound the delta into the commodity-form in hitherto unusual ways and in unknown realms in order to once again establish its dominance over the rivers. Notes:

(1) . T. Fortesque, secretary, Cuttack, to G. Groeme, Juggernaut, 2 April 1805, CDR, RD, vol. 16, August 1804 to 9 August 1805, P. 155, OSA. (2) . G. Groeme, collector, to Thomas Fortesque, secretary to the commissioner, 11 April 1805, CDR, RD, vol. 23 January 1805 to 10 July 1805, p. 34, OSA. (3) . G. Groeme, collector, to Thomas Fortesque, secretary to the commissioner, Cuttack, 16 February 1805, CDR, RD, vol. 23 January 1805 to 10 July 1805, pp. 14–15, OSA. (4) . Gungoareah Bundee, Bahar Bundee, Hussea Bundee, Khall Bandee, Khall Kundee, Falni Kassie, Bheera Bundee and Bheree Bundee. See ‘Embankments in Bengal: Note on their Origin, Development and Utility (1772–1850)’, p. 33, Land Revenue Records (28 March 1851), pp. 20–1 in Index to Land Revenue Records (1838–59), vol. 2, NAI (henceforth ‘Embankments in Bengal’). (5) . ‘Embankments in Bengal’, pp. 33–8. (6) . Embankment Committees Reports (Calcutta 1901), pp. 36–40, V/27/730/7, OIOC.

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Embankments and its Discontents (7) . Quoted in Captain J.C. Harris, B.E. ‘Report Upon the District of Orissa in Respect of the Inundations by the Mohanuddy River, and its Branches, and the Measures Calculated to Ensure Relief Therefrom’ in Papers on the Subject of the Cuttack Rivers containing Captain Harris’ 2nd Report (Calcutta 1860), p. 38 (henceforth Captain Harris’ 2nd Report). (8) . H.L. Harrison, collector Midnapore, to the officiating commissioner of the Burdwan Division, 3 December 1877, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government Relating to the Cossye and Seyle Floods, May 1860 to Septemberl893, vol. 1 (Calcutta 1928), p. 331 (henceforth Harrison, Cossye and Seyle Floods). (9) . Harrison, Cossye and Seyle Floods, p. 331. (10) . Embankments in Murshidabad, Selection from the Records of the Government of Bengal Relating to the Nadia Rivers, 1848 to 1926 (Calcutta 1931), p. 53. (11) . The Company administration in a bid to maximize its income and enforce its new proprietary laws initiated the sale of any estate whose owner had defaulted on the revenue installments. In both Orissa and Bengal an innumerable number of such defaulting zamindaris were sold in the first two decades of colonial rule. See B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’ in Dharma Kumar (ed.) The Cambridge Economic History of India 1757–1970, vol. 2 (Hyderabad 1984), pp. 91–8. (12) . Regulation XXXII of 1793 was the first directive on the embankments, followed by the appointment of local committees in 1801 to supervise the embankments. Regulation VI of 1806 in fact, superseded the previous two rulings. See ‘Embankments in Bengal’, pp. 131–2. (13) . Harrison, Cossye and Seyle Floods, p. 331. (14) . G. Groeme, collector, to Thomas Fortesque, secretary to the commissioner, Cuttack, 11 April 1805, CDR, vol. 23 January 1805 to 10 July 1805, p. 34, OSA. (15) . G. Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa from 1803 to 1828 (Calcutta 1873), p. 84. (16) . According to Toynbee, the zamindar’s petition was an attempt by them to appropriate the labour of their raiyats (tenants) ‘either for nothing or at very inadequate rates of payment’ in order to keep cost of repairs low while expecting a higher level of compensation from the government. See Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa, p. 84. (17) . Ibid., p. 85.

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Embankments and its Discontents (18) . B.C. Ray, Foundations of British Orissa (Cuttack 1960), p. 230. (19) . P.C. Roychowdhury, Muzaffarpur Old Records (Patna 1959), p. 335.I thank Dinesh Mishra for making this document available to me. (20) . See the note on the rules and instructions for conduct of the superintendent in Roychowdhury, Muzaffarpur old Records, pp. 337–43. (21) . Toynbee, A Sketch of the History of Orissa, p. 85. (22) . W. Trower, Collectors Office, Cuttack, to Robert Ker, commissioner, Cuttack, 27 August 1818. CDR, RD, vol. 16 December 1817 to 30 September 1818 p. 192, OSA. (23) . Incident recorded in a note sent by W. Trower, collector, to A. Stirling, secretary to the commissioner, Cuttack, 16 July 1818, CDR, RD, vol. 16 December 1817 to 30 September 1818, p. 136, OSA. (24) . R.J. Rose, assistant surveyor, 29 October 1828 in extracts from a letter from the superintendent of Public Works, Province of Cuttack, Balasore, 23 May 1828, CDR, RD, vol. 10 January 1828 to 31 December 1828, p. 262, OSA. (25) . H. Mackenzie, acting secretary, Territorial Department, quoting an extract from a letter from the Honourable Court of Directors in the Revenue Department, 16 June 1815, CDR, RD, vol. 5 January 1816 to 3 December 1816, pp. 94–5, OSA. (26) . Harrison, Cossye and Selye Floods, p. 331. (27) . H. Mackenzie, ‘Extract from a letter’, l6 June 1815, CDR, RD, vol. 5 January 1816 to 3 December 1816, pp. 94–5, OSA. (28) . Harrison, Cossye and Seyle Floods, p. 333. (29) . Note by Col. F.T. Haig, chief engineer, Irrigation Branch, 11 April 1878 in Harrison, Cossye and Selye Floods, p. 346. (30) . Harrison, Cossye and Selye Floods, p. 334. (31) . Memorandum submitted by Captain WD. Short, officiating superintendent of embankments, 17 June 1857 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, Calcutta 1860, p. 136. (32) . Captain C.B. Young, officiating chief engineer, Lower Provinces, to the secretary to the Government of Bengal, Fort William, 1 December 1857 in Papers Relative to the Rivers of Cuttack, part 1 (Calcutta 1860), p. 159.

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Embankments and its Discontents (33) . W. Trower, collector, Cuttack, to W.C. Ward, acting magistrate, 2 February 1814, CDR, RD, vol. 31 January 1810 to 22 November 1816. (34) . Lt Col. H. Goodwyn, superintending engineer, South-Eastern Provinces, to Lt J.P. Beadle, officiating secretary, Military Board, Camp Lichinpore, Right Bank Damooda, 10 February 1853 in Papers of 1853 and 1854 on the Damoodah Embankments (Calcutta 1854), pp. 11–12. (35) . Goodwyn, Papers of 1853 and 1854 on the Damoodah Embankments, pp. 37–8. (36) . Ibid., p. 37. (37) . Territorial Department, 11 August 1829, BP, RD, 2 March 1829 to 29 December 1829, p. 297, OSA. (38) . No reference to the Military Board is made in the original twelve resolutions of the Territorial Department’s letter of 11 August 1829. But subsequent correspondence on embankments refers to Regulation 1829 as appointing the Military Board to monitor and direct operations for protecting the deltas of the Bengal Presidency. See Harrison, Cossye and Seyle Floods, p. 333. Also see letter, acting commissioner, to collector of Midnapore, 19 September 1834, vol. 13 August 1834 to 9 February 1835, BP, RD, p. 36, OSA. (39) . Anon., ‘The Economics of Public Works’, CR, 33(2), June 1859, pp. 343–8. (40) . Elizabeth Whitcombe, ‘Irrigation’ in Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, c. 1757–1970, vol. 2 (Hyderabad 1984), p. 679. (41) . Captain Harris’ 2nd Report, pp. 39–40. (42) . Ibid., p. 40. (43) . Ibid. (44) . Captain W.D. Short, officiating superintendent of embankments, Lower Provinces, to the officiating chief engineer, Lower Provinces, Midnapore, 3 August 1857 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, pp. 100–1. (45) . Captain N.C. Macleod, officiating executive engineer, Cuttack Division, to Col. W. Sage, superintending engineer, South-East Provinces, Cuttack, 20 April 1850 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, p. 117. (46) . Minute of A.J. Moffat Mills, commissioner, Cuttack, 23 January 1847 in W.A. Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal (Calcutta, 1909), p. 204.

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Embankments and its Discontents (47) . Note by W.E. Baker, consulting engineer to the railways (later Sir William Baker, secretary to the Government of India, Public Works Department), 17 June 1852 in Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, p. 244. (48) . Harrison, Cossye and Seyle Floods, p. 332. (49) . Col. F.T. Haig, joint secretary to the Government of Bengal, PWD, Irrigation Branch, to secretary to the Government of Bengal, Revenue Department, 20 February 1878 in Cossye and Selye Floods, p. 345. (50) . A.A. Michel, The Indus Rivers: A Study of the Effects of Partition (New Haven 1967), pp. 47–8. (51) . C.N. Subramaniam, ‘Aspects of the History of Agriculture in the Kaveri Delta c. 850 to c. 1600’, MPhil dissertation (Jawaharlal Nehru University 1983), pp. 93–102. (52) . Captain J.P. Beadle, superintending engineer, Burdwan Circle, to officiating chief engineer, Lower Provinces, 16 April 1860 in Papers Relating to Irrigation in Bengal and the Maghassai Hills as a Sanatorium (Calcutta 1861), pp. 33–5. (53) . Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, p. 208. (54) . Captain W.D. Short, superintendent of the embankments to Captain C.B. Young, officiating chief engineer, Lower Provinces, no. 1204, 28 August 1857 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, p. 140. (55) . Ibid., pp. 141–2. (56) . Captain C.B. Young, officiating chief engineer, Lower Provinces, to the secretary to the Government of Bengal, Fort William, no. 3656, 19 September 1857 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, pp. 87–92. (57) . Captain Beadle, superintendent of embankments, to the officiating chief engineer, Lower Provinces, no. 693, 22 June 1859 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, p. 190. (58) . Between 1856 and 1860 Lt Harris submitted four reports. The first report was submitted on 5 June 1856; the second in May 1858; the third on 31 August 1859, and the last on 1 February 1860. (59) . Captain Harris, Report on the Districts of Orissa Considered with Reference to the Inundations of the Mahanuddy River, part 3, 31 August 1859, pp. 57, 91. (60) . Captain W.D. Short, no. 953, 3 August 1857, Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, p. 102.

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Embankments and its Discontents (61) . Memorandum submitted by Captain W.D. short, officiating superintendent of embankments, pointing out the causes of the evils existing in the Cuttack Province and suggesting remedies in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, p. 123. (62) . See T.W. Armstrong, executive engineer, Central Cuttack Embankment Division, to Captain W.D. short, officiating superintendent of embankments, no. 325, 24 September 1857, and Captain C.B. Young, officiating chief engineer, Lower Provinces, to the secretary to the Government of Bengal, Fort William, no. 5364, 1 December 1857 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, pp. 159, 166. (63) . Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, p. 206. (64) . Lt Harris described the Cuttack revetment as an irregular line of masonry, partaking of the character of a wall in some portion, or a simple casing in others. It was constructed of large blocks of laterite and sandstone and set in mud cement. Lime plaster was painted on its exterior and its crest varied from 17 to 36 feet above the low water line. Executive engineer, Central Cuttack Embankments Division, to the superintendent of embankments, Lower Provinces, 3 July 1858 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 2, pp. 3–5. (65) . Superintendent of embankments, to the chief engineer, Lower Provinces, Midnapore, no. 1055, 21 August 1856 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, pp. 12–13. (66) . Superintendent of embankments, no. 1055, 21 August 1856 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1, p. 11. (67) . Captain J.C. Harris, Bengal Engineers, ‘Report upon the Naraj Spur, in Course of the Construction at the Head of the Mahanuddy Delta’, 1 February 1860 in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 2, pp. 39–50. (68) . Captain J.C. Harris in Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 2, p. 52. (69) . According to SSR, vol. 1, p. 12, the ratio of the volume of water passing down the Kathjuri and Mahanadi channels was:

Kathjuri

Mahanadi

1855

8

:

10

1872

1

:

1

In effect, after the Naraj Spur was constructed an equal division of the waters between the Mahanadi and its effluent took place. A.S. Thomson, The Rivers of

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Embankments and its Discontents Orissa (Calcutta 1905), p. 2, noted that the Naraj Spur was to actually adjust the discharge in the proportion:

Kathjuri

Mahanadi 4

:

5

However in his estimate, as the Naraj crest was constructed at RL 73.50 and not RL 78, as originally planned, the discharge was not satisfactorily readjusted. Thomson refers to Rhind’s calculations of 1872:

Kathjuri

Mahanadi 6

:

5

That is, less water flowing down the Mahanadi. (70) . Satyajit Singh argues that irrigation schemes in colonial India assumed ‘strong military features emphasizing discipline, regulation and obedience’ as they were constructed by military engineers This ‘military-civil engineering’ then led to the marginalization of ‘irrigation science’, which was more egalitarian and ecologically sensitive. See Satyajit Singh, Taming the Waters: The Political Economy of Large Dams in India (Delhi 1997), pp. 35–48. (71) . A considerable number of military engineers were involved in civil administration as well. Before 1857, the Company’s military engineers were predominantly given civil administrative posts and only occasionally participated in military campaigns. See Lt Col. E.W.C. Sandes, The Military Engineer in India, vol. 2 (Chatham 1935), p. 3.

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Delta in the Commodity-form

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Delta in the Commodity-form Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords This chapter provides a discussion on the commodification of the Orissa Delta. The Orissa Delta’s fluvial fury had worsted the colonial bureaucracy and brought much grief. In the aftermath of the damages the colonial government in the Orissa Delta decided to employ Colonel Arthur Cotton. It was hoped that his formidable reputation and experiences as a hydraulic engineer would deliver the administration. The Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863 addressed the problem of recurring inundation and drought. The impetus to this project was provided by private finance capital. The canal system was in several ways a desperate effort by the colonial administration to bail itself out of the hydraulic crisis while still retaining an overall momentum for capitalist consolidation. Flood-control as profitable venture instead of mere defensive strategy, nevertheless, failed. The Orissa Canal, in a short period, accumulated huge losses and its financial troubles raised a range of questions about the feasibility of controlling complex hydraulic processes through a market imperative. Keywords:   Orissa Delta, commodity-form, Colonel Arthur Cotton, Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863, colonial administration, hydrology

By the mid-half of the nineteenth century, the Orissa Delta’s fluvial fury had worsted the colonial bureaucracy and brought much grief. A seemingly interminable series of inundations (especially in 1853–4 and 1855–6) regularly churned vast swathes of alluvial tracts into quagmires and fetid morasses. Relentlessly, leaping watery waves and capricious channel diversions had seasonally drenched, debilitated, and impoverished many cultivating rent assessees and landed tax payers. Most distressing of all, for the administration, Page 1 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form was its own rapidly wilting faith in the protective embankment system, which had, by then, resolved into an endless tedium of repairs, rising maintenance charges, disputes and the regular collapse of flood-control structures. Between 1856 and 1860, military engineer Lieutenant J.C. Harris, for example, after surveying the Mahanadi River, declaimed emphatically that embankments ‘silted up’ river channels and aggravated inundations in the long run.1 But in complete contrast to such accumulating and loud evidence, the colonial administration continued to pursue two opposite and conflicting paths: prevent inundations through embankment construction, while convinced that such protection was exacerbating the delta’s flood problem. The lack of fit between strategy and outcome was, however, not wholly unexplainable. The choice and challenge, for the colonial bureaucracy, was, in the scheme of things, a diabolical one: capitalist property had to get the delta’s rhythm to defeat itself by reorganizing the rivers not as process but as adjuncts to the ordered routines of tenure, revenue collection, and colonial rule. But hemming in deltaic river systems, as pointed out in the previous chapter, caused the latter to inevitably explode into catatonic inundation. To solve this seemingly impossible puzzle, in 1857, the colonial government in the Orissa Delta decided to employ Colonel Arthur Cotton. His formidable reputation and experiences as a hydraulic engineer, it was hoped, would finally rescue the administration (p. 127) from its twisted dilemmas by keeping the rivers silent and gentle, perhaps even forever.

Arthur Cotton and the Era of Private Irrigation Colonel Cotton submitted his Report on the Mahanuddy River in May 1858, in which he argued for a set of works for what he termed ‘controlling’ the delta’s rivers. The main thrust of his plan involved the comprehensive diversion of the rivers into a plexus of irrigation and navigation canals. Marginal embankments were to then line the canal routes and secure the adjoining land from flood spill. Though ‘regulating the waters’ of the Mahanadi River with a series of weirs was recommended earlier by other engineers, Cotton’s proposals were novel for arguing that such works could comprise part of a profitable irrigation and floodcontrol scheme.2 The entire project, he estimated, could be completed at a mere cost of Rs 13 million (Rs 130 lakhs) and would irrigate 2¼ million acres in the delta, besides adding an immense network of navigable canals. The scheme, he confidently predicted would operate at a generous profit of 30 per cent return on the investment.3 Cotton’s several inflated claims and unqualified guarantees of success in the report, however, indicated more than an exaggerated sense of optimism; rather, the heavy-handed bluff and bluster was actually directed at engaging with two intense debates then raging over the direction and nature of private capital investments in British India. At the time of the survey of the Mahanadi River, Cotton was at the height of his fame as a hydraulic engineer, having acquired a Page 2 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form formidable reputation for his irrigation works on the Kaveri, Krishna, and Godavery rivers. With the passing of the Indian empire from Company administration to Crown government in 1858, however, Cotton was pushed to the centre stage of a new phase in water works. The Crown government was keen to initiate projects for transport with money markets in London literally pulling at the leash to invest in British India.4 Cotton, ever the man for the moment, had already chalked out an elaborate plan for linking up peninsular India with navigation canals that were to simultaneously also irrigate areas around Hyderabad and Raichur. This peninsular system was to further comprise a part of a larger navigation grid that linked Karachi (in the north west) to Madras (in the south) via Kanpur, Calcutta, and Cuttack with additional lines to Poona and the west coast.5 In effect, Cotton was advocating the (p.128) harnessing of the subcontinent’s innumerable river networks for mass river transport, which, he zealously argued, would provide a far more effective mode of conveyance than the railways. Consequently, in the attempt to channel the flow of British finance to navigation projects, Cotton rendered the Mahanadi report into a polemic against the railways rather than a rigorous inquiry into the causes of deltaic flooding. This possibly accounts for the several inordinately colourful and long passages in the report that attacked the railways. Compare the apparatus of a single steam tug and 10 barges with 30 or 40 locomotives and 700 railway wagons with all their complication of machinery of the most expensive workmanship, more than 3,000 wheels, 3,000 springs, 1,500 axles all turned and fitted to the 10th part of a hair, and let it be judged which is the ‘inferior’ mode of conveyance for the great traffic of this country; and especially in a country which has every natural facility for water lines, and as great natural objections to the railways….6 On a second front, Cotton was seeking to compel the government to lend its support in the form of guarantees to private capital investors in irrigation and navigation schemes in India.7 The question of private financial speculation in irrigation works had, in fact, already cleaved a huge division within the ranks of the entire British government. While the then Governor General Lord Canning, along with most of his administration, argued in favour of carrying out irrigation works solely as government ventures, the Secretary of State at London, Lord Stanley was in favour of allowing private investments for such works. The sudden disruption of cotton supplies to Britain following the American Civil War (1861–5), however, caused an abrupt reversal in the situation by tilting the scales decisively in favour of the proponents of private capital. The powerful Manchester Cotton Supply Association (MCSA) now looked towards India to make up the shortfall and vigorously argued that the ‘surplus capital and free enterprise of England’ had to be allowed to develop public works in order to increase cotton production in India.8 Several powerful lobbies headed by the MCSA in time successfully pressured the government to relent, and in June 1863, the Madras Irrigation and Canal Company (MICC, which had been formed Page 3 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form in 1857) was granted a 5 per cent guarantee on its capital of £1 million and thereby received a fillip to pursue works with official patronage in the South Asian subcontinent.9 Arthur Cotton was by then already a project consultant to the MICC (p.129) and his previous pronouncements on the Mahanadi, therefore, also found quick acceptance in the new context.10 In sum, speculators of private capital initiated the impetus for the construction of the Orissa canal system as part of a bid to create for themselves new avenues for investment and profit.11 The conventional view, therefore, that the Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863 was an effort arising solely from and directed chiefly towards addressing the problem of recurring inundation and drought ignores the role of private finance capital in making the project possible.12 But what is of central concern in this chapter is to explore the nature of failure that dogged private irrigation works in Orissa. Why did the attempt to bound the delta’s hydrology into the commodity-form prove impossible even to the indefatigable energies of the formidable Arthur Cotton?

The Early Dissenters Even before the MICC acquired government support, the directors, bolstered by the conviction that huge profits awaited them, decided to undertake the project as an unguaranteed company. Subsequently, an offshoot of the MICC—the East India (Orissa) Irrigation and Canal Company (EICC)—was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1861 and a contract dated 16 June 1862 was drawn with the secretary of state. According to the agreement, the government would make all land for the works available free of charge and supervise the EICC, while the latter would finance the construction of the scheme. Second, the EICC would sell irrigation water exclusively to the government, who would, in return, collect the water charge/cess. After deducting administrative expenses, the government would then repatriate the profits to the Irrigation Company. On 4 February 1863, the Government of India delegated the ‘detailed control of the operations of the Company within the contract’ to the lieutenant governor of the Bengal Presidency. The capital of the EICC was fixed at £2,000,000 and Colonel F.H. Rundall was deputed by the government to serve as chief engineer of the project.13 In contrast to the optimism exuded by the shareholders and directors of the EICC, as early as 1860, several government engineers and administrators had already expressed considerable doubts about the financial viability of the works. The then commissioner of Chittagong, after a study of the proposals, concluded that the prospectus of the Company (p.130) was ‘overdrawn both as to the destructive effects of the inundations and droughts and as to the probable returns’.14 Colonel Baird Smith, author of a voluminous treatise on irrigation works in Italy and inspector general of irrigation, observed that up to a fifth of the proposed capital would have to be expended on purely protective works (embankments), which would bring no returns. Lieutenant Colonel H. Yule, then Page 4 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form secretary to the Government of India PWD, in a letter dated 3 October 1861, made it plain to the secretary of the EICC that the demand for irrigation in the Mahanadi Delta was substantially overstated in the project. These doubts carried well into 1864, when military engineer Captain Beadle calculated that far greater expenses were involved than stated by the Company as even greater amounts of land would be required for the construction of embankments and sluices.15 While the EICC’s persistence with the scheme, despite the criticism, can be ascribed to their faith in Cotton’s estimates, the government’s decision to endorse the project issued from an altogether different vantage. In a minute dated 25 January 1861, the lieutenant governor of Bengal, Sir Peter Grant argued that the question of profits was irrelevant to the government as the works were ultimately ‘beneficial’ to the delta. Probably, Grant’s statement was intended to convey the government’s eagerness to foist upon the Orissa scheme the primary role of flood-protection. Thus, while private finance sought profits from irrigation and navigation rates, the colonial administration was tugging the other way by priming the scheme as essentially an embankment project, albeit on a grander scale.16

Elusive Profits In August 1862, the design for the Orissa Scheme, very similar to the one outlined by Arthur Cotton, was completed by an assembly of engineers under the overall direction of Colonel Rundall.17 The actual work on the canals commenced in November 1863 and water was made available by the end of 1865. The scheme as realized, after a fairly staggered construction schedule, consisted of seven weirs with an aggregate length of 3½ miles. The main canal system consisted of the Taldana and Machgaon branches for the irrigation of the lands between the Mahanadi and Kathuri rivers, the Kendrapara and the Patamundai lines for the irrigation of the lands between the Chitratola and the Birupa, and the three ranges of the high (p.131) level canal for the irrigation of the strip of land lying at the foot of the hills from Cuttack to Bhadrak (Balasore District) (see Map 3).18 On 20 April 1866, the first irrigation lease was signed for an area of 3½ acres. At the end of February 1867, the area irrigated amounted to approximately 6,675 acres, at a time when water sufficient for 60,000 acres was ostensibly, in the Company’s estimate, ready for use. In effect, at the height of the great Orissa famine of 1866–7, which had overwhelmed 3 million inhabitants in the coastal districts, the canal system was barely functioning.19 By October 1867, the Company was prepared to supply water to 153,000 acres, whereas the area actually under irrigation amounted to a mere 9,836 acres.20 In that year, the gross revenue from the commencement of the project amounted to a mere Rs 4,339–9–3–a far cry from the 30 per cent rate of return that had been grandly advertised by Cotton.21 In 1866, the EICC in a desperate bid to shake off its Page 5 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form losses, mortgaged the works to the government for a loan of £320,000. However, by November 1868, despite the unwillingness on the part of some of the shareholders, a deed of surrender was finally signed which made over to the government the entire works. The EICC received approximately £990,050 to which a 5 per cent interest was added. The entire debt of £152,000 was also cancelled and a sum of £50,000 was made over to the Company’s shareholders.22 With the exit of the EICC, the troubled and tenuous relationship between the initiators of private capital for irrigation works in India appeared to have been brought to an abrupt and unceremonious end. Upon the government assuming ownership, a fresh review of the scheme followed. The new appraisals countered much of the optimism that the private investors had been earlier steeped in. Not only had the directors of the EICC grossly inflated the area they were capable of irrigating, but they had also, it seemed, greatly undervalued the costs of the works. In one of the reviews, Haig calculated that even if irrigation was fully developed and utilized on 840,000 acres of land and a rate of Rs 3–5 willingly paid by the cultivators for the monsoon rice crop, the scheme would barely recover the interest on the capital sunk into it. The question, however, arises whether the paying rate of Rs 3–5 is ever likely to be realized in Orissa…but if not, then not only will a debt of £2,250,000 have been contracted 25 years hence, but the scheme will not even be paying its way and further debt will be accumulating.23 (p.132) Despite the ominous tenor of Haig’s note and other similar reviews, the government was determined to turn the scheme around.24 Underlying most of these subsequent endeavours, however, was the intractable issue of reconciling the drive for profit with the nature of deltaic flooding. In other words, the administration was confronted with the many challenges of attempting to bound the delta’s hydrology into a commodity-form, to be then regulated through a market imperative.

Water Rate as Solution In the initial euphoria, the EICC assumed that cultivators would be quick to adopt canal irrigation and would attach great value to the water. In June 1866, the lieutenant governor of Bengal Presidency confidently approved the rates, which were calculated differently for cultivators irrigating by volume and for those drawing water by area.25 The demand for canal irrigation, however, remained negligible and the trend persisted even in the drought year of 1870–1. In that year, despite the threatened loss of their crop, the cultivators seemed to have still held back even when the water rate (henceforth WR) was brought down to Rs 2–8–0 per acre. Finally, when the WR was reduced to Re 1 per acre the demand leapt to almost 100,000 acres, though a considerable part of the crop was already damaged by the delay.26 The WR, therefore, came in for Page 6 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form immediate scrutiny and review. In a minute of 12 December 1871, the lieutenant governor enumerated three bottlenecks that he perceived were dogging the profitable functioning of the canal system—irrigation leases were contracted for undefined areas, which made it difficult for the canal bureaucracy to distinguish between the leased and the unleased fields; though the leases were usually granted to the zamindar, the actual collections had to be made by the revenue officials from the innumerable tenant cultivators and thereby caused the administration to incur additional costs in recovery time and effort; the WR that was imposed on the users was clearly high and often given to fluctuations and therefore discouraging potential irrigators from applying for the canal waters.27 While on the surface, the lieutenant governor’s observations appeared to suggest that logistical and organizational problems plagued the canal system, the underlying emphasis was most significantly directed at indicating that irrigation water and its delivery had not been sufficiently bounded as property. That is, there was need for the administration to more rigorously establish canal water as a distinct and exclusive form of (p.133) hydraulic property, clearly priced and accessible to the cultivator only as a commodity that could chiefly respond to a market imperative. Given the unique nature of the challenge, the first step to try and solve it was taken soon after, when under the aegis of Commissioner Ravenshaw a whole new set of rules for canal irrigation was issued, following a conference at Cuttack in 1872. The WR was fixed for a five-year period and pitched at Re 1 per acre for flow irrigation if leased before 31 May and Rs 1–8 per acre after that date (irrigation by volume was abandoned). Supply was to be made only to clearly demarcated plots upon a written application and the canal bureaucracy was encouraged to deal directly with the cultivators, instead of signing leases with the zamindars.28 The new rules though enabling government to operate with a relatively more legible notion of property, however, proved inadequate for the larger task of bounding irrigation in the delta into the commodity-form. For this aspect of commodification, upon which the financial success of the canal hinged, the colonial administration decided to enact a series of ordinances, which in actual operation seemed to echo a version of enclosures in eighteenth-century England —the bloody process in which the independent producer was forcibly divorced from his tools and conditions of production.29 After passing the comprehensive Bengal Irrigation Act III (BC) of 1876, a special clause (section 79), was inserted into the Bill for the Orissa Scheme. Through section 79 ‘joint responsibility’, for the first time, was enforced to ostensibly combat ‘surreptitious’ or illegal irrigation from occurring. In effect, the canal administration could penalize, on their failure to identify the culprit, all the cultivators who had drawn water from a channel from which illegal irrigation had allegedly taken place.30 Henceforth any cultivator could be directly or indirectly guilty of irrigating his fields surreptitiously and be fined a double Page 7 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form charge for the ‘illicit’ use of canal water. In the event of the fine not being paid, punishment could even lead to the distraint/seizure of the cultivator’s property. The ordinance on illicit irrigation soon became an instrument of terror in the canal tracts. Patrols were frequently on the prowl and the latter, unless dissuaded by bribes, heavily fined cultivators when charged for illicit irrigation. In 1883–4 over 28,200 acres were declared to be illicitly irrigated, of which, on inquiry, approximately 1,500 acres were absolved of the fine. In all, a total of 7,870 cases were filed in that year alone.31 The procedure (p.134) of litigation, needless to also add, was a long-drawn and tiresome process and placed inordinate burdens on the accused. A cultivator against whom a certificate had been issued (a case registered) was permitted a fifteen-day period for appeal to a divisional or subdivisional canal officer, either directly or by representation through a local zilladar (water-cess collector). The subdivisional officer after examining the evidence in a manner he deemed fit then passed orders in all cases in English—a language choice that, not unexpectedly, made the judgement both inaccessible and incomprehensible to many of the Oriya tenantry. Even, in the event that the cultivator somehow overcame the language hurdle, the subsequent legal procedure for appeal involved an equally strenuous set of obstacles that could tardily terminate only at the highest executive and administrative office in the district, that of the collector.32 The clearance of certificate cases, therefore, took a great deal of time, even up to fifteen months in some instances. It was, in fact, not unusual for the ‘evidence’ against the cultivator’s use of illicit canal irrigation having all but evaporated over a period of several cropping seasons. Such certificate cases soon proved to be counter-productive to all sides that got entangled in its procedures. The administrative machinery, for example, got bogged down in a mire of contesting claims and counter appeals. Out of a total demand of Rs 42,382–13–2 in fines for the year 1883–84, barely Rs 302–15–5 (i.e., less than 1 per cent) could be settled in over a year of cumbersome litigation. To compound matters, no consistent or precise legal definition of the term ‘illicit’ irrigation was conveyed to the cultivators. Water could, for example, just as easily flow from leased to unleased land much against the wish of the latter’s owner. The patrols, therefore, employed a rough rule of thumb approach that in practice often became simply arbitrary. One such instance took place at Laptna and Ramkistopore villages in 1878, where a canal embankment or bund had been pierced and some water had drained into the pat (marsh or depression) fields. After several rounds of accusations and arguments had exhausted the canal officers and the cultivators: …a superior officer of the department went, tasted the water in the fields, declared that it had all come from the canals and then gave the people the

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Delta in the Commodity-form option to either pay at the surreptitious rates for all the lands or to take out leases for 5 years for the higher lands.33 (p.135) Despite serving to fuel both litigation and violence in the canal tracts, the egregious success of section 79 lay in the fact that it could force the non leaseholders to pay revenue to the canal as well, The mounting arbitrariness and oppression of the certificate cases, in time, became one of the most substantial grievances that the cultivators repeatedly represented to the Canal Commission of 1884: Complaints have in several cases, been made of unnecessary annoyance, caused by the filing of certificates for the recovery of very small sums and in some cases, of demands not actually due, or, not due from the persons against whom certificates were filed. The hardship being occasionally aggravated it is alleged by the distraint [seizure] of property without previous notice.34 While the notion of illicit irrigation was thus a useful device for generating additional revenues for the scheme, it was still not able to completely wipe out competition from other types of irrigation possibilities. Besides the fact that the delta’s high precipitation rate itself rained in a considerable amount of water onto the cultivators’ fields, there also existed several other types of traditional irrigation structures. The cultivators, therefore, could still resort to utilizing these other irrigation sources instead of being forced to accept the relatively financially exorbitant canal water. In effect, in the view of the canal bureaucracy, the inability to turn canal irrigation into an exclusive monopoly in the delta further undermined the Scheme’s financial viability. Consequently, as another measure, the colonial administration was encouraged to empower itself through Act III of 1876 with the right to regulate the delta’s drainage. In terms of its actual operation on the ground, this translated into the systematic destruction of the practice of bund irrigation—small embankments constructed by cultivators to trap water from drainage lines. Through the Irrigation Act of 1876, the canal administration often declared these bunds as obstructions to the delta’s drainage and steadily secured their removal. A letter from Baboo Juggo Mohan Lall, a zamindar in the district of Cuttack, to the Canal Commission poignantly sums up the cultivators or raiyats plight: Three or four hundred bunds have been removed or cut by the Department of Public Works under Act XXXII of 1855 and Irrigation Act III of 1876 on the ground that it obstructed the natural drainage of the country…. All these bunds had gaps which remained open when the rainfall was abundant, and were closed when the rainfall was scanty. By these bunds the ryots had control over rain-water, which they would keep into or let off their fields as the necessity arose. So they (p.136) were very useful for

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Delta in the Commodity-form agricultural purposes, and also yielded fishery revenue, and did not obstruct the drainage as they had gaps in them….35 On the other hand, to counteract the possibility of the cultivators irrigating their crops with rainfall, the canal administration often forcibly opened drainage channels on their fields and emptied the water into the canal. Closure of these drainage cuts was not permitted and cultivators were instead forcibly ‘compelled’ in several instances to apply instead for five- or three-year leases for canal water. Along the same line of attack, jhils (ponds) and tanks were also destroyed by drainage cuts, as is evident from a petition from raiyats of several villages in Cuttack District: The rain water of our lands are taken away by the drains dug through our field. Drains have also been dug by the side of ponds and streams, to take their waters away. These drains have been dug by government with the intention of obliging us to take water from the canals….36 The canal bureaucracy even resorted to aligning the canal’s distributaries with the sole objective, in several instances, to obstruct ‘the rush of the water from the rivers and waterfalls’, which cultivators previously utilized for irrigation purposes.37 Clearly, the colonial administration sought to increase the spread of canal irrigation in the Orissa Delta by forcibly foisting it upon a large number of cultivators, thus giving credence to the observation of Baboo Gauree Shanker Roy (secretary of the Orissa Association) that the sustained attacks on the noncanal irrigation sources were intended as design rather than occurring from inadvertence: When in 1882 the drainage cut over-drained the fields the ryots petitioned to the Collector to be allowed to make cross-bunds in the drainage cuts to save their crops but their prayer was rejected and the crops suffered. In 1883 the ryots petitioned for storing only rain water in the drainage cut. Mr Roberts [collector?] rejected the petition but ordered verbally that if the ryots would again take leases for five years he would put cross-bunds across the drainage cut.38 These efforts of the colonial administration through acts and ordinances were without doubt largely employed to forcibly create a demand for canal water. That is, the colonial administration’s campaign to destroy non-canal sources of irrigation was intended to resonate with the deeper drive to divorce the cultivators in the delta from ownership and access to their means and conditions of production (irrigation water), in (p.137) order to then confront them with canal irrigation as a commodity. By the early half of the 1880s, the immense violence and attrition that followed the commodification process provoked cultivator grievance and led to disturbances in the canal tracts. The Canal Commission, instituted in November 1884 to investigate the causes for the Page 10 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form widespread disaffection, in fact, took note of two major protests against the Orissa Canal. The first, in 1881, occurred when raiyats of 61 mouzas (villages) in Pargana Sasungara resigned their leases and made petitions to the collector against the canals.39 The second, of a more determined nature, took place in April 1884: The [raiyats] met in large bodies at different places resolved never again to apply for water under any circumstances…the cultivators have struck to the determination not-withstanding the occurrence of a drought during the past summer.40 Though the members of the Canal Commission ably documented and recorded the depth and intensity of the suffering of the cultivators in the canal tracts, their intervention did not slow down or offset the pace at which the colonial administration continued to pursue aggressive strategies for turning around the finances of the Orissa canals. In fact, during the canal disturbances itself, the colonial administrators began to debate the possibility of enforcing an altogether fresh charge termed the owner’s rate, which they hoped would enable them to finally recover revenue for the canals.

Was the Surplus Untaxed? At the outset itself, the WR for canal irrigation in colonial India was intimately tied to the land revenue demand. According to the dominant reasoning within the ranks of the colonial officialdom, irrigation inevitably caused a ‘general improvement’ in crop production and therefore higher rents could be imposed in the watered tracts. Consequently, canal water, it was argued, need not be priced as a direct charge but could instead be realized indirectly by first increasing the productivity of the land and then recovering the costs through a higher or extra tax on the land.41 The owner’s rate (henceforth OR) was first implemented in the irrigated tracts of the north-western doabs (flood plains) following the adoption of the 1873 North India Canal and Drainage Act. The OR was imposed on the proprietors of all estates in which canal water had been introduced after (p. 138) the land settlement had been concluded earlier and it was usually pitched at a third of the WR.42 In the Orissa Delta, the WR had been virtually frozen at Rs 1–8 per acre for flow and Re 1 per acre for lift irrigation (on five-year leases). The land revenue demand, on the other hand, had been fixed for thirty years by the land settlement of 1867.43 In 1883, the secretary of state in London set the ball rolling by calling for information regarding the imposition of an OR in the tracts that were ostensibly ‘benefiting’ from the Orissa canals. The request immediately sparked a fresh interest in the continued dismal financial performance of the Orissa Canal Scheme.44

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Delta in the Commodity-form The central government now asserted that it was convinced that the Orissa canals had offered considerable protection and irrigation to the deltaic tracts and possibly had substantially enhanced the value of the land even though these benefits were not being reflected in the revenue collections nor in any tangible manner amongst the cultivators. The central government then went on to conclude with great assurance that the profits were ‘undoubtedly being reaped by the zamindars’. Interestingly enough, in a subsequent letter of 13 August 1883, the central government chose to emphasize to the Bengal provincial administration that the need to implement an OR in the delta was in actual fact brought on by the sad state of the scheme’s finances. They also indicated as an added point that the previous land revenue settlement would expire only in 1897 and therefore the rents could not be raised in the interim period. Given these constraints, the government seemed convinced that only an extra imposition in the form of an OR could help it recover its huge investments sunk on the project. The letter, nevertheless, also sounded a note of caution that the zamindars could retaliate either by discouraging their raiyats from taking canal water or by passing on the extra burden of the tax onto the latter. Much of the central government’s reasoning was based on an earlier statement by the commissioner of Orissa that canal irrigation had caused an increase in the rents of no less than Rs 2–8 per acre in the delta.45 The commissioner was, therefore, ordered to conduct a fresh enquiry, which was subsequently submitted as a report to the Board of Revenue, dated the 21 June 1884. In a surprising turn, the commissioner now opined that there was no evidence which could confirm that cultivators in the irrigated tracts paid higher rents to landowners than those in the unirrigated lands, nor could it be proved that rent increases in some (p.139) lands were influenced by canals. The commissioner further declared that in his examination of a number of rentals, it appeared that in the irrigated villages the rate of increase in the ten-year rentals had ranged from 5.8 per cent to 17.8 per cent, whilst in the unirrigated villages they ranged from 12.9 per cent to 17.8 per cent. This was a startling revelation to the government, as it implied that the rate of increase in the rents was either marginal or lower in areas ostensibly benefiting from irrigation than in those supposedly suffering from a lack of it.46 These conclusions prompted the government to impress upon the then recently assembled Canal Commission of 1884 to investigate the matter as well. The Canal Commission, however, merely added to the government’s discomfiture by reiterating that the exact impact of the canals on the rents was a difficult and probably an inconclusive exercise.47 Remaining unconvinced, the central government pushed for further inquiries in 1887 and 1888. The data obtained, however, was so confusing that it led the director of land records to exclaim in disgust that it was ‘hopeless to obtain correct returns by the agency of the patwaris (clerks) and kanungos (accountants)’.48 In January 1897, at a conference in Cuttack, the OR was once again comprehensively discussed and instructions for another study was Page 12 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form reissued. This time, seven revenue officers under the overall charge of the Assistant Settlement Officer J.E. Webster were deputed to collect information within a year from across 320 irrigated villages and several unirrigated villages.49 Webster’s report, however, once again agreed with the findings of the previous surveys and many of his observations are strikingly instructive: So many causes tend to produce differences in rent rates, that it is impossible to eliminate all but the one factor, and say that a definite increase of rent is due to the extension of irrigation to a tract. Irrigation and protection mean, however the exclusion of silt from the land; and, with the silt, the raiyats lose their facilities for growing valuable crops, such as tobacco, cotton, etc., which are more rarely seen in any protected tract…. That facilities for irrigation tend to promote the extension of cultivation is, I have no doubt, generally true, but there are many cases in which low lands have become waterlogged, and where sandy lands, dependent on silt for their cultivation have become worthless.50 Though Webster stated in the latter half of his report that the canal, despite numerous problems, was an insurance against flood and drought, (p.140) it was an assertion ‘bereft of hard evidence’. Following Webster’s report, the government made another attempt to arrive at an OR by authorizing a revenue official, Babu Jamini Mohan Das, to conduct a microstudy of the rents in the pargana of Derabisi (Puri District). Mohan Das’s detailed investigation into the matter was concluded on the note, in tune with the earlier inquiries, that no evident surplus was ascertainable.51 Finally in 1900, the director of the Department of Land Records and Agriculture ended the investigations with a categorical declaration that ‘no conclusive evidence was available to warrant the imposition of an Owner’s Rate’.52 Clearly, the colonial administration’s protracted and exasperating search for a taxable surplus in the Orissa Delta raises several questions outside the immediate realm of the scheme’s finances. If anything, the slew of investigations revealed that canal irrigation was neither overwhelmingly profitable in all instances nor necessarily instrumental for raising crop productivity. The debate and discussion over the imposition of an OR in the delta, in fact, endorses many claims by the cultivators that their lands were actually experiencing a decline in yields. Such complaints are palpably evident in a large number of petitions submitted to the Balasore National Society and the Canal Commission of 1884. Many cultivators repeatedly claimed that their lands suffered a steep loss in fertility, caused by the canal’s physical obstruction to low intensity inundation, which deprived the soil of the river’s nourishing silt. A petition from several

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Delta in the Commodity-form villages in the pargana of Sungda, Mathanagar, and Asureswar (Cuttack District) points to this: Since the excavation of the canal there has been no good out-turn of the crop in our fields. Owing to the embankments no silt is deposited in our fields, caused by the overflow of rivers, therefore the out-turn has fallen off. Still we are paying the land revenue, the Road and Public work cess, the zemindaree dak-cess, bribe and other cesses for which we have become poor and involved in debt.53 Another petition from the raiyats of Nalia Killah Darpan echoed a similar claim that their crop output actually declined after their traditional irrigation sources were interrupted by the canal. …the land in question is fertilized by the water from the seven ponds, spring water from the majhar [spring], and the muddy water coming from the hills, jungles and village. The produce was three bharans forty gownies per man per annum. For the presence of the canal the water from the above sources have been (p.141) stopped, so the produce has been reduced to 40 gownies, 60 gownies or 1 bharan per man per annum.54 Though accurate estimates of the gross average decline in yields or net reduction in total output are unavailable and make for hazardous speculation, these petitions, especially in the backdrop of the colonial administration’s ordeal over the OR, can nonetheless be broadly surmised as being indicative of trends that may have been fairly widespread in the irrigated tracts. Even if one were to uncharitably assume that the raiyats had stakes in understating the benefits from canal irrigation and were therefore prone to undue exaggeration about its negative impacts, there is still need to account for a fairly wide and consistent reportage by cultivators across the delta that their yields tended to decline. This loss in output, moreover, was repeatedly attributed by the cultivators to the introduction of the Orissa canals which, as pointed out earlier, were extended alongside the destruction of other irrigation sources such as springs, tanks, bunds, drainage channels, etc.55 Allegedly, besides depleting the fertility of the land by preventing silt deposition, the canal water also waterlogged the lowlying lands (the pats). On the other hand, since higher lands could not be watered by the canal for technical reasons, the canal could irrigate only a slice of intermediate lands. Thus villages with an extensive amount of highlands or lowlands had simply no use for canal water. They were nevertheless charged an irrigation cess as is evident in a petition from pargana Khandi and Jhunkar (Cuttack District). On an average five-eights part of the lands in those mouzas are low. Since the excavation of the canal its water accumulates there and injures the crop. Formerly the crops in these lands were prosperous consequently on it Page 14 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form we depended much. The canal water cannot reach the high land, therefore they are not well cultivated though we derive no benefit from the canal water we are compelled to pay the irrigation cess, the Road and PWD cess, bribes to several officers and rent to the Zamindars The out-turn of these lands have fallen short by one-fourth.56 Besides consistently complaining about a decline in soil fertility and a fall in yields, the cultivators also maintained that they were steadily impoverished by several other charges in the canal tracts. The raiyats of mouza Boichua, pargana Matkutnuggur, for example, gave the following account of the impact of the canal on their incomes. They had been using canal water for twelve to thirteen years, initially for the rabi (winter sown) (p.142) crop but then for the kharif (summer sown) rice crop as well, and had contracted a five-year lease. While we paid Rs 33 for canal water in addition to rent Rs 37–10 we reaped no more paddy than we did before the canal. We gave fair trial to the canal water and found that it failed to increase the produce of the land and on the contrary some 20 acres of land in our mouzahs have much deteriorated in consequence of drainage cut and the produce of the land is now half of what it was before.57(see Table 4.1).

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Delta in the Commodity-form

Table 4.1 Rent and Water Rate in Pargana Matkutnuggur Name of the raiyat

Area leased (in mans*) Rent (Rs)

Kharif water rate (Rs)

Rabi water rate (Rs)

Total canal charges (Rs)

Krapa Ghondani

11

22.0.0

16.8.0

3.0.0

19.8.0

Bhogi Padan

4

11.4.0

6.0.0

3.0.0

9.0.0

Rama Jana

2

4.6.0

3.0.0

1.8.0

4.8.0

Total

17

37.10.0

25.8.0

7.8.0

33.0.0

Source: Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into Certain Matters in Connection with the Orissa Canals, Calcutta, 1885, Appendix B, Petition 25, p. 32. Note: (*) A man varied between 248 to 1.39 acre in different parts of coastal Orissa.

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Delta in the Commodity-form Clearly, the colonial administration’s inability in the Orissa canal tracts to implement a remunerative WR and their repeated failure to arrive at an OR resulted from a far broader crisis that is revealed in certain persisting patterns. To begin with, both cultivators and the zamindars consistently reported a loss in soil fertility and a net decline in crop yields in the irrigated tracts. Second, the innumerable investigations over the land rents and revenue demand in the delta could not substantively confirm any increase in productivity nor profitability in crop production, which could be ascribed exclusively to the influence of the canal. Colonial officials, moreover, repeatedly noted that the canals could effectively irrigate only the higher lands, while the lower fields were often waterlogged by leakages from the distributaries.58 That is, the canals could not be adapted to the delta’s ecological complexities nor the cultivator’s cropping strategies. Rather, in several ways, canal irrigation unsettled a number of (p. 143) agricultural practices and inundation rhythms.59 Added to which was the equally intractable issue of protection by the embankments.

Embankment Rate and the Aul Dispute The directors of the EICC had realized early on that the entire length of the canals had to be protected from annual inundations. In 1873, Haig had calculated that up to a third of the project’s cost would actually result directly from the construction of flood embankments.60 In other words, the financial viability of the Orissa Scheme greatly hinged on its ability to turn floodprotection into a paying proposition. The first attempt at determining an Embankment Rate (henceforth ER) was made by the Inundation Committee of 1866, which had been appointed to investigate the impact of the floods of that year in the delta. The committee arrived at an ER of 8 annas per acre, which they suggested could be imposed on all areas ‘protected’ in the delta.61 Despite stirring some interest in the possibility of realizing a cess for protection, the Inundation Committee’s ER, did not receive any active consideration from the government. The debate over the ER in the Orissa Delta, however, was soon to get caught up in a festering dispute between the colonial administration and the raja of Aul. The contentious issue was regarding a 9½ mile length of embankment that lay in the raja’s estate. In 1886, the raja was served notice that he was Rs 24,482 in arrears with the government, for repairs that the administration had periodically carried out on the Aul embankments since 1867. The notification immediately precipitated an intensely bitter and acrimonious legal battle, with the raja asserting that once the embankments had been taken over by government they had also gratuitously taken upon themselves the burden of all the subsequent costs for repair and maintenance. There was, the raja declared, no clause in the then existing provision (Act XXXII of 1855), that could now force him to pay.62

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Delta in the Commodity-form Earlier in 1880, the commissioner of the Orissa division had argued for a complete revision of the rules dealing with the embankments in the delta by seeking to adopt some of the provisions stated in Act VI (BC) 1873, then prevailing in other parts of the Bengal Presidency.63 By this act, persons benefiting from the embankments were held entirely responsible for bearing the financial burdens for such protection.64 That is, the colonial administration in the Orissa Delta was already exploring the option of changing laws in a manner that would enable them to effect a (p.144) clean transfer of the costs and expenses of the embankment system directly onto the zamindars and the innumerable tenure holders. The realities on the ground, however, threw up another round of perplexing complications against this initiative as well. Those protected by the embankments had necessarily to register tangible and financially ascertainable ‘benefits’ in order for the administration to determine a corresponding charge or ER. Ascertaining the exact quantum of benefits generated by the efficiency of the embankments had meanwhile already become a source of much confusion and consternation amongst engineers and administrators. Haig’s earlier approximation of an ER had, in fact, by the time of the Aul dispute already become an accounting riddle of sorts.65 After reviewing the finances of the Orissa Scheme, Haig had arrived at an ER of 11 annas 4 pie, which, by his own admission, was actually the minimum cess that was needed to prevent the Orissa Canal Scheme from going bankrupt and did not represent per se a measurement of benefits. The ER of 11 annas 4 pie, however, was embarrassingly close to the Inundation Committee’s earlier estimate of 12 annas 4 pie, which the latter had computed as the average loss of property from inundation Cover 36 years per head per annum) in the Orissa Delta.66 In juxtaposing the two calculations, ironically enough, it appeared that the ER towards protection and the financial costs suffered per acre by the cultivators from the annual inundation would be practically the same amount. In effect, the cultivators would pay as much for their protection as they would incur in the form of losses from flood damage.67 Haig’s other observation in the same review revealed an even more confusing and perplexing dilemma: It is to be considered also that the inundations are not wholly destructive. There can be no question that they do, by the fertilizing silt which they leave behind, renew the productive powers of the soil from time to time. The crop which followed the great inundation of July last was about the finest on record.68 Thus the possibility of a differential impact on crop output by deltaic inundation repeatedly confronted the colonial administration with an accounting conundrum and at times even brought into question the very objective and need for protection through embankment construction. Central to the problem was the administration’s inability to estimate through bureaucratic procedure the

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Delta in the Commodity-form nature of the so-called benefit that protection was supposedly rendering. H.J.S. Cotton, Secretary to the (p.145) Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, reflecting on the paradox of deltaic inundation, wrote with much exasperation:

…if only the increase of efficiency in the protection given could be measured, and if it were admitted by all concerned….Experience, however, shows that nothing is more difficult than to arrive at an opinion which shall command general assent as to the degree of benefit conferred by a systems of embankments… not only that the zamindars whom it might be proposed to hold liable would refuse to admit the degree of benefit estimated by the officers of government, but that their objections, whether really sound or not, would to some

Map 3 . Canals and Embankments in Deltaic Orissa

extent be bonafide, and that the very undesirable impression would be created that the government was making them pay for what it had undertaken [embankment construction]… 69

On a second front, the raja drove another point by claiming that he was, in the first place, under no legal obligation whatsoever to provide protection through embankments to his tenants. In his opinion, the existing clause in the words ‘bound to keep up’ in Section 5, Act XXXII of 1855, did not require him to maintain a legally-enforceable contract on protective embankments either with the government or with his tenants. And lastly, in the event of any damages caused by the inefficiency of any of the protective works, the raja now maintained that since he was not bound to maintain the embankments he could not be sued either for the same.70 If the raja’s confident legal interpretations could prevail, the colonial administration realized that they would quickly be forced to abandon any legal framework for preserving an ER in the delta and therefore had to pursue a vigorous line of attack. On the administration’s behalf, the Remembrancer of Legal Affairs countered by arguing that an obligation on Page 19 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form the raja could also arise from ‘ancient custom’ or even a ‘tacit understanding’ and did not require a distinct legal contract. To lend substance, the Remembrancer on his ruling also called for an inquiry into the past history of the embankment system in the delta to determine the obligations that rested on the raja of Aul.71 A subdivisional officer was subsequently impressed to follow the line of the Aul embankment and to meticulously recover relevant information on the issue from villages within the protected area. The officer examined seventy-three witnesses and collected evidence that supposedly supported the claim that the Aul embankment was maintained by the raja, who also granted remissions (rent waivers) whenever the crops failed.72 This (p.146) struck the officer as conclusive proof that a moral obligation or tacit understanding existed between the raja and his subjects. However, in the broader arena of embankment policy for the entire delta, instituting a civil suit on the basis of a presumed moral obligation could open a pandora’s box of litigation. For one, the government would at the outset have to onerously establish and map the specific relationships that existed between hundred of miles of embankments and the zamindars and raiyats who were protected by them. The enormity of the task and the inherent legal pitfalls in such an endeavour had earlier already been emphasized in a report submitted in 1871 by Deputy Collector W.C. Taylor. In 1867, Taylor, upon instruction from the government, had initiated an investigation of the embankment system in the Orissa Division. He carried out a detailed examination of the existing settlement papers, conducted local inquiries, and carefully sought to plot and identify all the embankments in the delta. After the survey, he strongly indicated that clarifying the liabilities of the zamindar and the government towards embankment maintenance and repair was going to be cumbersome, if not, an impossible task altogether: …no records appear to have been kept up either by the Public Works Department, the Collectors, or the zemindars and it has generally been found impossible to trace when or by whom any embankment was first made, or to lay down distinctly whether Government is, or is not, bound to keep up any particular embankment or line of embankments….In Balasore, and in fact in all the districts of Orissa, some embankments appear to date from the times of the Mahammadan and Mahratta Governments; before the Settlement; others again made by the Government since the Settlement. Some made by zemindars have been so altered and repaired, retired, advanced or extended, abandoned and taken up, that it is now impossible to trace the history of any particular bund.73

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Delta in the Commodity-form Consequently enforcing any ‘moral obligation’ in the circumstances described by Taylor would have consumed the administrative energies of the government and inevitably involved it in the attrition of countless court battles. Not surprisingly, therefore, the colonial administration preferred to retreat with the Remembrancer of Legal Affairs now having to somewhat hastily reconsider his earlier judgement: It simply appears that, as a matter of fact, the zemindar used to maintain the embankment and that, should it not be maintained, the ryots would cease to till the land and pay rent.74 (p.147) The government’s claims on the raja of Aul were finally dismissed by P. Nolan, the secretary to the Government of Bengal, in 188875 thereby unceremoniously ending a long and protracted battle, at the heart of which the colonial authorities endeavoured to transform flood-protection into a profitseeking activity. The failure to either ascertain or implement an ER in the delta, however, was not principally brought about by logistical, organizational, or technical inadequacies but rather stemmed from the colonial administration’s inability to contend with the differential impacts of the annual inundations on the cultivated tracts. In other words, the seemingly contradictory nature of the deltaic inundations, to simultaneously nourish the soil with silt deposits or devastate cropped lands, provoked the cultivators and the zamindars into adopting an ambiguous response to flooding. Consequently, attempts of the colonial administration to calculate the putative benefits from embankment construction became an accounting conundrum of sorts and inevitably served to demoralize their drive to both rationalize their response to deltaic inundation through bureaucratic procedure or seek profits from protection.76 In sum, the colonial administration failed to regulate the delta’s hydrological complexity by bounding the latter as a commodity.

The Last Resort Towards the final decade of the nineteenth century, the colonial administration began to radically alter its views on the question of profit from irrigation and protection and instead began to redirect its efforts towards trimming the running expenses of the scheme. After 1900, the canal system still continued to register a steady decline in gross revenues.77 Though the receipts from the WR picked up in the early years of the twentieth century, income from navigation began to plummet, caused chiefly by the opening up of the railways in the region.78 Against Arthur Cotton’s optimistic estimate that the project would irrigate 2½ million acres, a maximum of only 250,390 acres was achieved in 1927–8.79

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Delta in the Commodity-form With regard to the expenses of the protective works, in 1894, C.W. Odling, the then chief engineer of the Irrigation Department, was deputed to survey the entire embankment system in the delta with the express purpose of reclassifying them in terms of their utility and need. Out of the 969 miles of embankments then in existence, Odling argued for abandoning (p.148) 372 miles, a little over a third of them. Of the remaining 597 miles listed as necessary for immediate retention, he nevertheless still earmarked 141 miles for being gradually phased out in the near future. In effect, Odling’s reclassification retained for the government the costs of maintaining barely 456 miles of protective works.80 Further surveys were carried out in 1896 as well with a renewed emphasis on phasing out ‘superfluous’ embankments. The policy of steadily dismantling the embankment system was, however, soon moved a final notch upwards with the Board of Revenue issuing the directives of 1904 to the commissioner of the Orissa Division. From a strategy of gradual retreat from bearing the costs of embankment repair and construction, the colonial administration now made a decisive turn in entirely abandoning its responsibility towards flood-protection. The new policy, notified as a five-point agenda, is particularly revealing in the manner that it indicated a desire for a complete and comprehensive reversal of over a century of flood-control strategies through protective works like embankments: a) Costly works are not now necessary in Orissa and therefore no elaborate schemes of heavy expenditure are contemplated. b) No material increase in the number or length of protective embankments is contemplated. It is not possible to channelise the whole volume of flood water to the sea within embanked channels and the present view of the government is to endeavour to arrange for as favourable a distribution of that volume as possible. c) The question of embankments should not be looked at primarily from a revenue point of view. The decision whether a work should be undertaken should depend rather on its probable benefit to the people generally, than on any estimate of its effect on the revenue. d) Government is under no obligation to maintain or construct embankments in temporarily settled estates; but, on the contrary, is at liberty to abandon existing embankments without granting any compensation for doing so. c) In permanently settled estates, no new works need be constructed except on the application and at the cost of the proprietors concerned.81 For the colonial government in the Orissa Delta, the attempt to turn private canal irrigation into a financially-rewarding enterprise was repeatedly (p.149) crippled by the delta’s unique hydraulic properties. More specifically, the administration realized that their plans to generate profits on investments made in the canal scheme of 1863 was predicated on preventing seasonal inundation. The contours of this disconnect, running between the economic and the Page 22 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form hydraulic in the delta, can be illuminated here by drawing upon Karl Marx’s conception of the capitalist commodity. The notion of the commodity in capitalist society comprising use and exchange, for Marx, refers to the manner in which use-value is subjugated to exchange-value and value, in turn, is subordinated to the value-relation as a general social form.82 That is, to clarify, in extreme simplification of the above, the value of the commodity is expressed not essentially as the latter’s intrinsic natural properties but its ‘mystical character’ as a social relation.83 For Marx, value as abstract social labour time is objectified in the commodity, from which the latter’s ‘fetishism’—its appearance—manifests chiefly as the social division of labour and relations between producers rather than as a ‘sensuously varied objectivity’ that is an article of utility.84 The substance of nature therefore in the realm of its appearance as the capitalist commodity is bound in a manner in which its value-form becomes different from its natural existence: organic nature in its sensuous properties is now a fetish, chiefly as a social relation. This brief recourse to Marx’s notion that a disconnect can occur between nature and its value-relation helps explain the tensions between why the profit-seeking canal remained at sharp odds with the delta’s ecology. That is, I argue, in order to bound canal irrigation as a capitalist commodity to be regulated by a market imperative, the administration increasingly realized that they could facilitate canal irrigation only by introducing a ‘metabolic-rift’—the canal had to operate against the general hydraulic character of the delta.85 Canal irrigation, as a commodity-form, had to essentially remain responsive and kept contrapuntal to the requirements of high finance and capital investments and not to the delta’s hydraulic regime. In other words, the canal bureaucracy had to prevent the regular occurrences of inundation in the delta in order to ensure the profitability of canal irrigation. But alongside the need to regulate the delta’s volatile fluvial behaviour primarily as exchange value, the canal’s economic viability depended on it being turned into a monopolized means of production. Thus, the administration in the quest to render irrigation as exclusive ownership, had to correspondingly divorce cultivators in the delta from their traditional access to non-canal irrigation sources. Put differently, the (p. 150) canal administration was attempting to force about a kind of enclosure.86 In several ways, therefore, the introduction of the canal was simultaneous with the destruction of traditional and non-canal structures for harnessing river water and rainfall. However, the repeated inability of the colonial administration to effectively operate fiscal mechanisms such as the water rate, owners rate, and the embankment rate into means for regulating the delta’s hydrology as exchange-value stemmed from the fact that these devices were repeatedly unsettled by the delta as a geomorphologic process. Thus, the Orissa Scheme was not merely a financial failure but was more profoundly revealed as the inadequate means to bound the delta’s hydrology as a commodity-form. Put differently, the logics and calculations for regulating the rivers through devices Page 23 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form such as profit seeking, enclosure, dominance of exchange over that of use value and the market imperative were brought to grief by hydraulic volatility. This colonial quest for introducing private canal irrigation in Orissa, however, must more significantly be viewed within the larger backdrop of the immense ecological dislocations that had been earlier brought about by colonial capitalism’s peculiarly specific agendas for rule and revenue in the delta. As pointed out in previous chapters, the introduction of capitalist private property in land compelled the colonial administration to recast the delta from being a geomorphologic process to that of a calamitous event and in turn compelled them to initiate plans to ‘protect’ cultivated land through embankments. But the introduction of protective embankments, soon enough, it was realized by the colonial government, had massively exacerbated the problems of inundation and drainage in the region. The issue of restoring the delta to its previous dynamic hydraulic landscape, however, would have meant the drastic reorganization, if not, the substantial dismantling of the entire colonial dispensation’s revenue coherence and institutions of rule and property. While caught amidst this cleft of sorts, between property and ecology, the administration, in the mid-nineteenth century, sought to retain the particularity of its agendas as colonial capitalism by harnessing the delta’s fluvial regime as a commodity-form. That is, to reiterate, it was hoped that by bounding hydrology as commodity and indexing it to the imperatives of the market the deltas volatile rivers could be bent towards substantiating colonial capitalism. By the early decades of the twentieth century, however, the triptych of capitalist property, embankment construction, and the Canal (p.151) Scheme of 1863 had ended up instead stranding the government and the deltas inhabitants in an impasse. Notes:

(1) . Captain Harris, Report on the Districts of Orissa Considered with Reference to the Inundations of the Mahanuddy River, part 3, 31 August 1859, p. 91. (2) . Captain Beadle, as early as August 1856, had advocated the construction of weirs on the Kathuri branch and the need for utilizing the Mahanadi River for irrigation. Captain Young in 1857 had also argued for weirs on the Mahanadi and Kathjuri. See W.A. Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal (Calcutta 1909), pp. 205–16. (3) . Col. Arthur Cotton, Report On the Mahanuddy River (Calcutta 1858), pp. 13–16. (4) . On British capital exports to India for this period see Leland H. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York 1927), pp. 206–24. (5) . Daniel R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940 (New York 1988), p. 20.

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Delta in the Commodity-form (6) . Cotton, Report On the Mahanuddy River, p. 22. (7) . Cotton’s prestige and the success of his projects in the Madras Delta coincided with a ‘buoyant mood’ amongst British speculators, who were anxious to invest in irrigation works in India. This period apparently was witness to a virtual ‘canal mania’. See Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress, p. 182. (8) . Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Financial Foundations of the British Raj (Simla 1971), p. liii. (9) . Inglis, The Canal and Flood Banks of Bengal, p. 1 and Ian Stone, Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy (Cambridge 1985), p. 21. (10) . Arthur Cotton served as a project consultant for private irrigation firms between 1862–5 in Stone, Canal Irrigation in British India, p. 45. (11) . Between 1854 and 1869 approximately £ 150 million of British capital was invested in India, chiefly on the railways see Jenks, The Migration of British Capital, pp. 225–32. (12) . Col. H.W. Gulliver, chief engineer, Bengal Irrigation Branch, had in a note dated 19 February 1875 traced the origins of the Orissa Scheme to the dangers posed to Cuttack by the floods of the Mahanadi River. Subsequent to this note, Lt Harris’ study and Cotton’s report formulated the Scheme as a strategy primarily to contain the chronic visitations of floods. Quoted in G.C. Maconchy, Report on Protective Irrigation Works in Bengal (Calcutta 1902), p. 255. A version uncritically accepted by J.K. Samal, Orissa Under the British Crown, 1858–1905 (Delhi 1977), pp. 194–7 and by Gorachand Patnaik, The Famine and Some Aspects of the British Economic Policy in Orissa, 1866–1905 (Cuttack 1980), pp. 113–14. (13) . For details on the Orissa Scheme see Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, pp. 1–40. (14) . Ibid., p. 4. (15) . Ibid., pp. 4–5. (16) . F.T. Haig’s revised estimates for 1873 indicated that flood embankments alongside the main canals would account for almost 29 per cent of the total expenditure on the Scheme. See ‘Note’ by Lt Col. F.T. Haig, officiating chief engineer, Bengal, Irrigation Branch, 29 May 1873 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883 (Calcutta 1884), p. 42. Out of a total expenditure of Rs 30, 713, 000 on the works, the costs of the embankments alone came to Rs 8,798,000.

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Delta in the Commodity-form (17) . Note on the Orissa Canals by Col. H.W. Gulliver, officiating chief engineer, Bengal Irrigation Branch, 16 December 1874 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, p. 83. (18) . L.S.S.O ’Malley, Cuttack Gazetteer (Patna 1933), pp. 106–8. (19) . Patnaik, The Famine and Some Aspects, pp. 16–53. (20) . These figures conflict with those of Hunter, who records that in 1866–7 leases were executed for 667 acres and in 1868–9 water was taken for 9378 acres. See W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. xviii (London 1877), p. 45. (21) . All figures relating to irrigation acreage drawn from ‘Note’ by Lt J.W. Ottley, 10 December 1874 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, p. 85. (22) . Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, p. 14. (23) . Note by Lt Col. F.T. Haig, officiating chief engineer, Bengal Irrigation Branch, 29 May 1873 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, pp. 46–8. (24) . Notes by Col. F.H. Rundall 20 September 1869; Lt Col. F.T. Haig, 29 May 1873; Lt J.W. Ottley’s 10 December 1874, and Col. H.W. Gulliver’s 16 December 1874. See Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1885, pp. 23–86. (25) . Supply by volume Re 1 per 1,000 cubic yards 15 June to 31 October. Re 1–8 per 1,000 cubic yards 1 November to 14 June. Supply by area Rs 3 per acre for a single crop. Rs 5 per acre per annum Rs 1–8 per acre for single watering. (See Inglis, The Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, p. 9). (26) . According to Lt Ottley’s ‘Note’, 130,000 acres were estimated to have been irrigated. However, out of the total demand of Rs 131,130 only Rs 10,646 was collected. See ‘Note’ by Lt J.W. Ottley, 10 December 1874 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, p. 86. (27) . For details on the discussion see Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. XVII, pp. 45–8. Page 26 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form (28) . Ibid., p. 48. (29) . Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London 1990), pp. 871–95. (30) . W.A. Inglis, A Review of the Legislation in Bengal Relating to Irrigation, Drainage and Flood Embankments (Calcutta 1911), pp. 11–13. (31) . Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into Certain Matters in Connection with the Orissa Canals (Calcutta 1885), p. 3, henceforth Canal Commission 1885. (32) . Canal Commission 1885, p. 22. (33) . Ibid., Appendix C, p. 80. (34) . Ibid., p. 4. (35) . Ibid., Baboo Juggo Mohan Lall, a zamindar in Cuttack 13 February 1885, Appendix C, p. 68. (36) . Ibid., Petition 35, p. 21. (37) . Orissa High Level Canal its Advantages and Disadvantages, The Balasore National Society (Raja Shyamananda De’s Street 1884), p. xvi, (henceforth Balasore National Society). (38) . Canal Commission 1885, Baboo Gauree Shankar Roy, p. 61. (39) . Ibid., questions put to and answers given by Baboo Gauree Shanker Roy, Honorary Secretary, Orissa Association, Appendix C, p. 49. (40) . Canal Commission 1885, p. 129. (41) . Stone, Canal Irrigation in British India, pp. 159–94. (42) . Ibid., p. 167. (43) . In 1902 the Rs 1–8–0 rate was enhanced to Rs 1–12–0 and underwent further increases in 1912, 1920 and 1922. That year it was raised to Rs 3–8–0 for long leases and Rs 4–8–0 for season leases, mainly because the prices of grain registered an increase. Even then the raising of the water rates led cultivators to cancel leases, forcing the rate’s immediate reduction to Rs 3 and Rs 4–4–0 for the Cuttack District and Rs 2–8–0 and Rs 4 on the High Level Canal Range III, respectively. See O’Malley, Cuttack Gazetteer, pp. 113–15. (44) . J.E. Webster, Interim Report on Owner’s Rate, 6 April 1899, BRP, LRD, EIB, File no. 161, Acc. no. 1478, p. 15. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA (henceforth Webster, Interim Report).

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Delta in the Commodity-form (45) . Webster, Interim Report, p. 15. (46) . Ibid., p. 15. (47) . Canal Commission 1885, paragraphs 57–60. (48) . Webster, Interim Report, p. 15. (49) . Note by J.E. Webster, assistant settlement officer in Orissa, 28 August 1897, BRP, LRD, EIB, File no. 161, Acc. no. 1478, p. 5. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA, (henceforth, Note by Webster). (50) . Note by Webster, pp. 6–7. (51) . Babu Jamini Mohan Das, assistant settlement officer, Cuttack, 27 June 1899, BRP, LRD, EIB, File no. 161, Acc. no. 1478, p. 19. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. (52) . P. C. Lyon, to the secretary, Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, Calcutta, 29 August 1900. BRP, Land Revenue Department, Settlement and Survey Branch, File no. 289, Acc. no. 1571 Listed under B&O Files (1878–1920). OSA. (53) . Balasore National Society, p. 49. (54) . Canal Commission 1885, Petition 13, p. 32. (55) . Ibid., See Appendix B, petitions 10, 11, 12, and 16, pp. 31–2. (56) . Balasore National Society, p. 22. (57) . Canal Commission 1885, Appendix B, Petition 25, p. 32. (58) . S.L. Maddox, to director, Department of Land Records and Agriculture, Bengal, 1 February 1899, Cuttack, BRP, LRD, EIB, File no. 161, Acc. no. 1478, pp. 8–9. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. (59) . In deltaic agriculture, drainage was and is as crucial as irrigation, especially in the case of paddy cultivation. Thus in the Kaveri Delta ancient inscriptions recording the alienation of land specifically mentioned the right of both irrigation and drainage. See C.N. Subramanian, ‘Aspects of the History of Agriculture in the Kaveri Delta, c. 850 to c. 1600’, MPhil dissertation, (Jawaharlal Nehru University 1983), p. 104. (60) . Lt Col. F.T. Haig, 29 May 1873, Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1885, p. 42. (61) . The Committee recommended an outlay of Rs 7,434,630, which it suggested could be ‘safely’ incurred for ensuring protection in the delta. The Committee restricted itself to suggesting financial recommendations and argued Page 28 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form that the engineering aspect needed a separate professional opinion. This reflected the gap between the civil administration and the engineering wing of the colonial government that had heightened over the years in the delta. Unlike in the early decades of colonial rule when the civil administrators freely speculated on measures towards containing the inundations, by the latter half of the nineteenth century the technical perspective became the sole preserve of the military engineers see Inglis, The Canal and Flood Banks of Bengal, pp. 218–19 (62) . Extract from letter no. 5336, superintending engineer, Orissa Circle, to the chief engineer, Bengal, PWD, 4 November 1886, BRP, LRD, EMB, File no. 18, Acc. no. 326, p. 10. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. (63) . C.T. Metcalfe, commissioner of the Orissa Division, to the secretary, Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, 15 September 1886, BRP, LRD, EMB, File no. 18, Acc. no. 326, p. 7. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. (64) . Inglis, A Review of the Legislation in Bengal, p. 44. (65) . ‘Note’ by Lt Col. F.T. Haig, 29 May 1873 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1885, p. 50. (66) . Report of the Committee on the Effects of the Inundation in Orissa in 1866, September 1871, PWD (1867–1886) nos 60–66, pp. 6–24, NAI. (67) . Haig was quick to realize that his ER was not feasible and therefore as an afterthought to his calculations wondered if a rate of 4 to 6 annas per acre could be imposed, see ‘Note’ by Lt Col. F.T. Haig, 29 May 1873 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1885, p. 50. (68) . Ibid., p. 50. (69) . H.J.S. Cotton, secretary to the Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, to the commissioner of the Orissa Division, Calcutta, 26 January 1882, BRP, File no. 1320, Acc. no. 161, p. 12. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. (70) . Certificate Objection Case No. 458 of 1886–87, collector of Cuttack (certificate holder) versus the raja of Killah Aul (objector), BRP, LRD, EMB, File no. 18, Acc. no. 326, p. 23. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920). OSA. (71) . T.T. Allen, superintendent and remembrancer of Legal Affairs, to the secretary of the Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, No. 983, Calcutta, 22 November 1886, BRP, LRD, EMB, File no. 18, Acc. no. 326, p. 18. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. (72) . C.T. Metcalfe, commissioner of the Orissa Division, to the secretary to the Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, Cuttack, 12 August 1887, BRP, LRD, EMB, File no. 18, Acc. no. 326. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920). OSA. Page 29 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form (73) . Quoted in ‘Note’ by Col. F.T. Haig, 29 May 1873 in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, p. 45. A copy of Taylor’s report is available in the library of the Cuttack Board of Revenue, Cuttack, Orissa. Unfortunately, only eight pages seem to have survived the vagaries of time. (74) . T.T. Allen, superintendent and remembrancer of Legal Affairs, to the secretary to the Government of Bengal, Revenue Department, Calcutta, 5 December 1887, BRP, LRD, EMB File no. 18, Acc. no. 326, p. 1. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. (75) . P. Nolan, secretary to the Government of Bengal, to the secretary to the Board of Revenue, 20 January 1888, Calcutta, BRP, LRD, FMB, File no 18, Acc. no. 326. Listed under B&O files (1878–1920), OSA. For details of the case see Appendix I. (76) . Floods on the Mahanadi were categorized according to reading on the gauge at Naraj. High floods: over 90 feet; medium flood: between 90 and 87 feet, and low flood: less than 87.00 feet. W.A. Inglis, Present State of the River Channels and Flood Embankments of the Pun District with Proposals for the Construction of Permanent Escapes (Calcutta 1902), p. 7. (77) . Only in the ten year period ending in 1929–30 did the average annual gross revenue of Rs 7,37,885 (irrigation plus navigation) manage to overtake the working expenses of Rs 6,55,354 for the same period. This sanguine result did not, however, account for the cumulative interest on capital invested. Quoted in Patnaik, The Famine and Some Aspects, p. 128. (78) . O’ Malley, Cuttack Gazetteer, p. no. 110. (79) . Ibid., p. 113. (80) . SSR, vol. 1, pp. 14–15. (81) . Quoted in P. Mukerjee, Irrigation Inland Navigation and Flood Problems in North Orissa During the British Raj (Bhubaneswar 1967), p. 36. (82) . See Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 125–77. (83) . See the section on ‘The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret’ in Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 163–77. (84) . Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 166. (85) . Marx used the notion of ‘metabolism’ to describe human relations to nature through labour. Seeking to depict, thereby, the complex and dynamic interactions and material exchanges between human beings and natural conditions. The ‘metabolic rift’ in turn, refers to how large-scale industrialization Page 30 of 31

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Delta in the Commodity-form and agriculture robs/depletes nature through intensive exploitation. See John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (Kharagpur 2001), pp. 141–77. I, however employ the term ‘metabolic rift’ loosely, to underline the lack of fit between the substance of nature and social relations. (86) . In the command of the Sone canal system (southern Bihar) there also was a similar attempt by the canal staff to destroy traditional ahur (tank) irrigation by running canal and drainage lines over them. See Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Administration of the Sone Canals, vol. 1 (Calcutta 1888), pp. 13–19.

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The Great Denouement and After

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

The Great Denouement and After Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter presents an assessment of the report of the Flood Committee of 1928. This report gives an unprecedented and comprehensive critique of the various ecological and social costs that had resulted from over a century of flood-control initiatives. The administration appointed a committee of experts for a new direction on the subject. The canal system after several decades of providing ‘protection’ and irrigation had always motivated the inhabitants in the delta into seemingly irremediable conflict. The canal system and the embankments had produced a slew of vested interests who sought protection by having the flood risk being disproportionately directed against villages in the non-embankment and non-canal tracts. Following the devastating floods of 1937, Biswanath Das, after consulting with Gandhi, appointed a committee under Vivesvarya to resolve the problem. The committee recommended the establishment of the controverial Hirakud Dam. Keywords:   flood-control, Flood Committee of 1928, canal system, Orissa Delta, embankments, irrigation, Hirakud Dam, Vivesvarya, Biswanath Das, Gandhi

Sometime in the middle of July 1927, an ‘unusually high flood’ whipped up in the Baitarani River. Soon enough, frothing columns of water overran the Baitarani’s modest channel, smashed her banks, and snarled across the delta. In a blink of an eye, raging currents with impunity snapped, twisted, and wrenched apart several hundred kilometres of protective embankments. Canal lines and roads were similarly hurled about many times over and fluid fists relentlessly went on to mangle large chunks of the Bengal–Nagpur railway tracks. The Brahmini and Mahanadi Rivers followed by going into spate and in time their leaden crests, in Page 1 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After hurried but methodical surges, began to submerge large swathes of the surrounding alluvial tracts. The sheer scale of devastation wrought by the 1927 floods, was hitherto unprecedented in living memory. It seemed, as if, nature intended to dramatically remind the colonial administration and the inhabitants in Orissa of how raw and colossally catatonic the delta’s impulsive rivers could be. However, to anyone perceptive enough at the time, it would have been perhaps all too apparent that the flood of 1927 was a catastrophe waiting to happen. For one, the colonial administration had been, throughout the early years of the twentieth century, mostly unresponsive towards augmenting and maintaining their flood-protection measures in the delta. For the most part though, to be fair, the administration’s quiescence on the subject of the seasonal inundations had been forced on them. Through most of the nineteenth century, as pointed out in earlier chapters, the intended efficiency and functioning of flood-control initiatives through structural methods, such as embankments and the Canal Scheme of 1863, had been largely defeated by the regular and relentless fluvial processes in the delta. These innumerable failed attempts to hem in the inundating rivers had been bottling up, over the decades, immense hydraulic energies. The haphazard embankment construction and the canal lines had substantially altered the delta’s natural drainage pattern and had created (p.158) new distorted topographical gradients and contours in which some lands were dramatically sunk below the river’s flood line. In effect, flood-control measures had increased the vulnerability of such settlements in the delta, which now more than ever depended on being structurally protected from the heightened intensity of unnatural flooding (for the lack of a better term). After the calamitous flood of 1927, therefore, a simple return to the old ways to control inundations in the delta would have been counterproductive and destined for failure. Thus, the administration, clearly exhausted by the familial paradigm for flood-control, had to seek a fresh ‘wise counsel’ through a committee of experts for a new direction on the subject.

The Committee and its Surprises The committee of experts that was subsequently constituted comprised Addams Williams, chief engineer of Bengal, D.G.Harris, consulting engineer to the Government of India, and Rai Bahadur Bishun Svarup, a recently retired chief engineer of the province Bihar and Orissa.1 Their investigations soon turned out to be a rigorous affair. They not only conducted two tours throughout the floodaffected areas, including one during the flood season, but went on to also exhaustively review and study previous reports and documentation on the subject. The committee even gathered what they termed as ‘new data on their

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The Great Denouement and After own account’. Their deliberations were finally published as the Report of the Orissa Flood Committee, 1928, which arrived at an unprecedented conclusion: …we have come to the conclusion that the problem which has arisen in Orissa, is due, in the main, to the efforts which have been made towards its protection. Every square mile of country from which spill water is excluded means the intensification of floods elsewhere; every embankment means the heading up of water on someone else’s hand. Orissa is a deltaic country and in such a country floods are inevitable; they are nature’s method of creating new land and it is useless to attempt to thwart her in her working. The problem in Orissa is not how to prevent floods, but how to pass them as quickly as possible to the sea. And the solution lies in removing all obstacles which militate against this result…. To continue as at present is merely to pile up a debt which will have to be paid, in distress and calamity at the end.2 (p.159) These observations of the committee marked a decisive rupture from over a century of official views on colonial flood policies. The previous strategy, as discussed in the earlier chapters, predominantly sought to limit flood damage through embankments and canals. The 1928 Committee, in contrast, argued that ‘flood-control’ was an obstruction to the ‘workings of nature’. They even thought it fit to challenge the long-term efficacy of the canal system, with the ominous pronouncement that as the irrigated and protected land would eventually fall ‘below the level [of the land] open to free spill, the canals will have to go’3 Furthermore, they concluded, floods caused by rivers straying from their courses or overspilling their banks were geomorphologic processes that were intrinsic and essential to the gradual consolidation or formation of the delta. In the opinion of the committee, deltaic inundation, should no longer be recognized as calamitous events and the only viable strategy towards the periodic flooding lay in the systematic removal of all obstacles that militated against ‘nature’s workings’. These inferences of the committee, inadvertently, also endorsed many of the views that had been made against flood-control throughout the course of the nineteenth century. The committee’s admonitions against the embankment system, for example, were strikingly similar to the opinions of several military engineers, who had, in the mid-1850s, vociferously argued for the dismantling of ‘protective works’, so that the deltaic rivers could gravitate towards restoring their natural equilibrium. However, despite the emphatic warning that the current system was merely a ‘postponement of the ultimate day of retribution’, the committee remained suspiciously ambivalent on prescribing any concrete measures to reverse the prevailing flood-control policy. In the over seventy recommendations that they outlined at the end of their report, the majority of the suggestions, in terms of effective proposals for interventions, merely argued for steps to temporarily relieve flood congestion in the delta. Even in the Page 3 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After instance in which a few suggestions appeared relatively radical, such as the elimination of all obstacles in the way of the floods, the committee advanced them as general principles that did not necessarily require immediate action. Similarly, though invective and opprobrium was heaped on the canal and the embankment system, the committee chose to unambiguously state, in the first recommendation itself, that these structures were ‘not to be removed’,4 This apparent inconsistency in the committee’s report, between its analysis of the flood problem and its (p.160) various prescriptions and recommendations, was, however, not brought about simply by sheer inadvertence or oversight. Following almost a century of flood-control works such as the embankment system and the canals, several ecological transformations in the delta had been effected. This drastic reordering of the delta’s hydraulic and physical context, I conclude, in turn lent shape to a new set of economic and social realities. The most prominent of these changes was the ecological fragmentation of the delta’s alluvial plains into sharply demarcated zones of protected and unprotected enclaves.5 The tensions that simmered between these two zones, with the protected arguably gaining somewhat at the expense of the unprotected, in fact, was instrumental in authoring the above mentioned paradoxes which littered the committee’s report. The determining influences of these new economic and social realities in shaping the responses to deltaic floods in Orissa is strikingly visible in two well-detailed sources. First, the testimonies collected by the committee itself, which they published as part two of their report. The second, is the evidence that can be discerned from the intense debates over the flood issue in the Orissa Legislative Assembly between 1936 till 1942. Though the testimonies recorded by the committee predates the Assembly debates by almost a decade, these two documented collections, when cross-checked against each other, insightfully reveal how a range of interest groups had taken root in the delta and sought to retain the latter as a flood-vulnerable landscape. These new social and economic cleavages, brought on by the altered hydraulic environment, most profoundly revealed the several factors that prevented the delta from being returned to a flood-dependent agrarian regime. Most of the tensions and frictions brought on by the colonial flood-control strategy centred around two major issues: (a) the continuance of the canal system and (b) the numerous battles over the location of the flood-protection embankment structures.

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The Great Denouement and After Canal versus the Non-canal According to the committee, the delta over time had gradually got divided into three physically distinct zones, during the course of the nineteenth century. These zones could be demarcated based on the land types they possessed in terms of their relative protection from seasonal inundations (p.161) and their access to canal irrigation. Accordingly, the committee classified the three zones as: a) Protected: The area protected from floods by embankments and irrigated by canals. b) Semi-protected: The area protected to a greater or lesser degree from floods by embankments, but not irrigated by canals. c) Unprotected: The area which was neither protected from floods by embankments nor irrigated by canals.6 The protected areas were alleged to be the most prosperous portions of the delta, that supposedly also had the highest land values.7 In the evidence given before the committee, for example, within the Kendrapara subdivision, the value of protected land was listed at being approximately Rs 300 an acre while that of the unprotected stood at Rs 200 and even fell to Rs 150 in the Nuna-Pyka areas.8 In 1938, a legislator Babu Bichitrananda Das, during a session of the Assembly indicated that land prices in the unprotected areas stood at Rs 50 or Rs 100 an acre while those in the canal tracts were approximately Rs 500 to Rs 700.9 The semi-protected areas, in contrast, apparently possessed diverse types of conditions with respect to irrigation and protection. While certain tracts in this zone could be insulated from floods by high and strong embankments capable of withstanding the full force of a high flood, in other tracts in the semi-protected areas itself there were tracts which, though protected by embankments, were inundated almost annually. In the unprotected areas, on the other hand, no attempt was made to ‘ward’ off the flood and cultivated lands were frequently subject to inundations. Nevertheless, the committee also noted that the productivity of the land types did not necessarily correspond with their classificatory status, especially in the case of the semi-protected and unprotected areas. On most occasions, for example, it was observed that the crop output could vary with the circumstances of season and the annual flood behaviour rather than the cultivated plot’s location in its specific zone. In some areas in the semi-protected zone, for instance, the committee noted that some cultivators who grew sarad paddy and pinned all their hopes on the protective works, realized barely one crop in a period of ten years because of frequent embankment failure. In the unprotected areas, on the other hand, a flexible cropping strategy, in combination (p.162) with an intelligent mix of rabi crops and dalua rice often allowed for a substantial return to the cultivators.10 Moreover, in these tracts, the committee learnt, a fairly large number of residents migrated to Calcutta and nearby areas Page 5 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After to find either seasonal or permanent work and remitted their earnings home. Thus, reduced population pressure on the land from out-migration in this manner resulted in larger individual holdings and, therefore, in general ‘the people in the unprotected are not so badly off as might at first be imagined’.11 This lack of fit between the assumed degree of protection given to the land and the realities on the ground is also evident in P.T. Mansfield’s enumeration of land types in the delta. Mansfield, a former settlement officer in Orissa, in an interview to the committee, identified several variables that affected productivity. He divided the delta land into four classes: a) land protected from flood and irrigated by canal water, b) land always free from flood but not irrigated by canal water, c) land occasionally flooded, d) land frequently flooded. In his estimate, the worst lands were those that comprised class (d), which grew only paddy and no rabi (winter sown). However, even those lands in class (d) which were frequently flooded but grew good rabi, the value of the lands was comparable to those of classes (b) and (c). Furthermore, in the year following a big flood, and in the event of silt being deposited on the land, bumper crops often resulted thereby rendering lands in class (c) almost as valuable as those in class (b). Finally, the lands in class (a), that had canal-irrigation and surrounded by strong embankments, were, in Mansfield’s opinion, the most valuable as they possessed complete insulation from both floods and droughts.12 This last claim, however, was far from unanimously subscribed to, as is evident from Legislator Mandhata Gorachand Patnaik Mahasaya’s submission to the Assembly in its session of 9 March 1938: …it cannot be said that the flood destroys crops only in areas not irrigated by canals; even in areas irrigated by [the] canal crops are destroyed by floods. Areas irrigated by canals are not free from inundation and destruction by floods.13 Mansfield, in effect, sought to advance an essentially two-part classification which divided the delta into the canal tract and the non-canal tract. Significantly, this division enabled him to differentiate the lands in the semi and unprotected zones from the protected areas not on the basis of the degree of protection possessed, but on variables such as the cropping (p.163) pattern and the intensity of flooding. It was, therefore, not entirely the degree of insulation from flood that these lands determined their levels of productivity but how cultivators in these zones fashioned their respective responses to seasonal inundation. Nevertheless, the fact that cultivators in the non-canal tracts still remained critically sensitive to the quality, timing, and intensity of the annual flood behaviour, caused them to be confronted by a slew of problems brought on specifically by the canal system. Most pointedly, when the canal lines and their embankments could cause the aggravation of the flood line, currents, and drainage by obstructing the direction of the river’s overspill. A problem that was well brought out in an interview given to the committee by Gopal Prasad Das, Page 6 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After Jagannath Prasad Das, and Mohini Mohan Chakravarti. They energetically contended that the canals and embankments were the main obstructions which prevented the flood waters from being ‘properly’ expelled. To further substantiate the claim, they brought to the attention of the committee the incident of congestion in the Bhadrak subdivision, caused by the alignments of the right embankment of the Baitarani with that of the Pattamundai Canal and Range III of the High Level Canal. These structures, according to them, by bottling up the waters of the Brahmini, and Baitarani rivers along with several of their tributaries caused ‘great distress’ within the tracts that were thus hemmed in.14 Legislator Maulvi Muhammad Latifur Rahman also registered a similar complaint against a section of the canal that he alleged blocked the Alanka River outfall and forced its entire water onto the: …Kakatpur area of the Puri District and the result was devastation of the once fertile country in the Sadr sub-division of Puri i.e. Kakatpur and Gop area. It is only for the preservation of that canal that a very fertile country of Kakatpur and Gop has been left to its own care and since 1933 the Olupura Ghia [sluice] has been working havoc in that area and the Government are not paying any heed to it….15 Not unexpectedly, many influential elements in the delta even advocated that the canal system be completely abandoned. Banbehari Palit, the secretary of the Orissa Landholders Association and Bhikari Charan Patnaik, the secretary of the Orissa People’s Association, in their deposition before the Flood Committee, made it known that in the event of the canals being abolished there would be a ‘free flow of water throughout the districts and there would be no high floods’.16 Jadumani Mangaraj, an eminent politician of Cuttack District, echoed a similar sentiment by (p.164) arguing for the ‘abolition of the canal systems, their embankments and anicuts’. In his estimate, this would enable a ‘free passage to [the] flood waters which would [then] be able to spread over the whole country without impediment’.17 Ironically, within the canal tracts too there were demands by some for dismantling the canal network in order to allow for the free play of the flood waters This urge was expressed in what was clearly a widespread belief amongst cultivators that ‘rich red water’, carried by the annual inundation, had fertilizing properties. As described by the then minister for public works in 1937, Nityananda Kanungo: Expert revenue officers and the irrigation engineers have also opined that in the areas protected by the canals, the cultivable lands are now in a state of diminishing returns. And it is a fact that the rich red water is denied to them, the rich red water with which nature meant to increase the fertility

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The Great Denouement and After of our country, to increase the cultivation of our lands that is denied to us.18 Nityananda Kanungo, however, went on to subsequently dismiss the above observations that he had scrupulously recorded. His seeming about turn on the issue was perhaps brought on by his need to also enunciate the peculiar bind the government had found itself in on the subject. Thus, he went on to simultaneously also assert that: …from the very nature of the canal system and of the river system it is not possible to distribute the flood water through the canals….canal irrigation is an insurance against drought, against famine and it is a protection against flood and along with these advantages the raiyat has to forego the advantages of getting natural manure carried by the flood water. He cannot have it both ways (emphasis added).19 Legislator Brajasunder Das, however, was perhaps closer to indicating the issues involved in the demand for irrigating the canal tracts with flood waters. He claimed that he had once suggested that if a series of outlets or sluices were permitted in the canal embankments, a ‘little flood water’ could easily be made to irrigate the canal lands and would allow for more than one crop. Though the principle was accepted by the Canal Department, they desisted from implementing his suggestion as, in Das’ estimate, they were ‘afraid lest the tenants would abrogate their kabuliyats or contract to pay the canal rent and would not take canal water’.20 K.R. Bery, one time superintendent engineer in the Orissa Circle, in his interview to the committee, in fact, seemed to have endorsed the above claims by Das. (p.165) Thus, though Bery agreed with the need for opening spill channels, he nevertheless also affirmed that the canal’s would suffer losses in revenue and significantly as well if people were given the option to take water from elsewhere ‘they would not take canal irrigation’.21 Clearly, the canal bureaucracy had acquired vested interests in denying cultivators access to other irrigation sources which could undermine the department’s monopoly in the delta. Brajasunder Das, in fact, rounded off his submission to the committee by straightforwardly asserting that layers of corrupt interests within the canal administration which he named as the engineering, patrolling, and the collecting department had ganged up to extract bribes and thereby take away the ‘life blood of the tenant’.22 Nevertheless, despite the crescendo of popular opinion against the canals, forcing the government to completely abandonment the entire scheme of 1863 was fraught with too many complications. In fact, Nityananda Kanungo in a speech to the Assembly in 1937, in a long winded reply, openly admitted to the government’s complicated dilemma in the matter:

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The Great Denouement and After …even their [the canals] demolition, even their abandonment will cost a huge amount of money. This will mean the movement of vast population. This will mean the entire upsetting of the present revenue methods. We cannot go in a haphazard manner because it involves [a] large population… it requires a tremendous amount of work before it is done, and in the meantime, they have to be maintained, because, if neglected, if they are not attended to, they will bring much more danger than we have been having till now.23 Thus, the canal system after several decades of ostensibly providing ‘protection’ and irrigation had invariably also propelled the inhabitants in the delta into seemingly irremediable conflict. On the one hand, the canal had altered the delta’s hydraulic regime in a manner that further complicated the impacts of the seasonal flood. On the other, the physical alignments of the canal lines had topographically separated the populace within the delta into several opposed and contending interest groups. However, such experiences of the administration with flood-control strategies such as the canals were not unique. A similarly perplexing level of attrition dogged the embankment system as well.

(p.166) Embankment Battles Embankment location and its unauthorized construction rapidly became major source of conflict and acrimonious disputes within and between villages, especially in the semi- and unprotected tracts of the delta. Even though the Flood Committee was aware of the havoc being wreaked by these ‘protective works’, they seemed aware that the level of complications and strength of the interests involved could scuttle any administrative attempts at dismantling the embankments. The case of the Gajaria embankment, for example, was particularly striking. The Gajaria embankment was constructed by Raja Bahadur of Kanika, allegedly in order to insulate his estate from floods. The embankment was roughly 17 ft in height with a width of 70–80 ft at the base and about 7 ft at the crest.24 The Gajaria embankment was identified by the Flood Committee as part of a complex of works that congested the basin coursed by the Burha, Kharsua, Brahmini, and the Birupa rivers. In the words of the committee: … the two embankments, one along the left banks of the Burha and Kharsua, which protects the Jaipur Canals, and the other along the right banks of the Birupa and Brahmini, which protects the Pattamundai Canal coverage together, forming a funnel through which the whole of the water of these four rivers and their branches has to flow. The water emerging from this funnel has, however, no free outfall; it is held in by the Raj Kanika embankment along the Kharsua on the north, and by the Uttikan and Gajaria embankments along the Brahmini on the South, these again converging lo a very narrow neck at the junction of the rivers Between

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The Great Denouement and After these embankments is situated the Aul circuit embankment like a ball in the neck of a bottle.15 The flood waters thus clogged, repeatedly devastated the lands of the villages in the estates of Aul, Binjharpur, and Pattamundai. The Flood Committee even described the Gajaria embankment and its surrounding bunds as the ‘worst offender’ and categorically recommended the latter’s immediate removal.26 The follow-up action, however, took on an entirely different turn. The committee’s report was submitted to the governor of the province of Bihar and Orissa and duly placed before the Executive Council. It then got referred to the member holding the portfolio of the Public Works Department (PWD). The honourable member in charge of the PWD, ironically enough, turned out to be the offender himself—the Raja Bahadur of Kanika. Subsequently, in the words of Legislator Govind (p.167) Prasad Singh ‘some means were evolved to avoid the recommendation and [the] question of the vested interest came in’.27 In 1935, representations against the Gajaria embankment were made by ‘thousands of people’ to the Government of India, the chief engineer of Bihar and Orissa, and to the commissioner of the Orissa division. According to Govind Prasad Singh, the complaints to the Government of India were directed to the chief engineer ‘through the usual channels’. The chief engineer then ‘in the usual bureaucratic way’ sent in a reply which simply stated that proposals for draining the flood waters to the sea were under consideration by the government and would be put into effect when funds permitted. While the nonaction over the offending embankment continued to hang, the commissioner of the division E.S. Hoernle took the initiative to conduct an enquiry on the matter through the subdivisional officer of Kendrapara. The officer noted, in his communique to the collector of 16 July 1935, that bunds did obstruct drainage to the ‘detriment of the greatest number’ and thousands of villagers of Aul, Binjharpur, and Pattamundai had vociferously complained to him that ‘great havoc’ had been caused to them. Furthermore, on examination of the other embankments in the estate of Kanika, officer Hoernle also noted that several bunds or small embankments had also blocked jores (springs) in the area. Despite these obviously deleterious effects, the officer observed, earthwork was still in progress on these embankments and their heights were actually being raised at places. Hoernle’s stern and pointed report, however, met with the ‘usual fate’, being, according to Govind Mishra, forwarded to the superintending engineer who then did not hesitate to have it ‘thrown into the waste-paper basket’.28 The Raja Bahadur of Kanika remained not only successful in retaining the Gajaria embankment in the face of stiff opposition from cultivators and government administrators, but even went on to manoeuvre around similar challenges from local zamindars and petty chieftains from the area. In his interview to the committee, for example, the raja shrewdly sought to divert Page 10 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After attention from the Gajaria embankment by blaming the Aul circuit bund for all the drainage ills in the area.29 This move appears to have been aimed at entangling the proprietor of Aul, Braja Sunder Deb, on the issue of embankment congestion. The zamindar of Aul had earlier complained bitterly to the authorities against the Kanika embankments. But with the impacts of the Aul circuit bund now coming under a cloud as well, thanks to the raja of Kanika, the Aul proprietor Sunder Deb (p.168) was forced to be on the defensive. Consequently, in his interview to the committee, the proprietor of Aul, attempted to stage an exhaustive plea to try and acquit the circuit bund from the charge of being the leading cause of drainage congestion in the region. The committee, in fact, recorded a most interesting defence from the Aul zamindar, who proceeded to insist that the circuit bund was: …500 years old and unlike other embankments conferred to nature. The area inside the circuit was not very low: if the water was held up during spring tides it was drained away at neap tides. He [Deb] was also confident that, in due course, nature would raise the level of the land as the rain brought more and more mud through the sluices.30 The manager of the Aul estate Syed Zain-ud-din, was also at pains to point out that the circuit ring bund had ‘one great virtue’ unlike the other bunds in that it did not cross any rivers or drainage channels. Though Zain-ud-din conceded that whenever the ring bund breached, the water level upstream fell, he reiterated that it was the Gajaria and Uttikan embankment along with innumerable other private embankments that actually caused the drainage congestion.31 Besides the attrition over the Aul circuit bund and the Gajaria embankments, an almost similar pattern of conflicting opinions, exaggerated claims and inconsequential enquiries mired the debate over the submergence of between 1000 to 2000 acres of land in the jurisdiction of the Delang police station, in the district of Puri. Allegedly, the cultivators in the submerged area were not able to raise crops for ‘many years past’ and yet they were compelled to pay rent at the full rate.32 The cultivators claimed that the drainage in their area, which was lying to the north-east of the Bengal–Nagpur railway line, was being inadequately serviced by only one culvert, Number 39. In 1934, according to the cultivators, despite an investigation, the matter remained unresolved in which the ‘Railways blamed the Public Works Department, the Public Works Department started blaming the local bodies and in this way the thing was going on’.33 In a meeting of the Governor’s Advisory Council on 7 October 1936, Legislator Godavaris Misra, in a debate on the flood question, pointed to the insufficiency of culverts only to be curtly rebuffed by the then chief engineer who assured the council that the waterways in the Bengal-Nagpur railway line, in the opinion of the engineering department, were more than sufficient.34 However, where the strength (p.169) of human reasoning failed, ‘divine help’ in the form of the catastrophic floods of 1937 followed, which washed away the disputed railway Page 11 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After bridge, its culvert, and cut off the villages entirely from communications with the Puri District. When the matter once again came up for discussion in the Assembly, the minister for public works, Nityananda Kanungo, in a reply to Godavaris Misra, underlined that the problem was less that of expanding the waterways than of confronting the far more intractable issue of private embankments. The minister argued: Down below [the submerged lands] the entire areas is drained off by the river Nuna. On that Nuna there are four private embankments which obstruct the free drainage of that country. It is a shame that private embankments in this country are causing the worst sufferings to our people by the floods and whenever the question of solving the flood problem comes up, all sorts of interests stand against the demolition of these embankments. In this particular instance the local people agitated for 6 years and perhaps longer for the removal of these obstructions. Technical opinion was in their favour, but by a curious process the matter was brought within the purview of an antiquated bit of legislation and the litigation dragged on for some time and finally it was decided that the private embankments were sacrosanct and could not be dealt with.35 The minister rounded off his long speech with the observation that even though, in time, the railway culverts would be widened, it did not necessarily mean solving the problems of the area appreciably until the private embankments were done away with. He hinted that Godavaris Misra’s concentrated attack on the culvert was a deliberate attempt to divert attention away from the havoc being wreaked by private embankments. Misra, probably, caught off-guard by the well-directed accusation, merely managed a sheepish reply in which he presumed that an enhanced passage for the flood waters would also enable the violence of its torrents to wash away the ‘small private embankments’.36 This exchange between the public works minister and Legislator Godavaris Misra, perhaps, underscored how bitter the various contending interests in the delta debated and fought over the impacts of the embankments oh drainage. D.R. Sethi, for example, the deputy director of agriculture for Orissa, in his interview to the committee, observed: The zamindars did not care whether the embankments were harmful to other peoples so long as they were of use to them and their tenants and so long as Government were prepared to relieve them when distress occurred.37 (p.170) However, the anxiety and anger of the Irrigation Branch against the private embankments was not necessarily shared by other departments of the government. K.R. Bery, superintendent engineer in the Orissa Circle in his deposition before the committee frankly admitted that there was no love lost between the civil authorities and the Irrigation Branch. According to Bery, the Page 12 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After civil administration encouraged the cultivators to put up embankments and the latter were even encouraged to make these structures flood-proof, often much to the ire of the irrigation engineers38 Clearly, when departments within the government itself held intensely conflict ridden views on the embankments, the administration’s attempts to restrain or fetter the rapid proliferation of the latter within the delta could not but be halfhearted and lacking in any strong will. In fact, on the ground, embankment construction seemed to have been aggressively pursued and encouraged especially by landlords, who furthermore appeared quite callous and unmindful of how their actions interfered with drainage. Thus, one finds Hare Krushna Mahtab (late chairman of the Balasore District Board) and Makand Prasad Das (late vice-president of the same), informing the Flood Committee that innumerable channels in Balasore District were being leased out by landlords to tenants, who then erected ‘large embankments partly to retain fresh water and partly to exclude the sea’.39 In another example, the committee was notified that cultivators of Contai in Balasore had put up bunds between the canal and the sea, which obstructed and closed up small drainage lines. The clotted water thus created by the bunds were then strewn with fishing devices.40 Reclamation activity, involving embankments across drainage lines, was also rampant, notably the Hansua area in the Brahmini Delta, which the committee had strongly recommended be stopped.41 This proliferation of embankment construction, predominantly in an unauthorized and haphazard manner, was intended to create enclaves of protected zones in which cultivation could take place. Needless to add, such ‘unplanned’ construction activity aggravated the flood situation and often intensified tensions between the protected and unprotected areas. However, any attempt at a comprehensive abandonment of all such ‘obstacles’ could give rise to another difficult complication. Though landlords or zamindars suffered as well from the drainage congestion, a sudden abandonment of the embankments could cause a substantial disruption in rent collection and loss of livelihoods as lands would have to be exposed to the floods.42 The minister Nityananda Kanungo, dilated upon with great precision the government’s fears on the subject: (p.171) …we have to realize that the present condition of things have been existing for the last half century. Villages have grown up under the protection of some of the embankments. Large areas of cultivable lands have been depending upon this protection…large masses of population cannot be hit all of a sudden to change the habits of centuries.43 In other words, the whole strategy for flood-protection in the delta had generated a slew of insoluble problems by aggravating the flood line and congesting drainage. These hydraulic challenges, brought on essentially by the canal system and the embankments, however, could not be reversed without grave attendant consequences on the populace in the delta. Thus, the Flood Page 13 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After Committee of 1928, despite its many accurate observations on the causes that afflicted the flood situation in the delta, found itself in an impasse of sorts. They, in all probability, must have realized that not only had powerful interests emerged who would seek to defend and retain the delta as a flood-vulnerable hydraulic environment but, more significantly, any sweeping attempt by the administration to dramatically phase out or eliminate flood-protection structures would involve the delta suffering from massive catastrophic flood impacts, at the very least. Not surprisingly, therefore, the 1928 Flood Committee Report carried a peculiarly sharp disconnect, as noted earlier, between its fairly accurate analysis of the flood problem and the rather tame and ineffective recommendations that were suggested as solutions. Thus, the 1928 Committee having failed to decisively force an initiative on the flood question, had its seventy-odd recommendations, over time, drift into irrelevance. Though some of the recommendations were carried out, their essentially limited thrust remained blunted and inconsequential.44

Overcoming the Impasse For proponents of flood-control, in theory at least, the technical and ecological stalemate in the delta could still be comprehensively resolved by attempting one grand possibility: a solution in which the river’s flows, arising at its catchment or main sources, could be regulated through a set of dams and reservoirs In other words, if a large dam or a series of reservoirs could be operated like a giant faucet at the headwaters of the river itself, the previously unrestrained flows could then be shut off or alternatively released to allow for the exact amounts of water to enter the deltaic stretches of the province. In many ways’, this idea could convey (p.172) as much a claim for being technologically elegant as it could also be a socially neat solution for the coastal tracts in Orissa. In effect, proponents pushing for large dams could argue that, besides controlling the rivers at their source, they simultaneously helped obviate the need for untangling the complicated and intractable social polarizations and disparities that had set in the deltaic tracts, caused, as described earlier, by the unequal impacts from flood-control structures. Small wonder then, amongst the many supporters in the delta for constructing a large dam, was the biggest defender for the continuance of the Gajari embankment, the raja of Kanika. In his interview to the committee, the raja enthusiastically averred that reservoirs or lakes needed to be constructed in the catchment areas of the river, which could then be used for blocking and holding flood waters during peak periods and gradually releasing them over the course of the year.45 The Flood Committee, however, forcefully dismissed the proposal on two counts: …it is most improbable that a site or sites could be found which would permit of the storage of this huge volume of water; even should such exist, the cost would run into many crore of rupees.

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The Great Denouement and After …the gravest defect inherent in any scheme of this nature is the fact that the lives of the reservoirs, presuming their construction to be technically and financially possible, would be extremely limited. The silt laden water, trapped by the dams, would deposit its sediment and in a comparatively short period the storage capacity of the reservoirs would be reduced to such an extent as to render the works useless.46 In many ways, the Flood Committee’s criticism and rejection of the idea for constructing reservoirs and large dams in the catchment of the deltaic rivers appears prescient and some what ahead of its time. Contemporary critiques of dams have, in fact, repeatedly highlighted the dangers of the possibility for rapid sediment build-up in large dam created reservoirs47 By the 1930s, however, the change in the overall political climate in India dramatically began to alter the tenor and terms of the discussions on the flood situation in Orissa. Most palpably, the promulgation of the Government of India Act of 1935, reframed the administration’s response to the flood debate. The Act of 1935 allowed for the creation of elected (albeit on a very narrow franchise) provincial governments and, though these state assemblies were circumscribed by limited financial and executive powers, they could nevertheless open up certain issues to a broader spectrum of (p.173) local pressures.48 In the instance of Orissa, the first provincial assembly elections held in 1937 ended with the Congress Party the then largest political organization challenging British rule in the subcontinent, forming the ministry with Biswanath Das as its chief minister. Soon after, in 1937 itself, a devastating flood overran the delta. Chief Minister Biswanath Das in ‘distress’ approached Mahatma Gandhi, who after a short tour of the flood affected area declared that he had been immensely overwhelmed by the suffering of the people in’ the delta.49 In turn, Gandhi suggested that Biswanath Das seek ‘advice and guidance’ on the flood question from M. Visvesvaraya, a much celebrated engineer and former dewan (prime minister) of Mysore.50 Gandhi’s endorsement of Visvesvaraya, however, was not without an element of surprise. Earlier, Visvesvaraya and Gandhi had been involved in a spat of sorts over whether and how India should be industrialized and modernized. Gandhi encapsulated his position in a dictum of sorts, described broadly as ‘industrialize and perish’, while Visvesvaraya’s retorted with ‘industrialize or perish’. Subsequent encounters on the same between the two became acrimonious and strained somewhat their equation with each other.51 Gandhi’s suggestion to nevertheless defer the Orissa flood problem to Visvesvaraya was, possibly, influenced by his earlier visit to the Krishnaraja Sagar Dam, built across the Kaveri River in the state of Mysore. The dam had been planned and executed by Visvesvaraya and completed in 1916, though its reservoir was filled to its full height of a 124 ft only in 1924.52 Gandhi on viewing the Krishnaraja Sagar Dam apparently was so impressed that in a subsequent

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The Great Denouement and After public meeting, he went on to shower ‘glowing tributes’ on Visvesvaraya for his ‘patriotism and selflessness’.53

Another Prophet, Another Committee Following Gandhi’s advice, Biswanath Das promptly impressed Visvesvaraya into service, who soon submitted a preliminary note on 15 November 1937. The note was based on Visvesvaraya’s study of the Flood Committee Report of 1928 along with two ‘connected papers’, the authorship of which he did not specify. Added to which, was certain general information he had gleaned from press reports on the floods, and from the Imperial Gazetteer and Census Report of 1931.54 In the absence of a field visit, in the preliminary note, Visvesvaraya, besides summing up the previous findings, argued that there was need for exhaustive surveys and studies on the deltaic rivers in order to place the ‘whole scheme of things on a scientific (p.174) basis’. He also called for the establishment of a special executive division for flood investigation work. The significance, however, that was ascribed to the note, largely in later years, stemmed entirely from an almost cryptic comment that he made on the need for exploring possibilities for the construction of a dam. The reference was in fact a point that Visvesvaraya had made as part of his general emphasis in the note, which was aimed at pushing for more comprehensive studies and investigations and was not perhaps intended to be a categorical plea for the construction of a dam. To quote: Reservoirs if constructed will be of value to hold up the floods temporarily and release them gradually so as to run to waste at a harmless rate. The Committee [1928] considers that proposals under this head are not practicable. The reasons seem to be that such reservoirs will have to be outside the province and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Orissa Government. Another reason expressly Stated is that on a river of the size of the Mahanadi, a reservoir could be constructed only at a gigantic cost. Unless the Committee [1928] have based their conclusions on dependable data which however are not revealed in their report it seems necessary to investigate the question fully.55 Though Visvesvaraya’s approach to the issue of building a dam was hemmed by the caveat that more studies on the subject needed to be done, he, nevertheless, chose to frame the key obstacles to the dam only in terms of its political (location of the site) and economic (costs) dimensions, while underplaying or ignoring the Flood Committee’s more substantial fears about the technical feasibility of the project such as the sedimentation rate of the reservoir. This oversight, or deliberate omission on Visvesvaraya’s part was subsequently to greatly influence the nature of the debates over the need and urgency for constructing the Hirakud Dam across the Mahanadi River. In particular, Visvesvaraya in restricting his concerns to only the river’s flood waters, ended up muting the notion of the deltaic flood as a combination of both the volume of water discharged by the river along with its sediment load. Visvesvaraya, in fact, Page 16 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After in his second note, submitted in 1939, went on to further amplify the emphasis on treating floods as essentially an overwhelming and torrential mass of water.56 The second note was prepared following his ten-day visit to the Orissa Delta, on the invitation of the then Public Works Minister Nityananda Kanungo.57 The visit in early April 1938 was Visvesvaraya’s first direct exposure to the deltaic rivers of Orissa. The parallels with Sir Arthur Cotton’s momentous (p.175) survey of 1858 are striking. Both, Visvesvaraya and Cotton were already celebrated engineers with formidable reputations when they were called upon to deliver a ‘lasting solution’ to the Orissa Delta’s flood problem. Both chose to investigate the flood problem in the dry season. Lastly, both were to leave their indelible imprint: Cotton with his infamous canal system and Sir Visvesvaraya with the controversial Hirakud Dam.58 The Second Note, which essentially reiterated the need for hydrographic surveys, a study of the river basins, and the collection of data, nevertheless also acknowledged that a paradoxical situation prevailed in the delta in which ‘people in unprotected areas ask for protection and some people in protected areas want low floods and would welcome inundation’.59 Visvesvaraya, however, did not address this paradox and left it instead to the Flood Advisory Committee, that had been instituted on an earlier recommendation by him. The Orissa Flood Advisory Committee, formed in 1938, was composed of a three-member team comprising R.S.M.G. Rangaiya, C.C. Inglis, and A. Vipan.60 In their first interim report submitted in January 1939, the Flood Advisory Committee stated: Generally speaking while they [1928 Flood Committee] considered the problem as one of disposal of excess floods, we [Flood Advisory Committee, 1938] view it mainly as one of proper distribution and disposal of excess sand.61 Following this conclusion, emanated the Flood Advisory Committee’s belief that the flood potential of the delta could be neutralized by enhancing the capacity of the river’s channel to scour its own bed. This could be achieved, in their opinion, by generating and maintaining a high velocity within the river’s channel by its current, which would then be able to convey the silt and sand load to the sea. The deltaic rivers, consequently, had to be conserved within a single channel and not be allowed to dissipate their energy through innumerable branches. Towards this end, the Flood Advisory Committee advocated: a) To improve a river, it is necessary (i) to improve the outfall conditions; (ii) to control the distribution of water and sand entry at the heads of channels; (iii) to restrict the number of channels. b) Without double embankments, deltaic rivers break up and deteriorate. Double embanking in conjunction with the other measures recommended, retards or prevents such deterioration.

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The Great Denouement and After (p.176) c) Double embankments necessitate the provision of high level escapes. With the improvement of the river channels, the depth of spill through these escapes should be gradually reduced. d) Control by double embankments and escapes should be combined with suitable drainage of the basins between rivers62 In effect, the Advisory Committee, by suggesting that double embanking be employed along the course of the river, merely reinvoked the views of Lieutenant Harris, who in the middle half of the nineteenth century, sought to prevent the draining of the waters of the Mahanadi through the Kathjuri River on the same principle. The unsuccessful Naraj Spur constructed by Harris, as pointed out in Chapter 3, was intended to enhance the velocity of the Mahanadi’s current in order to, or so it was presumed then, clear the river’s bed and allow the latter to discharge its silt load into the sea. With the submission of the Advisory Committee’s final interim report in 1942, embankment construction was once again brought to the centre stage. Thus, the earlier views and analyses of the 1928 Committee were either jettisoned or made to virtually stand on its head. Whereas the Flood Committee had emphatically declared embankments as a threat to geomorphologic processes inherent in deltaic formation, the Advisory Committee described the construction of these flood-protection structures to be a sine qu non for securing the delta from seasonal inundations. The Orissa administration, however, perhaps still fresh from over a century of disastrous experiences with embankments in the delta, allowed the proposals of the Advisory Committee to suffer the usual routines of bureaucratic drift. This administrative mix of fatigue and inaction towards implementing protective strategies in the delta, most poignantly perhaps, signalled the end of an aggressive era of official attempts at flood-control and insulation through structural measures. In a sense, the delta, after almost a century of scratchy battles, seemed to have won a good round in almost a century. By all indications, the impacts of the floods of 1927 was a calamity that was not entirely natural in its devastations and origins. If anything, as the Flood Committee of 1928 was keen to declare, the damage caused by the inundations had been in large measure brought about as much by the fury of the rivers as the latter had been aggravated by over a century of flood-control strategies in the delta. Most significantly as well, the policy for flood-control had, over time, simultaneously recast and altered (p.177) the region’s hydrology and social organization. The canal system and the embankments, for example, had created a slew of vested interests who sought protection by having the flood risk being disproportionately directed against villages in the non-embankment and noncanal tracts. Second, the canal system could neither be dismantled, given the huge costs of such an endeavour, nor could investments on it be stopped as that would entail a further aggravation of the flood problem. Lastly, the maze of embankments that had grown in an unplanned manner throughout the delta were intimately linked with the rent-collection strategies of powerful landlords Page 18 of 23

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The Great Denouement and After and zamindars In effect, the fracturing of the deltaic lands into various degrees of protected zones led to the proliferation of sectional interests, the more powerful and resourceful of whom seemed quite capable of staving off any attempts at ending their relative advantages from flood-protection. The Orissa administration, consequently, seemed caught in a cleft of sorts. They could neither restore the delta to its natural hydraulic equilibrium by dismantling the canals and embankments, nor could they indefinitely sustain the rapidly rising costs and increasing logistics for ensuring flood-control and protection in the delta. An alternate course of least resistance could nevertheless be followed, which involved measures at relieving the most congested areas through syphons, escapes, drainage cuts, and by lowering the heights of certain embankments. These quick fixes, however, were, at most, short-term solutions. The delta would still remain substantially vulnerable to any extreme hydraulic event. Increasingly, therefore, with the ecological and social stalemate within the Orissa Delta remaining politically irresolvable, pressure began to build up for shifting the theatre for hydraulic intervention. The delta’s flood problem, in effect, was now sought to be cured by manipulating the river at its catchment—an altogether new section of the river’s anatomy that had been hitherto untouched by the idea of control. The claim, this time around, however, was going to go beyond the simple rationales for domination or control. The delta’s flailing blue ribbons were now sought to be ‘produced’ or ‘remade’ itself, as an artefact in the image of gigantic new social, political, technological, and economic forces of the twentieth century. Notes:

(1) . L.S.S. O’Malley, Cuttack Gazetteer (Patna 1933), p. 103. (2) . Report of the Flood Committee 1928 (Patna 1929), pp. 12–13. (3) . Ibid., p. 3. (4) . Ibid., p. 56. (5) . For some approximations on the amount of deltaic land in Orissa classified as protected by the canals and embankments, see Appendix II. (6) . Report of the Flood Committee 1928, p. 12. (7) . The three fully protected areas were the lands between the Baitarani River and the Kharsua, irrigated by the Jajpur Canal. Lands between the Birupa on the north and the Mahanadi and Nuna in the south, irrigated by the Pattamondai and Kendrapara canals. And lands between the Pyka and the Mahanadi in the north and the Kathjuri and Olanka in the south that were irrigated by the Taldanda and Machgaon canals.

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The Great Denouement and After (8) . Rai Sahib Ajoy Chandra Das, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, vol. 2 (Patna 1928), p. 25. (9) . Babu Bichitrananda Das, OLAP, vol. 2, nos 19 to 20, 9 March 1938, p. 1331. (10) . The cultivators, unlike those in the protected area, did not broadcast the paddy before the flood season. Instead the floods were waited out and transplantation operations extended up to early October. (11) . Report of the Flood Committee, 1928, pp. 14–15. (12) . P. T. Mansfield, late settlement officer, Orissa in Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, pp. 27–8. (13) . Mandhata Gorachand Patnaik Mahasaya, OLAP, vol. 2, nos 19 to 20, 9 March 1938, p. 1321. (14) . Gopal Prasad Das, chairman, District Board Balasore, Jagannath Prasad Das, vice-chairman, District Board, Balasore, Mohini Mohan Chakravarti, district engineer, Balasore in Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, pp. 11–12. (15) . Maulvi Muhammad Latifur Rahman, OLAP, vol. 2, nos 19 to 20, 9 March 1938, p. 1327. (16) . Banberi Palit, secretary, Orissa Landholders Association and Bhikari Charan Patnaik, secretary Orissa People’s Association in Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 41. (17) . Jadumani Mangaraj, ex-chairman local board Kendrapara; ex-member Cuttack District board: ex-commissioner Cuttack Municipality; ex-member AllIndia Congress Committee; ex-secretary Utkal Provincial Congress Committee; member education Committee Cuttack District board; and director cooperative Central Bank Kendrapara, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee 1928, p. 23. (18) . Nityananda Kanungo, OLAP, vol. 1, nos 12 and 13, 16 September 1937, pp. 694–95. (19) . Nityananda Kanungo, OLAP, vol. 4, no. 9, 24 March 1939, p. 373. (20) . Brajasunder Das, OLAP, vol. 2, nos 19 to 20, 9 March 1938, p. 1334. (21) . K.R. Bery, superintendent engineer, Orissa Circle, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 62. (22) . Ibid.

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The Great Denouement and After (23) . Nityananda Kanungo, OLAP, vol. 1, nos 12 and 13, 17 September 1937, pp. 694–8 (24) . Gobinda Prasad Singh, OLAP, vol. 1, no. 4, 3 September 1937, pp. 174–5. (25) . Report of the Flood Committee 1928, p. 33. (26) . Recommendation no. 29: ‘The Gajaria embankment on the Brahmini should be removed and the Uttikan embankment on the same river curtailed. All further reclamation in the Hansua estuary should be stopped’. Report of the Flood Committee 1928, p. 57. (27) . Govind Prasad Singh, OLAP, vol. 1, no. 4, 3 September 1937, p. 174. (28) . Ibid., pp. 178–9. (29) . Raja Rajendra Narayan Bhanj Deo, Kanika, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 20. (30) . Braja Sunder Deb, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 21. (31) . Syed Zain-ud-din, manager Aul Estate, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, pp. 21–2. (32) . Babu Godavaris Misra, OLAP, vol. 1, no. 4, 3 September 1937, pp. 158–9. (33) . Nityananda Kanungo, OLAP, vol. 1, no. 4, 3 September 1937, p. 162. (34) . Godavaris Misra, OLAP, vol. 1, no. 4, 3 September 1937, pp. 159–60. (35) . Nityananda Kanungo, OLAP, vol. 1 no. 4, 3 September 1937, p. 162. (36) . Ibid., pp. 162–3. (37) . D.R. Sethi, deputy director of agriculture, Orissa, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 5. (38) . K.R. Bery, superintendent engineer, Orissa Circle, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 2. (39) . Hare Krushna Mahatab, late chairman of the Balasore District Board and Makand Prasad Das, late vice-chairman, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 16. (40) . Rai Sahib Prafulla Chandra Patnaik, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 12. (41) . Godavaris Misra, OLAP, vol. 2, 7 October 1936, p. 190.

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The Great Denouement and After (42) . Banbehari Palit, secretary, Orissa Landlords Association and Bhikari Charan Patnaik, secretary, Orissa Peoples Association, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 41. (43) . Nityananda Kanungo, OLAP, vol. 2, nos 17 to 21, 7 March 1938, pp. 1116– 17. (44) . In a reply to a question raised by legislator Babu Jagannath Das in the Bihar and Orissa Legislative Council, the relevant minister stated that: (a) Thirty recommendations were carried out fully, (b) 24 were partially carried out, and (c) Sixteen were not carried out. See Questions and Answers, Bihar and Orissa Legislative Council Debates, vol. 30, Wednesday 21 March 1934, pp. 480–1. (45) . Raja Rajendra Narayan Bhanj Deo, Evidence Taken Before the Flood Committee, p. 19. See also Jadumani Mangaraj, ibid., p. 23. (46) . Report of the Orissa Flood Committee 1928, p. 10. (47) . Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams (London and New York 2001), pp. 107–12. On the Hirakud Dam and its problems with sedimentation and siltation see R. D’Souza, Pranab Mukhopadhyay, and A. Kothari, ‘Re-evaluating Multi-purpose River Valley Projects: A Case Study of Hirakud, Ukai and IGNP’, EPW, 33(6), 1998, pp. 297–302. (48) . On the period between 1928–37 and the events on the ministry making after the 1937 elections see Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947 (Delhi 2003), pp. 254–348. (49) . V.S. Narayana Rao, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (Delhi 1982), p. 111. (50) . Ibid., p. 111. For a biographical sketch of M. Visvesvaraya see Y.G. Krishnamurti, Sir M. Visvesvaraya: A Study (Bombay, 1941); V. Sitamaraiah, M. Visvesvaraya (Delhi 1971); V.S. Narayana Rao, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya: His Life and Work (Mysore, 1973); V.S. Narayana Rao has also published an abridged version titled Mokhsahagundam Visvesvaraya (Delhi 1982). All these biographies tend to be hagiographic. Visvesvaraya’s contributions and role in the field of engineering and his project for modernizing post-independent India, I believe, still awaits a critical and balanced examination. (51) . Rao, Mokhshagundam Visvesvaraya: His Life and Work (Mysore 1973), pp. 202–6. (52) . The government of the Madras Presidency had challenged the Mysore State government’s right to construct the Krisharaja Sagar Dam. Filling up the reservoir of the Krishnaraja Sagar Dam to its full capacity, therefore, had to

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The Great Denouement and After await the clearance from the arbitrator’s award, which was delivered only in 1924. See Henry C. Hart, New India’s River’s (Bombay 1956), pp. 28–41. (53) . Rao, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, p. 105. (54) . M. Visvesvaraya, The Flood Problem in Orissa: A Preliminary Note (Cuttack 1937), p. 15. (55) . Ibid., p. 5. (56) . Though Visvesvaraya, in his ‘Second Note’, did observe that the floods brought sand and silt and that deltaic rivers tended to gradually raise their beds, he did not relate these aspects to that broader geomorphologic processes that were intrinsic and fundamental to the delta’s hydraulic regime. Instead he reiterated the need for flood-protection measures aimed at improving the ‘security’ of the tract. (57) . M. Visvesvaraya, The Flood Problem in Orissa: Second Note (Cuttack 1939), p. 1. (58) . In a brief contribution to a commemorative volume celebrating Visvesvaraya’s birth centenary, the then Chief Minister H.K. Mahtab ascribed the ‘…foundations of whatever irrigation and flood-protection work are going on today in Orissa’ to Visvesvaraya’s reports of 1937 and 1939. See ‘Resolved Orissa Flood Problem’ by H.K. Mahtab in M.V. (Dr M. Visvesvaraya): Birth Centenary Commemoration vol., published by Visvesvaraya Centenary Celebration Committee (Bangalore 15 September 1960), p. 197. (59) . Ibid., p. 3. (60) . R.S.M.G. Rangaiya, chief engineer and secretary, Public Works Department, Mysore; C.C. Inglis, director, Central Irrigation and Hydrodynamic Research Station Poona; A. Vipan, chief engineer and secretary to government, Public Works Department, Orissa. After the second interim report was submitted in 1940, A. Vipan retired from the assignment and was replaced by S.K. Roy. The Orissa Flood Advisory Committee submitted three interim reports: January 1939, January 1940, and February 1942. (61) . First Interim Report of the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee (Cuttack 1939), p. 5. (62) . Third Interim Report of the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee (Cuttack 1942), pp. 2–3.

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Production of the River

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Production of the River Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter describes the introduction of Multi-Purpose River Valley Development (MPRVD) and the Hirakud Dam in particular as being centrally involved in the political shaping of hydraulic technology in India. Introduction of MPRVD projects in India ran alongside or rather was prefaced on the wearing away of the provincial government’s control over and access to their hydraulic endowments. MPRVD schemes were soon spread not just physically but metaphorically and ideologically as well for calibrating a specific type of social temperature for rule in India’s immediate post-independence years. The Mahanadi was to be physically transformed into a sequence of calibrated flows, intended finally to be harnessed as a unit of capital. The history of flood-control in Orissa helps reveal the determining character of colonial capitalism in general and the latter’s relationships with the natural world in particular. Keywords:   Multi-Purpose River Valley Development (MPRVD), Hirakud Dam, India, hydraulic technology, Mahanadi, Orissa, colonial capitalism, flood-control

By the early 1940s, the official imagination on ways and means for tackling the delta’s mounting flood challenge seemed comprehensively exhausted. Despite the accumulated recommendations of innumerable commissions, inquiries, and often zealous structural interventions, the spiralling social, financial, and ecological costs brought on by flood-control measures could not be contained. Embankments and the canal system, it was observed, congested drainage, exacerbated the flood line and, given time, tended to provoke hydraulic volatility. Added to which, these structures by fragmenting the delta into different levels of protective enclaves, engendered the creation of a number of ‘vested interests’ Page 1 of 31

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Production of the River led in the main, as pointed out in the previous chapter, by landed zamindars whose estates critically depended on flood-protection. These interests, moreover, became some sort of natural opponents, as it were, to any administrative initiative that sought to either slacken flood-control measures or restore the delta to its previous hydraulic integrity as a geomorphologic process. Thus, the government found itself in a double bind: they could neither sustain the permanent upkeep of the embankments and the canals nor could they dismantle flood-control in its entirety. However, just when the strategy for flood-control in Orissa seemed to have irretrievably collapsed under the weight of its multiple contradictions, events in the 1940s—the cusp years heralding the end of colonial rule and India’s imminent independence—stoked a fresh impetus for the dramatic altering of the delta’s landscape of hydraulic vulnerability. The changed political context in this period enabled colonial capitalism to undertake a hitherto unparalleled scale in river manipulation in British India. Through the rubric of MPRVD, the colonial government, in its fading years of empire was once again involved in giving shape to an altogether new rhetoric and paradigm for rule. Significantly, the MPRVD was expected to initiate a complete departure from the entire nineteenth-century colonial (p.183) experience with the ideology and practice of flood-control. Thus, unlike the earlier years in eastern India, when deltaic rivers were sought to be contained within their channels through embankments and canals, MPRVD was intended to ‘harness’ flood waters through a technological complex. Deltaic flooding, in effect, was no longer to be treated as a natural calamity but instead now viewed as its obverse—a sought after ‘natural resource’. Central to this changed notion on flood-control was the drive to qualitatively transform the very hydraulic character of the delta itself. In other words, MPRVD was intended to ‘produce’ Orissa’s deltaic rivers not only as technological artefact and economic unit but, most strikingly, to be assembled as a specific political moment. Thus, I argue, the introduction of MPRVD in eastern India and the consequent construction of the Hirakud Dam over the Mahanadi River should not be understood as a mere ramping up of the idea of river control; instead it needs to be described as the colonial state’s attempt at ‘producing’ the river to craft an altogether new equation for social and economic power. The notion of ‘production’ here, I draw from Neil Smith’s use of the term to discuss the manner in which capitalism does not merely attempt a linear expansion towards the control or domination of nature but seeks to extend capitalist social relations into the latter. In other words, capitalism attempts to appropriate and transform nature into a means of production, which in turn will enable capitalist accumulation and affirm the value-relation—the dominance of exchange-value over that of use. Nature fashioned in the ‘image of capital’.1 This ‘production’ of the river while undoubtedly marking an altogether new era in hydraulic manipulation in the region was nonetheless paradoxical: though heralding a decisive shift in flood-control strategies in the region, especially Page 2 of 31

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Production of the River from the previous iron imperatives of colonial capitalism, it nevertheless was moulded and nurtured in the womb of the latter. Thus, MPRVD in British India was strongly anchored in the legacies of the colonial order and, therefore, was substantially shaped as well by many of the latter’s pronounced and troubled anxieties in the 1940s. This chapter, consequently, will discuss the introduction of MPRVD and the Hirakud Dam in particular as being centrally involved in the political shaping of hydraulic technology in India.

(p.184) The Era of Multi-purpose River Valley Development The global model for MPRVD was pioneered in the United States in the early 1930s with the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the construction of a series of dams on the Tennessee River and its tributaries. By the latter half of the 1930s, the TVA’s experience with comprehensive river regulation acquired the status of what James Scott has termed as a ‘module’ of high modernizm—a prepackaged project that was considered deployable in other regions in the world.2 In the subsequent years, engineers, agronomists, economists, regional planners and scores of scientific and technical staff associated with the TVA were dispatched and charged with the onerous mission of replicating MPRVD in different river basins.3 The historical juncture in which the TVA module became a much sought after icon of modernity is significant. The era was marked by the rapid decline of the European colonial powers and the emergence of the United States of America as the new centre for capitalist dynamism. In the turbulent first hundred days of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–45), fifteen major bills were pushed through in the US Congress between 9 March and 16 June. After legislating upon a clutch of new relief programmes and establishing a number of government agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and the National Recovery Administration, the Roosevelt administration, by an Act on 18 May 1933 instituted the TVA. Amongst the several tasks outlined for the TVA, besides the industrial and agricultural development of the Tennessee Valley, was a plan for the comprehensive control and utilization of the flood waters of the Tennessee River.4 This was one of the first comprehensive multipurpose schemes ever deployed and dealt simultaneously with floodcontrol, navigation, electrical power generation, soil conservation, irrigation, and public health. The rhetoric celebrating the economic possibilities of the TVA, however, tended to obscure the fact that it was most significantly an attempt to address two discrete but inter-related developments that had come to haunt America in the 1930s: electrical modernization and the Great Depression (1929– 33). In the early decades of the twentieth century, electric power had displaced steam power in the United States as the primary source of energy and had become vital for the advance of manufacturing in particular and (p.185) Page 3 of 31

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Production of the River industrialization in general.5 Technological advances in generation and transmission had enabled private utilities to create significant economies of scale and consolidate their stake as monopoly players in the electricity market.6 Consequently, by 1926, private utilities controlled roughly 90 per cent of the entire electricity that was then being generated in the United State.7 This monopoly concentration in utility ownership in time provoked a strong popular reaction against its pricing and service operations, which soon snowballed into a well-articulated demand for federally controlled and regulated power production. Some of the prominent public power advocates of the period such as Gifford Pinchot (governor of Pennsylvania), George Norris (senator, Nebraska), La Follete (governor of Wisconsin) and J.D. Ross (superintendent of the Seattle City Lighting Department) persuasively argued that these private utilities were divorcing ownership from responsibility and had created ententes and cartels which kept electricity rates artificially high.8 These critics argued for the introduction of ‘giant power’—the conversion of all primary energy resources into electricity and their common pooling into regional grids that would be coordinated to feed into a nation-wide electrical transmission system. They also lobbied for the construction of federal power projects on the ‘yardstick principle’, that is, state-run utilities would take on the task of driving down the inflated electricity charges of private companies by offering cheaper rates.9 J.L. Brigham, in a study on the electrical industry in the United States, argued that the intense and bitter battles over electricity in the 1920s was at heart a quest for electrical modernization, as opposed to the demand by private utilities for merely pursuing electrification. For public power advocates electrical modernization referred to the growth of electrical consumption through the cheapening of electricity rates and the proliferation in the use of electrical appliances; electrification, on the other hand, was limited to the objective of transmitting electrical current to a defined geographic region. In other words, the private utilities were regarded as an obstruction to the further development and growth of the electrical and manufacturing industry in the United States.10 For reasons of scale and efficiency, hydroelectric projects became pivotal to the federal involvement in electric power production. The Grand Coulee, the Bonneville, Shasta, and many other such large dams were built in this period by the federal government and aimed largely at diluting the monopoly control of electrical production by private utilities.11 Harnessing (p.186) the volatile and flood prone Mississippi, Tennessee, Colorado, Columbia, and Missouri rivers, however, required the entwining of flood-control strategies with that of hydroelectric generation. A broad conception of river regulation and development was, therefore, needed and the idea of MPRVD rapidly acquired appeal. In effect, MPRVD, as a technological complex, was crafted to address the

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Production of the River imperative of unifying the objective of flood-control with hydroelectric generation.12 The concrete realization of a technological achievement is, however, often compelled to await the catalytic influence of a specific political moment. In the instance of the TVA, its execution as a project followed from the precipitating events of the Great Depression of 1929 and the subsequent package of policies that the Roosevelt administration initiated to arrest the economic slide. The construction of dams on the Tennessee was now reinvested with the task of reviving the American economy by becoming an outlet for federal spending and generating employment.13 These objectives were central to the New Deal programmes and were largely directed at boosting effective demand in the national economy.14 The imperative for public power and electrical modernization through hydroelectric generation, nevertheless, remained central to the overall schema of the TVA.15 In fact, the coupling of flood-control (through reservoirs) with hydroelectricity became so overwhelmingly critical to the industrializing drive that state governments which failed to unify the two rapidly lost their appeal to manufacturing interests, most notably, in the New England states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Here obstruction by private utilities and the inability of their respective ruling elites to coordinate through interstate compacts between 1927 and 1950, prevented flood-control schemes on the TVA model from being built. The consequent absence of cheap hydroelectricity in these regions, in time, became one of the leading causes for the flight of a large number of their manufacturing industries to the southern states.16 In sum, MPRVD in the United States was assembled by the intersection of the drive for public power with that of the peculiar context of the New Deal. While the former was necessary for escalating a fresh and radical phase in industrialization,17 the latter involved the restructuring of American capitalism through Keynesian inspired state-directed planning.18 The TVA phenomenon, therefore, it could be argued, was as much an intervention for river regulation through a complex of hydraulic technologies as it was an artefact shaped by a specific political economy for rule.19

(p.187) MPRVD Unbound: Recovering the Field of Development In response to a ‘catastrophic’ flood that overran the Damodar River basin in 1943, the Bengal government assembled a ten-member enquiry committee with the maharaja of Burdwan as chairman, N.K. Bose as secretary, and the distinguished scientist Meghnad Saha as one its members.20 The Damodar Flood Enquiry Committee as it came to be known, was charged with the task of evolving a plan for flood-control and examining the impacts of such schemes on railways, roads, irrigation, and health in deltaic Bengal. In the Committee’s second sitting in March 1944, Saha circulated an exhaustive note to the

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Production of the River members, detailing in glowing terms the performance of the TVA and the urgency for its replication in India.21 Of all the river basins in the world, the Damodar Valley presents the closest parallel to the Tennessee Valley, though on a smaller scale. The radical solution of the problem of the Damodar Valley lies, therefore, in the adoption of similar procedure as has been done by the U.S. government through the TVA, with necessary modifications.22 In the course of the committee’s deliberations, Saha’s note was endorsed and in August 1944, its recommendations were forwarded to the central authorities via the offices of the Government of Bengal. In a subsequent series of administrative actions, through Lord Halifax, then British Ambassador to the United States of America, WL. Voorduin, a senior engineer on the staff of the TVA, was hired to provide the necessary technical input for introducing MPRVD in India. Voorduin, after being appointed as member of the Central Technical and Power Board (CTPB), was prompt in outlining a plan for the Damodar basin, which he grandly declared would essentially be a replication of the TVA experience.23 The colonial administration’s enthusiasm for adopting MPRVD was, however, unceremoniously halted on the thorny and sensitive question of provincial autonomy and inter-provincial coordination.24 Much to the chagrin of the central authorities, it was realized that schemes dealing with water which included projects for its storage and for power generation was an item in list II of the Seventh Schedule of the Government of India Act of 1935. All works relating to water management and allied activities, therefore, fell under the purview of provincial control.23 The Act of 1935, virtually debarred the central government from assuming executive authority over provincial subjects or from intervening in (p.188) inter-provincial matters Even the Inter-Provincial Council, which under Section 135 of the Act could investigate or discuss matters relating to the provinces, was a purely advisory body with no executive power.26 In effect, provincial autonomy became the most significant obstacle to ‘rapid development’, a dilemma that was poignantly summed up by Keith C. Roy, private secretary to the Member of Finance: Almost the entire field of development lies in the Provincial sphere, e.g. education, agriculture, canals, drainage, embankments, water-power, communications…. But post-war development on so ambitious a scale as is now contemplated involves strong Central direction, control and coordination in a field which is almost entirely provincial.27 Besides recovering subjects from the provincial list, implementing technologies for MPRVD also required a hitherto unprecedented scale of administrative, legal, and executive intervention. B.R. Ambedkar then Member for Labour (1942–6) in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, the department responsible for irrigation and Page 6 of 31

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Production of the River hydroelectric power, after surveying the formidable list of obstacles confronting the execution of MPRVD projects arrived at three issues, which, in his opinion, warranted speedy resolution: a) To develop a new instrument of executive authority for the regional control and management of projects on rivers flowing through more than one state. b) To evolve a definite development approach of water and hydroelectric power resources of inter-state rivers c) To evolve an administrative set-up with a pool of technical experts to develop a national irrigation policy and render technical and other services to the provinces.28 Between 1944 and 1945, not unexpectedly, the three issues and the task of asserting the centre’s control over subjects listed as provincial concerns consumed the Government of India (GOI). The GOI had to be cautious to walk a careful line between riding rough shod over regional sentiment, while, on the other hand, mobilizing the latter through procedures of consultation and cooperation. This balancing act, however, often remained short on tact, whenever possible, the proponents of the centralizing impulse in the GOI often dropped all its pretences of carrying (p.189) out any dialogue or discussions on the subject. On 9 September 1944, for example, Ambedkar, upon approving the establishment of the Central Irrigation and Water Advisory Board (CIWAB), opposed the need for any provincial consultations on the issue of inter-state river management, allegedly because it would ‘cause considerable delay’.29 In actual fact, Ambedkar’s excuse was perhaps less candid than the admission of B.C.A. Cook, Secretary, Planning and Development who, in an internal communication, underlined that the GOI’s impatience was chiefly motivated by the desire to recover the ‘field of development’ from the provinces by quickly instituting mechanisms such as supra-regional authorities for the task. [The] Labour Department have the support of the Planning & Development Department in the proposal to constitute a Central Irrigation and Waterways Advisory Board…. The object is to take over as much responsibility as possible in respect of waterways control.30 (emphasis added). To the central authorities, nonetheless, the likelihood of a backlash from the provinces against the loss of their autonomy and control over resources remained a tangible concern and perhaps explains why the former often chose to adopt a language of conciliation, ambivalence, and nuance rather than straightforward fiat.31 This tactic is transparently evident in one of the very first letters from the viceroy on the subject of the Damodar Valley Project. In a fairly long winded letter sent to the governor of Bengal in October 1944, the viceroy sought to imply that the CIWAB had the limited objective of merely providing Page 7 of 31

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Production of the River ‘advise’ to the provinces on matters connected with drainage and river control.32 To pre-empt possible doubt, he also added that even in the event of an authority being vested in a supra-regional corporation, the centre would merely ‘consider becoming partners with the Provinces in the enterprise’.33 A second clarification of the momentum for MPRVD followed, with another letter issued two months later in December 1944 by H.C. Prior, Secretary Labour, which informed the provinces of the centre’s proposal to create another federal agency named as the Central Waterways Irrigation and Navigation Commission (CWINC). The CWINC, it was declared, would be headquartered at Delhi and its concerns were listed as: a) irrigation, b) river control c) conservation and control of flood water d) hydroelectric development e) soil conservation f) tidal problems g) navigation. In the hope of emphasizing the need and urgency for regional cooperation, (p.190) Prior took the initiative to also enclose extracts of J.S. Ransmeier’s glowing account of the TVA, which indicated immense economic advantages that could follow from coordinated planning on river control.34 In response to the second letter, nine out of the then eleven provinces, in addition to several princely states, welcomed the proposal for the formation of a commission.35 Despite the fact that Madras and Bengal were the two formidable provincial objectors, the Labour Department decided to set up the commission on the plea that the majority of the provinces had agreed on its formation.36 Having thus satisfied itself by acquiring sanction for constituting a federal water agency, the Labour Department issued its third and final letter in March 1945, titled a ‘Memorandum on the Sone River Valley Authority’. This time around, however, the department struck an entirely different tone. The provinces and states were informed that on the setting up of a federal agency they were to surrender ‘full authority’ over the concerned river to the constituted body. This agency was entitled not only to have the sole right to generate electricity and to prevent the provinces and states from abstracting water without its approval, but also had the sanction to locate dam sites and submerge lands in the territories on ‘such terms as may be arranged’.37 Furthermore, though the agency would legally derive its powers from government it was nevertheless also to be invested ‘with the necessary flexibility and initiative’ to develop the resources of the river basin. The implication was that the agency was not necessarily obliged to consult the provincial or state governments on all of its actions.38 Though the Memorandum stated that the sphere of control of the river basin authority was to be circumscribed to the extent the provincial and state governments deemed necessary, it was repeatedly also asserted that the constituted body would nevertheless be invested with supra-ordinate power to plan and develop the ‘future of the river’: Provinces and states must therefore realize that if an Authority is set up that Authority must be given certain of their [Provinces and States] powers

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Production of the River and responsibilities if it is to operate and must be given a measure of financial independence.39 Finally, through a resolution on 5 April 1945, the GOI constituted the Central Water Irrigation and Navigation Commission with A.N. Khosla (1945–53) as its first chairman. On paper, at least, the CWINC was still defined as a central fact finding, planning, and coordinating organization (p.191) for the purpose of ‘advising’ the central and state governments with regard to irrigation, navigation, and waterways.40 In practice, however, a different equation from that stated in the resolution seems to have operated; an equation in which the CWINC functioned largely as a bureaucracy committed to its own agendas and accountable solely to the central government at Delhi.41 Some indication of the CWINC’s highly centralized style is indicated in a communication in late 1951 sent by Hare Krushna Mahtab, minister of industry and supply in Nehru’s cabinet, to Nabakrushna Chaudhuri then chief minister of Orissa: The position is that the Central Government has sanctioned a loan to the Orissa government for the construction of the Hirakud project. The Orissa government has entrusted the CWINC with the work of execution which means both the engineering and the administration. The CWINC is a part of the Government of India and, therefore, whatever the CWINC proposes is sanctioned by the Finance Ministry here [Delhi]. The sanction of Orissa government with regard to any proposal of the CWINC has not been sought nor made. 1 went through the papers and found out that even the creation of an additional post of Superintendent Engineer in which Palit was fixed up, the Finance Ministry here sanctioned it. So far as the execution of the project is concerned the entire responsibility is CWINC’s.42 There were complaints that Khosla behaved autocratically and had transformed CWINC into a personal fiefdom. The temperamental Meghnad Saha was, in fact, sufficiently provoked to state in Parliament that … the Chairman [A.N. Khosla] was combining in himself the functions of Brahma, Vishnu & Maheshwar. He drew up the designs, he executed the schemes himself and as Secretary he passed the whole thing himself.43 While the functioning of the CWINC is not immediately relevant to our argument, the anecdotal evidence given here suggests that the introduction of MPRVD projects in India ran alongside or rather was premised on the whittling down of the provincial government’s control over and access to their hydraulic endowments. Thus, through a series of manoeuvres the colonial government was able to initiate an altogether new legal and executive context for instituting supra-regional authorities. These bodies were designed to fundamentally realign

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Production of the River the relationship between the central authority and the provinces in order to accommodate the logistics for MPRVD.

(p.192) Damming the Mahanadi With the CWINC finally constituted, the GOI lost little time in referring to it as the ‘problem’ of the Orissa Delta and, in May 1945, A.N. Khosla personally undertook an investigation of the Mahanadi Basin. Following this, in a rhetorical flourish, Khosla declaimed that ‘the only cure for the many troubles of Orissa, namely floods, droughts, poverty and disease lay in the control, conservation and utilization of the enormous water wealth of its rivers by means of storage dams’.44 Official sanction for a scheme was immediately pressed for with the convening of the Orissa Multi-Purpose Rivers Conference on 8 November 1945, which met at Cuttack, and was attended by representatives from the Eastern Agency States, the Orissa government, and the adjoining Central Provinces. The deliberations ended with B.R. Ambedkar, as chairman of the conference, endorsing Khosla’s plan in ‘letter and spirit’; Orissa must therefore adopt the method which the United States adopted in dealing with the problem of its rivers That method is to dam the rivers at various points to conserve the water permanently in reservoirs45 The Mahanadi Valley Scheme, as envisioned by Khosla, involved the construction of three dams which he believed could be coordinated to simultaneously harness the river for hydroelectricity, navigation, and irrigation. The first dam was to be located at Hirakud roughly 2 miles from Sambalpur, the second at Tikkerpara, some 130 miles downstream of the first, and the third dam near Naraj, about 10 miles upstream of Cuttack. Two hundred thousand kilowatts of hydroelectricity were to be generated and the irrigated area was expected to cover 2½ million acres.46 The total cost was estimated at Rs 550 million, with the Hirakud Dam itself accounting for Rs 160 million.47 Within four days of the Cuttack conference, Khosla despatched a letter to B.K. Ghokhale, advisor to the governor of Orissa, in which he set out an almost frenzied pace for construction: We should aim at completing the preliminary surveys by February [1946] so that we can proceed with the preparation of a detailed project. If we can in the meantime come to an understanding with the States regarding submergence of areas, there is a good possibility of being able to start with the preliminaries for the construction of the first dam by October 1946. Investigations for materials of construction will be taken up simultaneously with the topographical and geological surveys.48 (p.193) By early 1946, however, it became apparent that the scheme was going to provoke strong opposition and resistance from the eastern states, who were expected to bear the brunt of the losses from the submergence of their territories by the reservoirs of the Tikkerpara and Naraj dams.49 The project consequently had to be drastically revised as only the Hirakud Dam at Page 10 of 31

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Production of the River Sambalpur appeared to be politically feasible. As a strategic manoeuvre, H.C. Prior recommended that the GOI press on with the construction of the Hirakud Dam as an independent project and, on completion, its irrigation potential could be ‘dangled as a carrot’ with which an agreement with the eastern states could then be renegotiated for the other two dams.50 The rapid retreat to a single dam option possibly acted to heighten the authorities’ fear that in time even the decision to dam the Mahanadi at Sambalpur could run into trouble, which in turn perhaps accounts for Ghokhale’s anxious attempts to get the foundation stone of the Hirakud Dam laid as early as March 1946—barely five months after the Cuttack conference. A similar haste was displayed in sorting out the bureaucratic clearances for the dam, often with a near minimalist concern for technical detail and assessments on the feasibility of the project. Completing the formality of the foundation ceremony, in fact, now became the main focus and caused Prior to dash off a letter to S.C. Mazumdar, member CWINC, enquiring if progress on the Hirakud Dam was sufficient to justify the Labour Department approaching the Finance Department for sanction. In the same letter, Prior also raised three points that he assumed would need clarification before the Finance Department could be approached: a) The minimum amount of storage that would be required to achieve any measure of flood-control and the approximate cost per acre foot of such storage. b) The probable availability of perennial power whether solely by utilization of hydro or by joint scheme for hydro and thermal, and the probable demand for such power. c) The probable amount of water available for irrigation and the amount that might be covered by the sale of such water.51 Mazumdar, however, was not only unable to furnish information on any of the three questions, but, significantly enough, revealed that most of the surveys for the dam, initiated only in December 1945, were at an extremely preliminary stage and hence the estimates were tentative, if not (p.194) highly unreliable.52 In effect, much of the euphoria that surrounded the Mahanadi Scheme, even as its construction was considered a foregone conclusion, was based on a narrow set of incomplete investigations, at best. This yawning gap in reliable and accurate data, nevertheless, did not deter Narahari Rao, secretary finance, from being satisfied by mere ‘further discussions’ with Khosla on the matter and made clear that the Finance Department had no objections to the ceremony taking place.53 Moreover, according to Rao, the viceroy’s ‘personal interest’ on the subject of MRPVD had been communicated to his department.54 Consequently, Member Finance also gave a no objection certificate, which Prior was careful to record:

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Production of the River Honourable Member Finance says that he does not care a damn about the proposal to lay the foundation stone as he is all in favour of schemes of this type and does not think that the ceremony [foundation stone] should be put off merely because the question of incidence of expenditure, as between the Centre and the Province, has not yet been finally settled. He is therefore in favour of the ceremony taking place, provided the engineers are satisfied that a dam will be necessary at the site proposed.55 The central government continued to make allowances with another note from Rao on 6 February 1946, stating that it would not insist on the scheme being fully self-financing as long as it was technically sound and was likely to yield substantial benefits through ‘flood-control and other ways’.56 This insistence that the project be technically sound was not, however, pursued with any conviction by the GOI. For example, despite the Finance Department’s repeated declarations that reliable estimates were not provided to them by CWINC and there was a near absence of any credible studies on the dam’s feasibility, the GOI continued to allow the project to be carried out.57

Post-War Anxieties and MPRVD On the surface, the GOI’s enthusiasm and seemingly unchecked zeal for pursuing MPRVD projects is perplexing and appears to run contradictory to the familiar calculus of colonial governance in this period. Not only did the government, with inexplicable urgency, carry out a substantial overhaul of several key administrative, legal, and constitutional instruments in order to accommodate the logistics for constructing river valley schemes, but, more significantly, the import of the TVA model was tantamount to (p.195) an outright solicitation of American expertise, capital, and by implication the extension of the latter’s influence into British India. However, when placed against the backdrop of colonial anxieties about empire in the period, this hurried drive for a certain type of centralization and the reckless manner in which MPRVD projects were planned, assessed, and approved for implementation, suggests the emergence of an altogether different blueprint for imperial influence in the region. In effect, the introduction of MPRVD in British India signalled the forging of a new political moment and a substantial revision of the existing social and economic equations. At the heart of this rapidly changing arrangements for rule was the complicated relationship between Indian industrial capital and the colonial government. As early as August 1937, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) of the Indian National Congress (INC) had resolved to establish a committee of experts, who were to be entrusted with the task of taking up the questions of MPRVD and industrialization in India.58 The correspondence the CWC chose to draw between MPRVD, industrialization, and the need for a planning body was by itself a significant expression of the INC’s growing awareness of the urgency to elaborate an economic agenda for a national government. The vexed question of Page 12 of 31

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Production of the River Indian industrialization had already become a battleground of sorts in this period over which an intense struggle was waged between the colonial government, leaders of the nationalist movement, and Indian capital. The battle lines, however, were far from clearly drawn, with the political and economic agendas of the above groupings overlapping as often as they were irreconcilably poised against each other in certain arenas. The colonial government, following the rapid broadening of the social base of the anti-colonial struggle after 1917 had been seeking, throughout the subsequent decades, somewhat unevenly, to either enlist the support of the Indian business class, neutralize them, or prevent their joining the nationalist camp.59 Indian capitalists, on the other hand, were increasingly alarmed by what they perceived to be a strong drift towards left-wing populism by the leadership of the Congress party.60 Nevertheless, despite these fears, Indian capital still perceived the INC’s mass mobilization capabilities as vital towards sustaining pressure on the colonial government to ensure protection to Indian industry, create infrastructure through public investment, and regulate capital, commodity, and labour markets for indigenous business expansion.61 The Second World War had (p.196) in the meantime created conditions favourable for the Indian economy, with war-time demand giving a massive fillip to domestic production and causing a dramatic expansion in industrial activity and employment opportunities.62 Shadowing this industrial boom, however, were fears that once war-time demand ended and production in ordinance factories and civilian industrial establishments was curtailed, a vast section of the labour force was bound to be rendered unemployed, which alongside the demobilization of a large number of soldiers could lead to a potentially explosive political situation.63 These anxieties were, in fact, repeatedly expressed within the ranks of the colonial government and amongst leading sections of Indian business. As early as 1941, for example, in the proceedings of the first meeting of the Reconstruction Committee, Sir A.R. Mudalier, Member for Supply in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, solemnly observed: In every country industrial labour is a problem and unemployed industrial labour is certainly one of the grave problems…. It will be disastrous from the point of view of the national economy if we were to let loose a number of skilled labourers on the one hand and a number of unemployed sepoys [soldiers] on the other.64 The subsequent Quit India campaign in August of 1942 launched by the INC under Gandhi’s leadership further alarmed the colonial authorities by exposing the seething volatility in the political landscape, made pronounced by an intense burst in popular and radical militancy.65 By October of that year, the India Office and the GOI were already discussing Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s ‘sudden brainwave’, which was explained as a plan to ‘side track’ the political crisis in India by implementing a policy of social and economic reform.66 In the space Page 13 of 31

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Production of the River opened up for reconsidering the India situation by the War Cabinet in London, Ernest Bevin, minister of labour and national service, and Stafford Cripps, minister of aircraft production, teamed up to argue for a bold initiative that, in their opinion, should: …secure the support of the mass of Indian opinion during the war by a large scale programme of social improvement supported by a propaganda campaign designed to show that these benefits were due to British initiative.67 The Bevin-Cripps proposals, in fact, went to the length of suggesting that the GOI provide mass welfare measures in India as a strategic manoeuvre to uncouple popular loyalties from the elite leadership of the Indian National (p. 197) Congress.68 Though the Bevin-Cripps proposals were much ridiculed by the GOI, an immediate off-shoot of their campaign was an increasing awareness amongst official circles that formulating an appropriate public works policy with an emphasis on employment generating schemes such as anti-erosion works, road and building construction would be critical towards addressing the imperatives of the new political context. Not unexpectedly, therefore, the idea of MPRVD found quick and ready appeal in this period, as a means of generating employment for a great number of labourers in construction activity.69 Such plans received a further boost from the fact that the war had drastically altered the balance of trade position, with India now possessing a positive Sterling balance vis-à-vis Britain.70 Funds for a variety of developmental works could, therefore, in theory at least, be drawn from those reserves and several provincial governments were alerted to the possibility that infrastructure projects could be undertaken in their territories.71 Alongside the enthusiasm for industrial expansion a new perception about ‘regional interests’ also began acquiring traction and possibly explains the aggressive solicitations for projects by provincial governments in this period. In Orissa, for example, Chief Minister H.K Mahtab, in his speech to the Assembly during the debate on the Mahanadi Valley Project, announced that a scramble for funding was on and it was therefore imperative that the provincial government quickly overcome obstacles and any likely opposition to projects in Older to position themselves to receive investments from the centre. With regard to the Bengal, Bihar, U.P., the Punjab and Orissa projects, very keen competition is going on amongst these provinces to secure help from the Government of India and this will explain why Mr Gokhale, as advisor to the Government of Orissa was so much keen as to go out of his way to invite the Viceroy to lay the foundation stone before even the preliminary survey was made…he [Gokhale] wanted somehow or other to commit the Government of India to the scheme, even if after preliminary survey the site might be changed or the entire scheme might be abandoned…. As you Page 14 of 31

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Production of the River know, so far as Orissa is concerned this scheme will cost about Rs 60 crore [600 million]. So far as is known this is the rough cost; it may be more or it may be less, but this amounts to 25 years revenue of the Province of Orissa…. In view of this competition we think it will be wrong on our part to show our disinclination about this scheme by any means to the Government of India, either by asking them to delay the survey work or by asking them to abandon the work….72

(p.198) Planning for Rule However, the motivations of the GOI towards undertaking a relatively deeper interventionist role in the economy through investments and infrastructure projects was to now turn on a fresh social and economic equation, that comprised a range of policies directed essentially at lending coherence to an alliance of sorts between the colonial state and the fledgling class of Indian industrial capitalists. In short, the GOI had opted for turning the Bevin-Cripps proposal on its head.73 Even though, by the early 1940s, Indian business was largely frustrated with the colonial government due to the latter’s monetary policies, austerity budgets, and allowances to foreign capital,74 the rise in popular militancy in several parts of India, nevertheless, became a source of shared anxiety. Consequently in the drive to counter the threat of a radical attack against property in general, the GOI attempted to open fresh lines of cooperation with Indian capital through the rubric of post-war reconstruction planning. In March 1943, the largely defunct Reconstruction Committee set up in June of 1941 was replaced instead by a Committee of the Viceroy’s Council also termed the Reconstruction Committee of Council (RCC). The RCC, with the Viceroy as chairman, was constituted as a body with powers to exercise initiative in coordinating and sanctioning plans for economic development, for which it was provided a separate secretariat and allowed to decompose into several policy committees to deal with various aspects of the plans. It was, in fact, through these policy committees that the entente between the GOI and business became plainly visible with the entire spectrum of Indian and European industrial and commercial interests well represented in the various committees.75 Post-war planning by the RCC, not unexpectedly, therefore, tended to very closely shadow or supplement several of the strategies that had already been drawn up by Indian capital for industrializing the economy, which the latter revealed in a document released to the press in January of 1944, popularly referred to as the ‘Bombay Plan’.76 The period (1944–7) of collaboration or rather close correspondence between Indian capital and the GOI was nevertheless marred by several complications, especially in the manner in which the colonial state configured new linkages between the Indian economy and American and British capital.77 On the issue of MPRVD, for instance, a number of British engineering firms unsuccessfully waged a particularly bitter campaign to break what they considered to be an American stranglehold over the water Page 15 of 31

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Production of the River projects sector in India. (p.199) The India Office in London and the Board of Trade repeatedly pressed the GOI to act in favour of British consulting and engineering firms in what was clearly emerging as a giant market for electrical equipment, heavy machinery, and engineering expertise. On the 26 October 1945, the India Office in London even sent a compilation of papers that carried criticisms of the TVA to the Board of Trade, with instructions to circulate them as a ‘counterblast’ to American propaganda78 At the heart of much of British anxiety and concern was the assessment, in the words of G.H. Baxter, assistant under-secretary at the India office, that America’s ‘Empire aspect was obvious’ as: American experts would advise the use of American plant. American plant leads to the employment of American technicians and when replacements or extensions of plant were required it is natural that they should be sought from the same source.79 Despite London’s alarm and repeated protestations, the GOI continued its embrace of both TVA expertise and equipment, signalling clearly that the previous influence and leverage of certain British businesses in this period vis-àvis the Indian government was being curtailed and undermined in some respects. Maria Misra, in her excellent study, convincingly argues that in the early stages of the Second World War the GOI in seeking to conciliate their Indian collaborators, while simultaneously also, devising new strategies to secure Britain’s long-term economic interests in India, was compelled to drastically jettison the old and familial routines of support to British business. On the other hand, British capital’s attachment to its traditional autonomy, ideas of racial exclusivity, and lack of cohesion for collective political action, tended to hobble their own efforts to pressurize the GOI.80 In fact, the general intransigence of British capital in their attitudes and styles of conduct was evident on the issue of MPRVD schemes as well, especially, in the manner in which they sought to compel the GOI to grant them engineering and consultant contracts as exclusive privilege. In making such demands, British business, besides displaying a fatal incomprehension of the delicate nature of the political moment, was clearly choosing to persist with its insensitivity to the interests of Indian capital. This, perhaps, accounts for H.C. Prior s blunt communication to several British firms during parleys with them that the basis of their entry into contracts for MPRVD would require them to consider: (p.200) a) whether the firms would be prepared to establish branches in India to undertake the projects that may come their way, b) whether they would be prepared to incorporate Indian consultants therein, and c) whether they would be prepared to afford facilities for Indian qualified engineers approaching the partnership level to work for periods of say two or three years in the London offices to gain experience.81 Page 16 of 31

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Production of the River In other words, the GOI was no longer interested in providing protection or safeguards to certain sections of British capital, nor willing to endorse their practices of racial exclusivity. On the reverse, the GOI now expected certain sections of British capital to fend for themselves by either competing against or collaborating on their own initiative and means with their Indian and American counterparts. However, the centrepiece of the varied plans of the colonial government for radically modernizing sectors of the Indian economy was premised very significantly on the plank of political stability; a calibrated dose of industrial expansion was viewed by dominant sections within the GOI as a strategic intervention that could probably help break the high wave in popular mobilization and labour militancy. The political context fuelling industrial expansion in British India also resulted in a distinct transformation in the tone and temper of the imperial rhetoric of governance. In the high discourses of rule British India was now recast in the image of an underdeveloped region weighed down by ‘population pressure’ and putatively crying out for a rapid increase in productivity through economic modernization.82 Declarations on the need for state sponsored development was amplified in discussions on post-war reconstruction and to typify this new spirit and intent, Viceroy Wavell (1943–7), in a Memorandum in November 1943, unambiguously declared that the colonial administration was now ‘expected to carry out a large programme of improvement’.83 Along the axis of such reasoning, R.G. Casey, governor of Bengal (1944–6), in a radio broadcast in late 1945, underlined the new urgency for hydraulic management in the Bengal Presidency as arising from the administration’s need to liberate the cultivator from the ‘tyranny of the monsoon’. The debilitation and poverty produced by nature’s uncertainties would be corrected by the ‘rationalization and control’ through technical interventions of the otherwise volatile river systems.84 In effect, British India’s impoverished millions were increasingly portrayed, in a growing number of development-narratives, (p.201) as victims created by the fatal interplay between population growth and natural scarcities—the resolution of which lay not in the realm of political freedom and justice but economic modernization through developmental initiatives by the state. The emergence of a peculiarly colonial rhetoric on state welfare in British India was, however, in step with the broader pattern of capitalist restructuring in the period, wherein industrial expansion and state-directed efforts to sustain effective demand in the economy were touted as being foundational to the existence of the modern nation state.85 Consequently, emulating the TVA module in India, as the harbinger of rapid industrialization, was portrayed as the very raison d’être of post-war reconstruction planning. In one of his despatches to the provincial governments, Prior, succinctly summed up the role of MPRVD schemes in the new paradigm for governance:

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Production of the River Post-war development is now considered one of the most vital matters before the Govt of the country. The broadcasting of the Electrical Industry and the development of hydroelectric power are inextricably connected with the development of industries and food production. The expansion of irrigation the conservation of soil and the control of floods are directly connected with the food supply of the country and the general contentment and prosperity of the people.86 The foundation stone for the Hirakud Dam was laid by Hawthorne Lewis, the then Governor of Orissa, on 15 March 1946.87 Thus, interestingly, all told, barely four months elapsed between the decision at the Cuttack Conference (8 November 1945) to pursue the project and the foundation stone ceremony. Feasibility studies assessing the technical viability of the scheme, inappropriately enough, were completed only in June 1947, more than a year later.88 On 12 April 1948, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, laid a second foundation stone and the actual construction work on the dam was begun in the latter part of that year. The final design for the Hirakud Dam was approved in June 1951 and the earth-cum-concrete and masonry dam was completed in 1957. After its inauguration on 13 January 1957, the reservoir was filled to capacity in the monsoons of 1958.89 The decision to dam the Mahanadi River at Hirakud and the import and adoption of MPRVD into British India was not only emblematic of a specific consensus between fledgling Indian industrial capital, the colonial government, and certain sections of the nationalist leadership, but, more significantly, it was in sync with the larger momentum for capitalist restructuring in this period. This, in turn, had been brought on (p.202) by capitalism’s crises, made intensely manifest since the late 1920s, notably the Great Depression that had overwhelmed the United States. This epoch of capitalist restructuring, in fact, was characterized by several efforts, especially after the Second World War, at state-directed planning, which Michael Kidron has described as being a response to a need for ‘internal coordination’ for new production cycles, technological innovations, and an increasing interdependence between national economies.90 British India’s allure for the TVA, therefore, was, in several significant ways, an attempted adoption both of an altogether new scale in hydraulic manipulation and the politics that underpinned the New Deal programmes and Keynesian fiscal and pump priming instruments.91 In India’s immediate post-independence years, MPRVD schemes, not unexpectedly, were soon deployed not merely physically but metaphorically and ideologically as well for calibrating a specific type of social temperature for rule. Particularly instructive in this regard was Nehru’s speech delivered to the Constituent Assembly on February 1948, in response to a resolution moved by Kazi Syed Karimuddin. In the Assembly, Karimuddin sought to have a resolution adopted which would declare India as a socialist economy that was ‘based on the Page 18 of 31

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Production of the River principle of nationalisation of key industries and cooperative and collective farming… ’. In a somewhat chaotically formulated response, Nehru argued that the new possibilities for dramatically raising levels of economic output with the help of science and technology made the question of distribution relatively less significant. In such a schema, for Nehru, river-valley schemes, in particular, as part of the then edge in hydraulic manipulation by, arguably, solving the food problem and providing power for industrial growth could provide the ‘basis of all future growth’.92 This retort by Nehru, that such a notion of technological advancement could trump issues of distribution, had, in fact, by then, already become part of a widely deployed rhetorical device by planners, administrators, industrialists, and members of the Indian elite, who were then assiduously involved in trying to craft an apolitical consensus around a new economic and social order for postcolonial India.93 Thus, the independent Indian state was meant to embrace MPRVD as part of a broader move towards articulating with a new political order. The deltaic rivers, consequently, were no longer merely sought to be controlled, as much as they were now intended to be produced as an internalized element to the larger political economy of the post-colonial state. In short, Orissa’s deltaic rivers were no longer meant to exist as (p.203) geomorphologic processes but as an artefact indexed to the rhythms of political economy. The impetus for flood-control, as I have indicated in previous chapters, emerged and was structured by the peculiarities of colonial capitalism. Briefly, to reiterate, colonial rule, in the South Asian subcontinent, sought to realize capitalist private property in land. In Orissa, this led to the proliferation of embankment construction in the delta. Even when these flood-protection measures caused an ecological crisis of irremediable proportions, the administration, instead of abandoning its flood-control strategy, moved towards further intensifying control along an altogether new technological level over the deltaic rivers, which, in the main, comprised a fresh vigorous attempt, in the mid-half of the nineteenth century, to commodify the delta’s hydrology through a canal system. In effect, the administration tried to resolve its flood dilemmas by seeking to regulate the delta’s hydraulic action through the logics and calculations of the commodity-form. Thus, in Orissa, river control was entwined with and implicated in the overarching social and economic agendas of colonial capitalism. However, such attempts to secure the delta from recurring inundations, in time, implicated the colonial government in an expanding scale of ecological and political crises. More so, in the early decades of the twentieth century, when the colonial administrative response to deltaic flooding, structured through the rubrics of capitalist private property and commodification, lay comprehensively exhausted. But, by the early 1940s, in line with the then dramatic period of Page 19 of 31

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Production of the River capitalist restructuring in many national economies across the world, the colonial government in India, once again, undertook an unprecedented level of hydraulic intervention by introducing MPRVD in the eastern deltas. In many ways, the Hirakud Dam was intended to literally ‘produce’ the deltaic river as an altogether new hydraulic entity. On an hitherto unprecedented scale, the colonial state began to reconceptualize and seek to alter deltaic inundation from being previously treated as a calamitous event to now being yoked as a natural resource for providing irrigation, navigation and hydroelectricity. In other words, the majestic Mahanadi, from a flashy, capricious, torrential, and temperamental river, was to be physically transformed into a sequence of calibrated flows, intended in the final instance to be harnessed as a unit of capital. (p.204) The introduction of MPRVD in the South Asian subcontinent, in effect, heralded a third distinct phase in the ecological impact of colonial capitalism in the region. In this phase, the British government rationalized its hydraulic intervention in the Orissa Delta not merely in terms of seeking to intensify its control or mastery over the river systems, but, most pronouncedly, as an endeavour towards trying to ‘remake’ the delta’s hydrology (physically and politically) in the ‘image’ of capital. Theoretically in fact, this spectrum of initiatives, involving a massive effort to modify and transform nature as an internalized or ‘capitalized’ element within the capitalist imperative, has been well explicated and drawn out by various notions such as ‘remaking’ (James O’Connor), ‘capitalization’ (Martin O’Connor), and ‘production’ (Neil Smith). These theorists have sought to argue that contemporary capitalism has undergone not merely a quantitative but a qualitative development in its relation with nature. This qualitative shift, in large part, according to them, refers to the manner in which capital tries to penetrate, modify, and then incorporate within its momentum for expanded reproduction the external domain of nature. The image is no longer of human beings acting on an external nature. Rather, the image is of the diverse elements of nature including human nature codified as capital. Nature is capital, or, rather, nature is conceived in the image of capital.94 To reiterate the above, in broad brush strokes, capitalism, it is argued, in its current phase, increasingly moves towards bringing about the unification of all nature within the capitalist production process. The rapid developments, from the early decades of the twentieth century, in the engineering and technical altering of natural substances as the hybridization of seed, cloning, biotechnology, and even the industrial plantation of forests all exemplify this broader movement in the direction of insinuating the value-relation into the natural world. External nature, therefore, is constantly sought to be deprived of its ‘originality, its firstness’ and is instead intended to be produced as an artefact and above all as an element internalized within capital.

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Production of the River These theoretical constructs such as ‘production’, ‘remaking’, or the ‘capitalization’ of nature, I argue, in many ways provide helpful conceptual traction for illuminating the events and causes that underpinned and enabled the introduction of MPRVD in deltaic Orissa. The decision to dam the Mahanadi River, consequently, was not chiefly or primarily a structure intended for floodcontrol, as much as it was to articulate a new (p.205) social, political, and economic equation; albeit expressed as a towering wall of steel and concrete. The new produced Mahanadi, thus trained and regulated, was now expected to march its coordinated waters to lubricate the exigencies of Keynesian fiscal pump-priming, demand-side economic management, colonial attempts to placate Indian capital and capitalist restructuring. Thus, the continuum of sorts, in the Orissa Delta, from embankments to canals and finally to MPRVD, was not essentially a linear technological progression towards river control as much as these shifts represented manoeuvres within a certain paradigm of political economy. The history of flood-control in Orissa, in effect, I argue, uncovers and helps reveal the determining character of colonial capitalism in general and the latter’s relationships with the natural world in particular. Notes:

(1) . Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature Capital and the Production of Space (Oxford 1984), pp. 32–65. (2) . James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven 1998), pp. 262–306. (3) . David Lilienthal, TVA: Democracy on the March, (Chicago 1966), See Appendix C for a list of countries which initiated projects inspired and modelled on the TVA, pp. 256–87. (4) . The Tennessee Valley Basin comprises an area of about 41,000 sq. miles (106, 200 sq. km). (5) . In 1929, electric motors accounted for 78 per cent of total capacity for driving machinery. The use of electricity also enabled industry to obtain greater output per unit of capital and labour input. See Warren D. Devine, Jr., ‘From Shafts to Wires: Historical Perspective on Electrification’, JEH, 43(2), 1983, p. 349. (6) . Three types of holding companies existed. First, holding companies that acquired utilities primarily as financial investments; second, operating utilities as compensation for engineering services, and third, large interconnected utility services such as the Commonwealth Edison Company of Samuel Insull. (7) . Jay L. Brigham, Empowering the West: Electrical Politics before FDR (Lawrence 1998), pp. 28–49.

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Production of the River (8) . In terms of a social base, public power advocates drew upon a predominantly rural constituency, which in the United States had a long history of being anti-monopoly and against big business. Several urban Congressmen also supported the drive for federal power because they looked upon it as workrelief measure. See Philip J. Funigiello, Toward a National Power Policy: The New Deal and the Electric Utility Industry, 1933–1941 (Pittsburgh 1973), passim. (9) . The TVA helped bring down private power rates in the south-east by directly competing with private utilities and by posing a threat to their service areas. Nevertheless, the main instrument that led to nationally reduced rates was the Public Utilities Holding Companies Act of 1935. In hindsight, however, TVA’s power when factored with cost of lost farmland and other government subsidies was actually costlier. See William U. Chandler, The Myth of TVA: Conservation and Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1933–1983 (Cambridge 1984), pp. 87– 95. For Franklin Roosevelt’s role in fighting the private power trusts see Richard Rudolph and Scott Ridley, Power Struggle: The Hundred-year War over Electricity (New York 1986). (10) . Brigham, Empowering the West, passim. (11) . William E. Warne, The Bureau of Reclamation (New York 1973), pp. 86– 103. Also see Richard white, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York 1995), pp. 59–88. (12) . See the interesting discussion on the evolution of the idea of the MPRVD in Herman Finer, The T.V.A. Lessons for International Application (Montreal 1944), pp. 5–14. (13) . For two recent reviews of some of the major debates on the New Deal, I found the following two books useful: Fiona Venn, The New Deal (Edinburgh 1998) and Ronald Edsforth, The New Deal: America’s Response to the Great Depression (Massachusetts 2000). (14) . For an excellent discussion on the consequences and impacts of various New Deal programmes see Anthony J. Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years 1933–1940 (New York 1989). (15) . Colignon argues that hydroelectric production was the real aim of the TVA and its structure and goals were shaped by the conflicts and tensions between private and public power advocates. See Richard A. Colignon, Power Plays: Critical Events in the Institutionalisation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (New York 1997), pp. 57–74. (16) . William E. Leuchtenburg, Flood-control Politics: The Connecticut River Valley Problem 1927–1950 (Cambridge, MA, 1953).

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Production of the River (17) . In 1949, hydroelectricity was the chief source of power in many countries: 96 per cent of installed capacity in Canada, 94 per cent in Switzerland, 90 per cent in Italy, 80 per cent in Sweden. See Colin Chant, Science, Technology and Everyday Life, 1870–1950 (London 1989), p. 110. Hydroelectricity was one of the major sources of power for the United States in the period of the World War II. See Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water (New York 1986), pp. 161–8. (18) . I draw this perspective chiefly from Thomas Ferguson’s persuasively argued assessment of the New Deal as being constituted by Roosevelt as a new ‘historical bloc’ of capital-intensive industries, investments banks and internationally-oriented commercial banks. See Thomas Ferguson ‘From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition and American Public Policy in the Great Depression’ in Dubofsky and Burwood (eds), The Great Depression and the New Deal (New York 1990), pp. 184–237. (19) . See Erwin C. Hargrove and Paul K. Conkin, TVA: Fifty Years of Grassroots Bureaucracy (Urbana and Chicago 1983); Richard A. Colignon, Power Plays; Preston Hubbard, Origins of the TVA: The Muscle Shoals Controversy, 1920– 1932 (Nashville Tennessee, 1961). For a critique of the performance of the TVA see William Chandler, The Myth of TVA: Conservation and Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1933–1983 (Cambridge 1984). (20) . Meghnad Saha though an astro-physicist by profession, possessed a keen interest in the flood problems of the Bengal Delta and contributed several knowledgeable articles on the subject. His interest probably stemmed from the fact that he grew up in a flood prone village near Dacca (modern day Bangladesh). For a biographical sketch see Santimoy Chatterjee and Enakshi Chatterjee, Meghnad Saha: Scientist with a Vision (Delhi 1984). (21) . The note was subsequently reproduced as an article. See Meghnad Saha, ‘Taming of the Tennessee River’, Science and Culture in Santimoy Chatterjee (ed.), Collected Works of Meghnad Saha (Calcutta 1987), pp. 101–14. (22) . See Meghnad Saha, ‘Taming of the Tennessee River’, p. 114. (23) . Damodar Valley Corporation Enquiry Committee, (1952–53) (Delhi 1953), p. 11. This Committee was also known as the Rau Committee and was instituted to enquire into the several delays and malpractices that plagued the Damodar Scheme. (24) . The India Office realized early that contradictions were bound to crop up between development works that required strong central direction and the relative economic autonomy ensured to the provinces in the 1935 Government of India Act. L.S. Amery, secretary of state for India, in a note circulated to several members of government observed ‘that the problem [post-war reconstruction] is Page 23 of 31

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Production of the River bound up with that of the relations between the Centre and the Provinces and indeed with the future course of constitutional changes in India as whole’. See letter of Amery to Bevin, India Office, 21 January 1944 in Nicholas Manserg (ed.), The Transfer of Power 1942–7, vol. 4 (Oxford, London 1973), pp. 659–60. (25) . A.S. Lall, joint secretary Planning, 30 November 1945 in Regional Schemes —Financing of—Should Centre Undertake to Finance Such Schemes Fully, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(20)-P/45, p. 3, NAI (26) . N.D. Gulati, Development of Inter-State Rivers Laws and Practice in India (Delhi 1972), p. 80. (27) . Keith C. Roy, private secretary to the H.M. Finance, Routine Note, 17 October 1944 in The Central Waterways and Irrigation Commission, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(1) P/45, pp. 18–19, NAI. (28) . S. Thorat, Ambedkar’s Contribution to Water Resources Development (Delhi 1993), p. 22. (29) . Ibid., p. 180. (30) . B.C.A. Cook, Department for Planning and Development, Note, 3 October 1944 in The Central Waterways and Irrigation Commission, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(1) P/45, p. 10, NAI. (31) . R.G. Casey, then governor of Bengal, as late as 11 May 1945 in a private conversation with A.N. Khosla made it known that there was ‘reluctance’ from other provinces as well on the question of surrendering their provincial autonomy to ‘any Commission on the TVA model’. See Personal Diary R.G. Casey, May 1945-Feb 1946, p. 14, OIOC. (32) . For an account of the controversy over DVC’s autonomy and its implications for centre-state relations (especially between Bihar and West Bengal) see Marcus F. Franda, West Bengal and the Federalising Process in India (Princeton 1968), pp. 62–128. (33) . See Thorat, Ambedkar’s Contribution to Water Resource, Appendix II.3, p. 166. (34) . From H.C. Prior, secretary to the Government of India, to all provincial governments, 8 December 1944 in Post War Irrigation: Question of a Regional Approach to River Basins and the Role of the Government of India in Promoting It Where More than One Province is Concerned, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(2) P/45, p. 15, NAI. (35) . Thorat, Ambedkar’s Contribution to Water Resource Development, Appendix IV.1, p. 181. Page 24 of 31

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Production of the River (36) . Ibid. (37) . Ibid., Appendix II.1, p. 161. (38) . Ibid., p. 162. (39) . For an account of the controversy over DVC’s autonomy and its impact on centre-state relations (especially between Bihar and Bengal) see Franda, West Bengal and the Federalizing Process in India, pp. 62–128. (40) . Department of Labour Resolution, 5 April 1945 in Central Waterways and Irrigation Commission, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(1) P/45, NAI. (41) . The CWINC operating as a self-serving bureaucracy compares with the similar functioning styles of the US, Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corp of Engineering in the United States. See Reisner, Cadillac Desert. (42) . Letter to Nabakrushna Chaudhuri, 19 June 1951 in H.K. Mahtab’s Papers, (1st Instalment), Subject File no. 36 (Economic), p. 5, NMML. (43) . Meghnad Saha, Lok Sabha speech 6 April 1954 in Santimoy Chatterjee and Jyotimoy Gupta, Meghnad Saha in Parliament(Calcutta 1993), p. 52. For an excellent biographical sketch and assessment of the career of A.N. Khosla see Daniel Klingensmith, ‘ “One Valley and a Thousand”; Remaking America, India and the World in the Image of the Tennessee Valley Authority 1945–1970’, PhD dissertation (University of Chicago 1998), pp. 335–57. (44) . A.N. Khosla (ed.), Mahanadi Valley Development Hirakud Dam Project (Simla 1947), p. 10. (45) . Opening address of B.R. Ambedkar, labour member, Government of India, at the Orissa Multi-Purpose Rivers Conference at Cuttack, 8 November 1945 in Khosla (ed.), Mahanadi Valley Development Hirakud Dam Project, p. 106. (46) . Summary prepared by Works, Mines and Power Department, 26 May 1946, Mahanadi Project: Construction of Hirakud Dam Project, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 9(7) P/46, p. 16. NAI. (47) . P. N. Suri, joint secretary, Finance Ministry, 15 October 47 in Mahanadi Project: Construction of Hirakud Project, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 9(7) P/46, p. 28. NAI. (48) . A.N. Khosla, Office of the Consulting Engineer to the Government of India for Waterways, Irrigation and Navigation, Labour Department, to, B.K. Ghokale, advisor to H.E. the governor of Orissa, 12 November 1945 in Unified and MultiPurpose Development of Orissa, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(18) P/45, p. 4. NAI.

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Production of the River (49) . The eastern sates facing submergence were Sonpur, Baudh, Khandhpura Baramba, Narisingpur, Athgargh, and Tigria. (50) . H.C. Prior, 16 February 1946 in Mahanadi Project: Construction of Hirakud Project, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 9(7) P/46, p. 8. NAI. (51) . H.C. Prior, Labour Department, 23 Januay 1946, Mahanadi Project, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 9(7) P/46, p. 1. NAI. (52) . H.C. Prior, Mahanadi Project, File no. 9(7) P/46, pp. 1–3. NAI. (53) . V. Narahari Rao, secretary finance, 6 February 1946, Mahanadi Project, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 9(7) P/46, pp. 4–5. NAI. (54) . V. Narahari Rao, Mahanadi Project, File no. 9(7) P/46, pp. 4–5. NAI. (55) . H.C. Prior, Labour Department, 16 February 1946, Mahanadi Project, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 9(7) P/46, p. 5. NAI. (56) . Quoted in letter of J.B. Shearer, joint secretary finance, 19 February 1946, Mahanadi Project, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 9(7) P/46 pp. 8–9. NAI. (57) . R.M.G. Rangaiya, then retired chief engineer and secretary of the Mysore PWD prepared a comprehensive critique of the Hirakud Dam, which he published in August 1947. Rangaiya’s report noted that the project was proceeding on a very thin number of surveys and technical studies. See R.M.G. Rangaiya, Mahanadi Valley Development: Hirakud Dam Project, (Bangalore 1947). (58) . Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, ‘The Idea of Planning in India 1930–1950’, PhD Thesis (Australian National University 1995), pp. 91–2. (59) . Claude Markovits, Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, 1931–1939 (Cambridge 1985), pp. 11–14. (60) . In 1936 a manifesto signed by twenty-one businessmen from Bombay criticized Nehru for what they perceived to his overt embrace of socialist ideas. See Markovits, Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, pp. 110–12. (61) . On the evolving tension between Indian business and the colonial state see B. R. Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India 1860–1970 (Cambridge 1993), pp. 92–155. (62) . An industry-wise break up of profits and production for the war years in India is available in Andrew J. Grajdanzev, ‘India’s Economic Position in 1944’, Pacific Affairs, 17(4), December, 1944, pp. 460–77.

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Production of the River (63) . Britain was to spend over Rs 4500 million in India in her war effort in 1944–5. This accounted for nearly one third of total government expenditure of Rs 12,000 million that year. Both these expenditures were slated for a sharp decline in the event of the end of the war. See Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, ‘The Idea of Planning in India 1930–1951’, pp. 213–14. (64) . Proceedings of the first meeting of the Reconstruction Committee held in the Committee Room, Shimla, 23 June 1941. Speech by Sir A.R. Mudalier in T.E. Gregory Papers (1890–1970), Part IV, p. 5, OIOC. (65) . The ‘Quit India’ agitation of 1942 had revealed quiet starkly the possibilities for independent initiative from below. See Sumit Sarkar, Modern India. For an insight into the radical potential and violence in the Quit India upsurge see the collection of documents listed under the theme ‘Aftermath of Quit India Movement’ in Partha Sarathi Gupta (ed.), Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India 1943–1944, vol. 1 (Delhi 1997), pp. 1–644. Also see the excellent monograph on Bihar by Vinita Damodaran, Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar (1935–46) (Delhi 1992). (66) . Amery to Linlithgow, India office 30 October 1942, Mss. Eur. F.125/11 in Nicholas Manserg (ed.), The Transfer of Power 1942–7, vol. 3, (London 1971), pp. 170–1. (67) . Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India, India Office, 9 April 1943, Ibid., p. 883. (68) . For a discussion on the Bevin-Cripps proposals see Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, ‘The Idea of Planning in India 1930–1951’, pp. 143–6. Also see the collection of documents in chapter 7 in Nicholas Manserg (ed.), The Transfer of Power 1942–7, vol. 3, pp. lxx-ii. (69) . The Indian government and even within the ranks of the CWINC, it was a widely held view that MPRVD projects comprised a vital part of the overall national plan to generate employment. A strong indication of such a sentiment prevailing is evident in a communication by J.N. Mckelvie to V. Thomson, private secretary, Board of Trade dated the 13 September 1949. Mckelvie reports that in a meeting with S. A Gadkari, then hydroelectric member CWINC, the latter opined that: …irrigation and hydro—electric projects will contribute more towards solving the unemployment problem than the food deficit, which he said was not more than 6%. See Note from J.N. Mckelvie, 13 September 1949 to V. Thomson, private secretary, Board of Trade, Economic and Overseas Dept. Collection. 58, L/E/9/38, OIOC.

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Production of the River (70) . The Bombay Plan (19 January 1944) prepared by India’s leading industrialists of the period estimated that a positive sterling balance of Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10,000 million) would accrue in India’s favour by the end of the war. According to Dharma Kumar, on 31 March 1939, the Indian government had a sterling debt of approximately Rs 4700 million. By the end of the Second World War not only was this debt wiped out but the Reserve Bank of India had accumulated foreign assets mainly in sterling of over Rs 17,000 million. Dharma Kumar, ‘The Fiscal System’ in Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, c. 1757 - c. 1970, vol. 2 (Hyderabad 1984), p. 944. G. Balachandran put the figure at Rs 1,512 crore (Rs 15, 120 million) on the eve of India’s independence. Though in the subsequent three years financing commodity inputs, capital outflows payment to Pakistan, pension annuities, and making payments to Britain for surplus military stores whittled down this amount: Indian sterling balance still stood at Rs 825 crore (Rs 8,250 million) at the end of 1949. See G. Balachandran, The Reserve Bank of India (1951–1967) (Delhi 1998), pp. 593–5. (71) . See for example the routine note by Keith C. Roy, private secretary to the H.M. Finance, 17 October 1944 in The Central Waterways and Irrigation Commission, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(1) P/45, p. 16, NAI. …we [Finance department] have not taken a narrow view of the financial assistance which the Central Government should afford to the provinces in the matter of Post-War development…. We have made it amply clear that the revenue surplus of 500 crore would be available for Post-War development schemes of the central government and for grants to the provinces. (72) . See H.K. Mahtab, Motion Regarding the Proposed Mahanadi Valley Project in OLAP, Thursday 5 September 1946, vol. 2, no.5, p. 125. (73) . M.N. Roy in an essay titled ‘Democracy versus Capitalism’ (21 March 1943) described the entente as the ‘most curious feature of the Indian situation is the anxiety of the Government to put capitalism in the saddle’. See M.N. Roy, Poverty or Plenty (Calcutta 1944), p. 27. (74) . B. R. Tomlinson, The Political Economy of the Raj 1914–1947 (London 1979), pp. 57–103. (75) . For an assessment of the plans see D.S. Nag, A Study of Economic Plans for India (Bombay 1949); K.B. Krishna, Plan for Economic Development of India (Bombay 1945); M.N. Roy, Poverty or Plenty; S.N. Agarwal, The Gandhian Plan (Bombay 1944). Also see Kesava Iyengar, ‘Industrialization and Agriculture in India Post-War Planning’, The Economic Journal, 54(214), 1944, pp. 189–205 and Andrew Grajdanszev, ‘India’s Economic Position in 1944’, Pacific Affairs, 17(2),

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Production of the River 1944, pp. 460–77. For a review of the plans and an assessment of their political implications see Chattopadhyay, ‘The Idea of Planning in India’, pp. 139–269. (76) . The leading Indian industrialists who sponsored the plan were Sir Purshottam Thankurdas, J.R.D. Tata, G.D. Birla, Shri Ram, and Kasturbhai Lalbhai. (77) . Indian capital maintained an ambivalent relationship with the colonial state. For all its frustrations against the British, Indian capital dependent on them see Michael Kidron, Foreign Investments in India (Oxford 1965), pp. 19–24. (78) . See the collection, of letters in Economic and Overseas Department Collection. 58, L/E/9/385, pp. 1–35, OIOC. (79) . Notes of a meeting held in the Committee Room, India office 8 October 1945 in Economic and Overseas Department Collection, 58, pages not in sequence, 1/1–79/381, OIOC. (80) . Maria Misra, Business, Race and Politics in British India, c.1850–1960 (Oxford 1999), pp. 162–81. Also see Maria Misra, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and the Raj: British Policy in India between the World Wars’ in Raymond E. Dumett (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire (London 1999), pp. 157–76. (81) . Note of a meeting held in Rumbold’s Room on 7 November 1945 in Economic and Overseas Department Collection, 58, L/E/9/385, p. 7, OIOC. (82) . Then economic advisor to the GOI, T.E. Gregory in a paper entitled ‘India and the Economic Order’ (2 March 1943) in several ways indicates the new paradigm of discourse on India’s under-development. See T.E. Gregory Papers (1890–1970), Mss Eur. D1163, OIOC. (83) . Governors’ meeting, November 1943, Post War Reconstruction, Memorandum by the Viceroy in Wavell Collection, Private Weekly Letters 1943– 44, pp. 31–3, L/PO/10/21, OIOC. (84) . ‘Poverty or plenty’, Broadcast Speech, on All-India Radio, Calcutta, Saturday, 8 December 1945 in Personal Diary R.G. Casey (May 1945-Fe.b 1946), MSS Eur. 48/4, OIOC. (85) . Philip Armstrong, Andrew Glyn and John Harrison (eds), Capitalism Since World War II: The Making and Breakup of the Great Boom (London 1984), pp. 193–212. (86) . H.C. Prior, secretary to GOI, to all provincial governments in Central Waterways and Irrigation Commission, GOI, FD, PB, File no. 6(1) P/45, p. 11. NAI. Prior’s schema bears an uncanny resemblance to David Lilienthal’s notion Page 29 of 31

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Production of the River of unified economic development outlined in his celebrated book on the TVA, published in 1944; …the lessons of the unity of resource development; [was] the close interrelation between electricity and industry, between industry and farming, between farming and the building of the soil, between the soil and floodcontrol. (David Lilienthal, TVA: Democracy on the March, p. 137.)

(87) . Thorat, Ambedkar’s Contribution to Water Resources Development, p. 113. (88) . A.N. Khosla (ed.), Mahanadi Valley Development Hirakud Dam Project. (89) . Report on the Benefits of Hirakud Irrigation (A Socio-economic Study), Bureau of Statistics Economics (Bhubaneswar 1968), pp. 10–11. (90) . Michael Kidron, Western Capitalism Since the War (London 1968), pp. 17– 43. (91) . For an accessible, readable and engaging survey of the discipline of economics and its treatment of the notion of capitalism see Douglas Dowd, Capitalism and its Economics: A Critical History (London 2000). (92) . Kazi Syed Karimuddin’s Resolution read as follows: This Assembly is of opinion that the economic pattern of this country shall be socialist economy based on the principle of nationalization of key industries and co-operative and collective farming and socialization of the material resources of the country and that the Government of India shall adopt the said principle immediately For Nehru’s response see ‘Our Economic Policy’ in Jawaharlal Nehru, Independence and After, Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Delhi 1949), pp. 163–72.

(93) . See, for example, the Indian Government’s Industrial Policy Statement (6 April 1948), which bears the following passage: Any improvement in the economic conditions of the country postulates an increase in national wealth. A mere redistribution of existing wealth would make no essential difference to the people and would merely mean the distribution of poverty. A dynamic national policy must, therefore, be directed to a continuos increase in production by all possible means, side by side with measures to secure its equitable distribution. (D.S. Nag, A Study of Economic Plans for India, pp. 161–2)

(94) . Martin O’Connor, ‘Codependency and Indeterminacy: A Critique of the Theory of Production’ in Martin O’Connor (ed.). Is Capitalism Sustainable: Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology (New York 1994), p. 55. Page 30 of 31

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Production of the River

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Conclusion

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

Conclusion Rohan D’Souza

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter tries to summarize the idea of flood-control. The Hirakud Dam was only an extension of the manual plumbing of natural resources that had begun a century before. Through the idea of the Hirakud Dam the book explains hydraulic control as an ideology, its relationships with colonial capitalism, and the various logics that were forged to dominate the many rivers in the delta. The British East India Company produced a sharp ecological rupture between the deltaic rivers and the surrounding rice-growing alluvial tracts. The Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863 could not neatly train the temperamental rivers through the medium of profit-seeking capital. The subsequent construction of the Hirakud Dam embodied the gargantuan efforts to remake nature in the image of capital. India’s many hydraulic endowments are tried to be re-engineered, developed, harnessed, reshaped, and produced as artefacts and adjuncts to the nation’s fast liberalizing and globalizing economy. Meanwhile, other projects like the Interlinking Rivers Project (ILR) are in the pipeline. Keywords:   flood-control, Hirakud Dam, British East India Company, Orissa Canal Scheme, Mahanadi, India, colonial capitalism, Interlinking Rivers Project

The Hirakud Dam was made operational in 1958 and since then lies slumbering across the Mahanadi’s throat, near Sambalpur. As intended, it entombs within its reservoir much of the flood season’s flows that hurtle downwards from the catchment. A number of shutters, gates and spill ways now regulate, apportion, distribute, and manage what should have otherwise been uncontrolled and wildly cascading jets of water. Putting the river on tap, however, has also meant the changed nature of flooding in the delta. According to some estimates, the Page 1 of 10

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Conclusion frequency of high floods in the Mahanadi Basin have risen, from once in 3.48 to 3.3 years, while the relatively more gentle low floods have fallen to once in 3.35 from the pre-dam period of 3.1 years. In other words, the delta is now witness to a reduced frequency of shallow inundations with an increase instead in the number of more violent upsurges or high floods, such as the devastations of 1982.1 But to evaluate the Hirakud’s performance, I contend, is to go beyond such bland statistics by questioning and debating the validity of frameworks itself. Put differently, to pass verdict on Hirakud’s efficiency in terms of its success or failure as a flood-control structure or how the Mahanadi has been harnessed as a resource is to essentially demand a political perspective—an evaluation that is implicated in perceptions about the delta as a hydraulic entity, claims on how economic acts relate to the environment and the place of technology in society. Flood-control, I have thus argued, is a political project and not mere technical intervention. Unravelling the idea of the Hirakud Dam, therefore, requires explaining hydraulic control as an ideology, its relationships with colonial capitalism and the various logics that were forged to dominate the many rivers in the delta. To recapitulate, once again, colonial capitalism, in order to institute and affirm itself as a specific social form, deployed a set of hydraulic (p.216) interventions that transformed the Orissa Delta from being a flood-dependent agrarian regime into a flood-vulnerable landscape. This altering of the delta’s hydraulic character, in large measure, was effected over the course of almost a century through a triptych of initiatives comprising capitalist private property, treating the rivers as a commodity, and the production of nature. In turn, these three-part manoeuvres were integral to the larger design of colonial capitalism’s attempts to anchor itself in the delta. The first of these initiatives—realizing capitalist private property in land—emanated from the British East India Company’s drive to organize and collect land revenue. But in attempting to administer land through the rubric of capitalist private property, the Company brought about a sharp ecological rupture between the deltaic rivers and the surrounding ricegrowing alluvial tracts: in a sense, getting land to confront the rivers rather than weaving the latter into practices for crop production. In effect, realizing capitalist private property in land required the administration to recast the seasonal deltaic inundations as calamitous event rather than adapting to it as geomorphologic process. The subsequent decision to insulate the cultivated tracts with embankments, in turn, brought about a spectrum of drainage and fluvial complications. Thus, damage from inundations, by the middle of the nineteenth century, rather than being contained by flood-protection structures ended up further aggravating hydraulic volatility. In fact, such was the extent of the complication introduced by the flood-control measures in this period, that the colonial administration found itself in a twisted bind—they had to urgently and unequivocally decide between either restoring deltaic inundations to its Page 2 of 10

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Conclusion previous flow regime or pursue flood prevention strategies with renewed intensity. This trying decision was resolved by the late 1850s and the early 1860s, when the colonial administration adopted Arthur Cotton’s plan to run a canal system through the very fluvial heart of the delta. The Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863, however, was not merely a simple quantitative continuation of the previous embankment policy. Rather, the canal was constructed and carried out to secure the delta from inundation through the commodification of its river systems. Canal irrigation, as a combined set of technical, bureaucratic, and legal apparatuses, was thus intended to bound the river as a capitalist commodity, with its waters and flow regime now meant to be regulated by a market imperative rather than allowed to function as geomorphologic process. Nevertheless, the Orissa Canal (p.217) Scheme of 1863—physically unfurled in the delta as a collection of weirs and irrigation lines paralleled by embankments —could not neatly train the temperamental rivers through the medium of profitseeking capital. The Scheme, in fact, besides being an abysmal financial failure also ended up further warping the delta’s already stressed hydraulic character. Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, capitalist private property in land and its intended solution—commodification—had driven an exceptional inflammation into the rhythm and metre of the inundation cycle and left the efforts of the proponents for flood-control all but exhausted. From the mid-1930s onwards, the colonial administration in the delta found itself in an impasse of sorts: neither could the fairly elaborated flood-control structures be dismantled nor could powerful landed sections in the delta, inured to the embankments and the canal system, be compelled to accept another hydraulic context. In effect, colonial capitalism by being unable to reconfigure its political, economic, and technical matrix ended up plunging the delta into a state of interminable hydraulic attrition. This seemingly impossible impasse, as I have indicated in the last chapter, nevertheless began to be circumvented after colonial capitalism itself began to transform internally along a different gradient of political economy. More specifically, world events in the 1940s, saw the emergence of the United States of America as the new capitalist hegemon from where a whole slew of institutions and technologies were crafted anew for sustaining capitalist accumulation—involving state managers reworking the ‘internal coordination’ amongst elements of the capitalist economy with new production cycles, technological innovations, and fiscal arrangements.2 Most pronouncedly this new historical juncture in capitalist development was characterized by massive state planning efforts, shaped in large measure through the ideology of Keynesian pump-priming or the demand management of the modern economy. Thus, with global capitalism, under American hegemony, forging different instruments for securing the capitalist accumulation imperative, Britain’s old style methods for domination and exploitation in its colonies, not unexpectedly, Page 3 of 10

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Conclusion came under new stresses. It is perhaps helpful here to explain the ecological consequences following these dramatic alterations in capitalism’s internal working in terms of what has been conceptualized as Fordism.3 As explained by Alain Lipietz, one of the major exponents of the Regulation School, capitalism’s existing regime of accumulation (p.218) was radically unsettled in the early decades of the twentieth century with the emergence of Taylorism ‘the process whereby the skills of worker collectives were expropriated and systematized by engineers and technicians using methods of “Scientific Management”’.4 Soon enough, productivity gains following the systematization of labour was incorporated into an ‘automatic system’ with machines and mechanization dictating higher gradients for worker output. The resultant rise in productivity, labour output, and the increase in the per-capita volume of fixed capital helped define and initiate, according to the Regulationists, the era of Fordism. The central logic being a capitalist regime of accumulation which was founded on intensive growth and mass production for mass consumption to ‘produce’ to the maximum and stimulate consumption to the maximum.5 Consequently, Fordism heralded a new intensive reorganization of the labour process, the development of new technical relations and concomitantly unprecedented and far-reaching ecological change. Undoubtedly, the impact and nature of this redesigning of the ‘modern economy’ was uneven in different national and regional sites and it would be erroneous to suggest that India, at the cusp of period of her independence, was experiencing a comprehensive fordization of its economy. Rather, I have sought to argue that elements emanating from within this new moment of capitalist development rippled onto the South Asian subcontinent and began to incise the colonial environmental landscape in India in new and significant ways, of which, one of the most profound points of impact was in the realm of flood-control through the introduction of MPRVD in eastern India. Thus colonial India’s embrace of MPRVD, in the twilight years of the empire, can be situated as being part of the broader momentum of capitalist restructuring in the period and thereby also accounts for Britain’s peculiar ambivalence on the question of enabling the acceptance of American technological expertise in the South Asian subcontinent. However, on the other hand, it would be entirely misplaced to suggest that MPRVD was slammed into colonial India by the fast growing might of the American imperium or that it arrived as a simple technological seduction. Rather, as I have sought to underline in the previous chapter, the idea of MPRVD found considerable traction and support amongst various sections within colonial India’s troubled polity itself. For many of these MPRVD enthusiasts, the new technology was as much about river control as it was intended, in several significant ways, to address and (p.219) assuage colonial and national elite anxieties about rule. Thus, the Orissa Delta served as a sort of melting pot into which varied notions about society and nature drawn from British colonialism, vibrant American hegemony, and national independence interacted to forge an Page 4 of 10

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Conclusion altogether new result—the ‘production of nature’. In sum, the subsequent construction of the Hirakud Dam embodied the gargantuan efforts to remake nature in the image of capital. An attempt, in other words, to draw in ‘external’ nature into the very ‘internal’ being of society: the river as a physical unit of the economy, a technical relation and a political artefact of capital. The once temperamental, volatile, and unruly dilations of the Mahanadi, its very essence as a geomorphologic process, was now meant to be a trained and harnessed sequence of water marching between catchment and sea as an economic cornucopia. But the Hirakud Dam had not been imbricated onto a social and technological vacuum. In fact, this grand attempt at putting the majestic Mahanadi virtually on tap was an unprecedented hydraulic superimposition over almost a century of flood-control measures in the delta. Previous colonial attempts to contain the delta’s furious waters through embankments and the canal system, as pointed out earlier, had come to grief. The dam thus was stapled onto an already existing tortuous technological legacy of trying to bring the delta’s hydraulic regime to correspond cleanly with the interests of colonial capitalism. The introduction of MPRVD, nevertheless, brought about a drastic change in scale in that the consequences of flood-control moved out of the narrow confines of the delta and its inhabitants and was inserted instead into the very womb of the nation’s political economy. The nation and the dam were henceforth sought to be mutually harmonized by mammoth electric transmission lines, turbines, cement, an intricate network of canals, the expert engineer, a battery of hydraulic planners, and ultimately the troubled calibrations of Keynesian pump-priming. In damming the delta, it was thus argued in official rhetoric, floods as a calamitous event had been remade or truly produced as a national natural resource. But treating deltaic inundation either as calamity or resource, nevertheless, remained two sides of the same coin—a political economy that viewed floodcontrol as the only possible response to seasonal deltaic flooding. Thus, colonial capitalism as a distinct social form in the Orissa Delta, despite its various evolving strategies over the period of over a century and half, could neither coexist nor utilize a flood-dependent agrarian regime and had to continually (p. 220) transform the delta into a flood-vulnerable landscape. Consequently, one can explain the emergence of flood-control embankments, private canal irrigation, and finally MPRVD in the Orissa Delta as part of a singular linear momentum that caused dramatic ecological change. Put another way, the introduction of capitalist private property, commodification, and the production of nature comprised the defining armature of colonial capitalism for establishing its agendas for exploitation, domination, and control and by implication generating and enforcing a distinct ecological signature on the delta’s hydrology. One of the most significant challenges in historicizing ecological change, as I had remarked in the introduction, lies in unravelling the specificity of a social form in order to explain the velocity of its environmental impact. Consequently, Page 5 of 10

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Conclusion analysing colonialism as a specific type of political economy remains critical to explaining the motivations underlying certain pronounced features of its environmental imagination and impact. In fact, some of the pitfalls on leaving the dynamic of colonial capitalism under theorized are plainly evident in Guha and Gadgil’s pioneering study This Fissured Land. According to the authors, the colonial ecological watershed was brought about by ‘profligacy’ in resource use following the introduction of the industrial mode into India. The industrial mode, in turn, is loosely characterized as an assemblage of technologies that transformed resources into commodities, sought the destruction of subsistence economies, and lastly caused the irretrievable breakdown of community solidarities and increased the atomization of individuals. However, in sharp contrast to this ‘Christian Western European’ derived industrial mode of resource use, the authors claim, the pre-colonial arrangement in the subcontinent comprised a tradition of ‘prudence’ in resource use.6 This explanation of the colonial watershed besides being too simplistic, suffers, more importantly, from being an ahistorical model. India’s pre-colonial polity was hardly a subsistence one, dominated by closely knit communities who managed resource prudence. In fact, prior to the emergence of colonial rule in the region, the economic and social landscape, as several studies have indicated, was studded by innumerable commercial emporias, vibrant trading centres, manufacturing towns, complex commodityproducing networks, credit markets and the subcontinent was endowed with a fairly elaborate technical capacity as well. Thus, if anything, going by Gadgil and Guha’s definition (p.221) of the industrial mode, the denizens of the Asian subcontinent should have been profligate resource users and thereby should have pre-dated the destructive influences of the British colonizers by several centuries. Another level at which This Fissured Land remains analytically unhelpful is the supposition that colonial rule not only rode roughshod over the prudent practices of the colonized but were so overwhelming that they could expose their subjects to the seductions of the industrial economy and consumer society in a way that ‘the British ensured that the process of ecological change they initiated would continue, and indeed intensify after they left India’s shores’.7 Clearly, Gadgil and Guha, though persuasive in identifying the emergence of a distinctive ecological watershed, fail to convincingly explain the colonial dynamic for motivating such change. In sharp variance to This Fissured Land, K. Sivaramakrishnan’s Modern Forests offers a theoretically fresh perspective for understanding not only the scale and direction of ecological change, but significantly as well, the ecological limits of colonial rule. Sivaramakrishnan explores ecological change in colonial eastern India through the optic of what he terms as ‘statemaking’—the fabrication of the instruments for governance and the arts of legitimation and rale.8 Colonial forestry in the western portion of Midnapore District (Bengal), as part of the endeavour at statemaking, is explained as producing various practices for the Page 6 of 10

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Conclusion clearing of the woodlands, strategies for vermin eradication (the tiger, wolf, snakes, etc), the sedentarization of tribal populations (notably the Santals), and the stabilization of the cultivated arable. By the 1800s, the colonial officials also initiated attempts to turn the so-called ‘wastelands’ into productive terrains by introducing teak plantations and formulating plans for forest protection. However, through the course of trying to realize these various objectives, colonial officialdom found itself confronted by several dilemmas. Forest protection, vermin eradication, and sedentarizing forest inhabitants or tribals turned out to have contradictory impacts. Forest protection, for example, meant the exclusion of tribal groups, which then helped multiply vermin numbers and ultimately undermined the extension of the arable. The colonial authorities, therefore, repeatedly found themselves requiting far more elaborated bureaucracies to contend with both ecological complexity and a recalcitrant native populace. In time, colonial forestry, had to be frequently tempered by the demands of rural livelihoods and was compelled to absorb into its design a slew of administrative variations, (p.222) reversals, and adaptations to local agrarian contexts. In sum, through the rubric of statemaking, the colonial impact on Midnapore District’s forests and local society is revealed as a negotiated, contradictory, oftentimes fluctuating and regionally specific impress, repeatedly modulated as much by social conflict, events, and cultures as by the stochastic effects of ecological factors. Thus, unlike Gadgil and Guha’s untroubled and simple divide between the pre-colonial and colonial, Sivaramakrishnan’s notion of statemaking helps provide a far more nuanced, cautious, and richly textured look at the many layered impacts and continuities in the colonial ecological watershed. Nevertheless, Modern Forests, tends to cloud the distinction between techniques of rule and the nature of rule. Why colonialism preferred the arable, resorted to scientific forestry, and attempted to sustain capitalist property lies unanswered. In other words, Sivaramakrishnan does not explain why certain administrative policies and strategies were persisted with despite their causing recurring environmental catastrophes and social rebellion. In fact, it is precisely this kind of colonial persistence in its dealings with both society and ecology that, I argue, comprised the essential armature of the colonial signature on the natural world. Particularly in the case of the Orissa Delta, the hardening of the administration’s posture on flood-control, amply reveals that colonial rule could coexist only with a flood vulnerable landscape. As outlined earlier, the introduction of embankments to secure private property in the delta caused the region’s hydrology to be violently unsettled. But instead of colonial rule dismantling the embankments and by implication requiring to dissolve capitalist property, chose instead to ramp up its hydraulic intervention by attempting to regulate the river systems as a commodity through a profit-seeking canal. When the canal system in turn failed and the delta had begun to be both overwhelmed by vicious flooding and by popular resistance, colonial state managers once again, instead Page 7 of 10

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Conclusion of demobilizing its flood-control initiatives, upped the ante by harnessing a new moment in capitalist restructuring through the adoption of MPRVD. In effect, British rule recast the seasonal inundations as calamitous event and sought to consolidate the delta as a flood-vulnerable landscape. Thus, the methods, logics, techniques, protocols, procedures, measurements, and rules for instituting floodcontrol, despite innumerable variations and contingencies, were, aimed principally at enabling colonial appropriation. That is, the colonial watershed was not principally determined or shaped (p.223) by drives for ‘profligacy’ or ‘statemaking’ but assembled by and derived from the workings of colonial capitalism as a specific social form. The colonial ecological watershed, however, was not merely marked by distinct forms of property, social relations, and regimes of exploitation but possessed a dynamism that was part of the broader uncurling of global capitalist expansion and its regime for accumulation. Capitalist dynamism, in a colonial context, has both general and specific features. General because capitalism, in the broadest sense, refers to generalized commodity production in which labour power is a commodity. As a mode of production, capitalism is characterized by the division of society into two antagonistic classes: a class of direct producers who have been dispossessed of the means of production and a class that has monopolized control over the means of production. The controllers of the means of production in turn attempt to sustain a momentum for the production and expropriation of surplus value from the direct producers. However, in specific contexts, neither is this dynamism realized neatly nor does it necessarily reproduce ideal capitalist conditions. In colonial contexts in particular, modern colonialized societies were reordered as a sort of an economic and political hybrid. A description, which, in many ways, resonates well with what Michael Watts has, in his study of colonial Nigeria, discussed as the ‘contradictory conjoining’ of capitalist and noncapitalist production processes.9 In the instance of the Orissa Delta, the transformation of the delta from a flood-dependent agrarian regime to that of a flood-vulnerable landscape, I have pointed out, was a long drawn, uneven and tortuous process, in which colonial initiatives for hydraulic manipulation were undermined, circumvented, resisted, and oftentimes entirely routed by local exigencies. Nevertheless, colonial rule remained steadfast in treating deltaic inundation as a calamitous event, even in the face of both repeated environmental catastrophes and social rebellion. A persistence in administrative policy and strategy, as I argued earlier, that was integral to defining its ecological signature and its realization as part of its dynamic as a particular kind of social form. Understanding the peculiar trajectory of capitalist dynamism, therefore, is central to understanding the very distinct continuities in the patterns of environmental degradation which continue to afflict post-colonial South Asia.

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Conclusion As I write these last lines, a gargantuan scheme to manually replumb India’s entire hydraulic endowment is being dreamed up. Termed with great engineering hubris as the Interlinking Rivers Project (ILR), the plan (p.224) advocates thirty-seven rivers to be connected through thirty links and thirty-six major dams. The claim is that the ILR will generate 30,000 Mega Watts of cheap hydropower, supply drinking water to 101 districts and five metros, and irrigate 34 million hectares. Rhetorically, in much official explanations, the ILR is based on the simple claim that water needs can be met by transferring the ‘surplus’ floodwaters of the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin to the central and peninsula river systems. In the course of this manual replumbing of the Indian subcontinent’s hydrology, the project, it is prophesised, could eternally banish drought and end floods.10 Once again, India’s many hydraulic endowments are sought to be reengineered, developed, harnessed, reshaped, and produced as artefacts and adjuncts to the nation’s fast liberalizing and globalizing economy. Meanwhile, drowned and dammed flows the Mahanadi. Notes:

(1) . R.B. Mohanty, ‘A Glimpse on Orissa’s Flood’, paper presented in a seminar on floods in the Mahanadi Basin (Bhubaneswar 22–3 January 1983) cited in Rohan D’souza, Pranab Mukhopadhyay and Ashish Kothari, ‘Re-evaluating, Multi-purpose River Valley Projects: A Case Study of Hirakud, Ukai, IGNP’, EPW, 33(6), 1998, p. 300. Sadhna Satpathy argues that the change in the intensity of the floods coupled with an increase in the flood level due to siltation of the river beds, expansion of an ill-planned embankment system and a growth in occupancy of semi-protected lands, has caused equal if not greater damage from floods in the post-dam period. See Sadhana Satpathy, Floods and Flood-control Policies (Trivandrum 1993), passim. (2) . Michael Kidron, Western Capitalism Since the War (London 1968), pp. 17– 43. Also see Philip Armstrong, Andrew Glyn, and John Harrison (eds), Capitalism Since World War II: The Making and Breakup of the Great Boom (London 1984), pp. 193–212. (3) . Ferrucio Gambino, ‘A Critique of the Fordism of the Regulation School’, Wildcat-Zirkular, no. 28/29, October 1996, pp. 139–60. Translated by Ed Emery in Common Sense, no. 19, June 1996. Available on the website http:// www.wildcat-www.de/en/zirkular/28/z28e_gam.htm (4) . Alain Lipietz, Mirages and Miracles: The Crisis of Global Fordism, translated by David Macey (London 1987), pp. 35–6. (5) . Alain Lipietz, Towards a New Economic Order (New York 1992), p. 52. (6) . Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (Delhi 1992).

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Conclusion (7) . Ibid., p. 118. (8) . K. Sivaramakrishnan, Modem Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Delhi 1999). (9) . See Michael Watts, Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (Berkeley 1983), pp. xxv-22. (10) . For criticism of the ILR see Medha Patkar (ed.), River Linking: A Millennium Folly? (Mumbai 2004) and Arun Kumar Singh, Inter-linking of Rivers in India: A Preliminary Assessment (Delhi 2003). Also see Rohan D’souza, ‘Supply-side Hydrology in India: The Last Gasp’, EPW, 38(36), 2003, pp. 3785–9.

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Appendix I Summary of Case Details TILL 1886

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

(p.226) Appendix I Summary of Case Details TILL 1886 1) Killah Aul is a permanently-settled zamindari in the province of Orissa held at an annual peshkash or quit rent. 2) The embankment law in force in Orissa is Act XXXII of 1855, as modified by Part IX of Act II (BC) of 1882. 3) The zamindar’s engagement with government contains no express stipulation regarding embankments, but the embankments had always been maintained by the zamindar and his ancestors. 4) The Aul embankments are now kept up (and have been kept up since 1880) by the officers of government, and they are therefore public embankments as defined in the Act of 1855. By Section 4 of Act II (BC) of 1882 the property in them vests in the government on behalf of the persons interested in the lands protected thereby. 5) In March 1881 the government directed the superintendent of embankments to prepare an estimate of the cost of maintaining the Aul embankments and to submit proposals regarding the fixed annual sum to be paid by the zamindar as his contribution. 6) In July 1882 the government expressed its willingness to maintain the Aul embankments (a length of 19¾ miles) on the zamindar making an annual payment of Rs 5,835. 7) This proposal was never accepted by the zamindar. 8) In 1883 some modifications were made in the character of the embankments, but these did not affect the amount of the contribution payable by the zamindar. 9) The arrears of the zamindar’s contribution amounted in December last to Rs 24,481-8-1 and a certificate for this amount was filed against him. (p.227)

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Appendix I Summary of Case Details TILL 1886 10) On an objection made by the zamindar, the collector has directed the certificate to be cancelled. Source: H.J.S. Cotton, secretary to the Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, to the superintendent and remembrancer of legal affairs Calcutta, 30 1886, BRP, LRD, File no. 18, Acc. no. 326, p. 20. Listed under B & O files (1878–1920), OSA

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Appendix II Protected Land in Deltaic Orissa: Some Estimates

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

(p.228) Appendix II Protected Land in Deltaic Orissa: Some Estimates Table II.i. Deltaic Area Protected in Orissa River

Total Area (sq. miles)

Area Protected (sq. miles)

Embankment (miles)

Mahanadi

2,525

1327

540

Brahmini

855

263

131

Baitarani

n.a.

289

75

Other Rivers

n.a.

156

58

3,380

2,035

804

Total

Source: A.S. Thomson, Rivers of Orissa (Calcutta 1905), pp. 40–52. Note: Out of the 804 miles of embankments along the deltaic rivers, 294 miles were connected with the canal system while 510 miles were classified as agricultural works.

Table II.ii. Irrigated and Protected Lands: Gubbay’s Note of July 1923 Status of Land in the Delta

Area (sq. miles)

a) Protected from floods but not irrigated

580

b) Protected from all floods and irrigated

450

c) Fully protected (irrigated + unirrigated)

1,030

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Appendix II Protected Land in Deltaic Orissa: Some Estimates

Status of Land in the Delta

Area (sq. miles)

d) Semi-protected (protected from low floods)

1,020

Totally protected (a + b + c + d)

2,050

e) Unprotected (open to all floods)

1,254

Total (protected + semi-protected + unprotected)

3,304

Source: Cited in P.C. Mahalanobis, Report on Occurrence of Floods in the Orissa Delta (n.p., 1941), p. 63. Note: These figures were recorded by H.A. Gubbay, superintending engineer, Orissa Circle, after his survey of the deltaic districts of Cuttack, Balasore and Puri in 1920. These figures were published in his note of 3 July 1923. As is evident, out of about roughly 3,300 sq.miles of area in the delta, approximately one-third is fully protected, one-third is semi-protected, and one-third is open to inundation. (p.229)

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Appendix II Protected Land in Deltaic Orissa: Some Estimates

Table II.iii. J. Shaw’s Note to the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee 1939–40 Status of the Land Area of Delta (sq.miles)

Mahanadi

Brahmini

Baitarani

Total

2940

854

659

4453

Protected area served by the canals (sq.miles)

641

62

190

893

Protected by embankments but not irrigated (sq.miles)

456

166

103

725

Semi-protected but affected by high floods (sq.miles)

725

192

177

1094

Area frequently flood (sq.miles)

475

230

140

845

High grounds, jungles etc., not ordinarily flooded (sq. miles)

278

124

30

432

Total length of embankments (miles)

751

178

100

1029

Source: Note of J. Shaw, executive engineer, Floods and Drainage Division, to the Orissa Flood Committee 1939–40, cited in P.C. Mahalanobis, Report on Occurrence of Floods in the Orissa Delta (n.p., 1941), p. 64.

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Appendix II Protected Land in Deltaic Orissa: Some Estimates

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Bibliography

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

(p.230) Bibliography Unpublished Papers

Oriental and India office Collection, British Library, London Economic and Overseas Dept Collection, 58 (L/E) Hawthorne Lewis Mss Eur. Leonard George Pinnel Mss Eur. Mountbatten Collection Papers of India, Pakistan and Burma Association Personal Diary, R.G. Casey Political External Files and Collections (UPS) Richard Temple Mss Eur. T.E. Gregory Mss Eur. Wavell Collection

National Archives of India, Delhi Irrigation Proceedings ‘A’, PWD, 1860–88 Finance Department, Planning Branch, Files I and II, 1945–7

Orissa State Archives, Bhubaneswar Board of Revenue Records Revenue, 1803–1926 Miscellaneous, 1868 Marine, 1819–32 Bihar and Orissa Files (File Records), 1878–1920

Loose Correspondence Revenue, Agriculture, Settlement and Miscellaneous, 1804–1919 (p. 231) Page 1 of 28

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Bibliography District Records Revenue Correspondence, Cuttack, 1803–70 Revenue Correspondence, Balasore, 1803–99 Marine Correspondence, Balasore, 1820–31

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi: H.K. Mahtab Papers Newspapers and Journals Report on Native Newspapers of Bengal, January–June, 1884 Utkal Darpan (Oriya weekly, Balasore) Utkal Deepki (Oriya weekly, Cuttack) Unpublished Reports Banjdeo, S.N., ‘Flood Problem in Delta Region (Orissa)’, Speech delivered in the Parliamentary Committee Seminar, Delhi, 4 September 1962. ‘Embankment Committee’s Reports’, Calcutta, 1901 (V/27/730/7), Oriental India Office Collection, London. ‘Report on the Embankments of the Rivers Bengal’, Calcutta, 1846 (V/27/732/36), Oriental India Office Collection, London. ‘Embankments in Bengal: Note on Their Origin; Development and Utility (1772–1850)’, Land Revenue Records (28 March, 1851), 20–1 in Index to Land Revenue Records (1838–59), National Archives of India, Delhi. ‘Orissa Legislative Assembly Proceedings’, Cuttack: Orissa Government Press, 1936 to 1947 (Relevant volumes consulted), Orissa State Archives, Bhubaneswar. Published Reports and Gazetteers

Addams, Williams C., History of the Rivers in the Gangetic Delta, 1750–1918, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1919. Banerjei, N.N., Report on the Agriculture of the District of Cuttack, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1898. Behuria, Nrusinha Charan, Orissa State Gazetteer, vol. 1, Bhubaneswar: Department of Revenue, Government of Orissa, 1900. (p.232) Bureau of Flood-control, Report on Extension of Irrigation and Further Flood-control of the Mahanadi Delta Orissa, Bangkok: Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, 1952. Bureau of Flood-control, Report on the Sample Survey for Estimating the Area, Yeild Rates and Total Production of Autumn and Winter Rice in Orissa, Cuttack: Government of Orissa, 1956.

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Bibliography Bureau of Flood-control, Report on the Benefits of Hirakud Irrigation: A Socioeconomic Study, Bhubaneswar: Government of Orissa, 1968. Central Water, Irrigation, and Navigation Commission, Mahanadi Valley Development: Hirakud Dam Project, Simla: Government of India Press, 1947. Cotton, Arthur, Report on the Mahanuddy River, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1858. Dalziel, W.W., Final Report on the Revision Settlement of Orissa (1922–32), Patna: Superintendent of Government Printing, Bihar and Orissa, 1934. Damodar Valley Corporation Enquiry Committee (1952–53), Delhi: Ministry of Irrigation and Power, Government of India, 1953. Donnell, C.J.O., The Lower Provinces of Bengal and Their Feudatories, Census of India 1891, vol. 3, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1893. Eight Years of D.V.C., Calcutta: Damodar Valley Corporation, 1956. Evidence Taken before the Flood Committee, Patna: Superintendent Government Printing, 1928. Ewer (1818) in Selections from the Correspondence on the Settlement of the Khoordah Estate in the District of Pooree, vol. 1, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1870. First Decennial Review (1912–22) of the Administration and Development of the Provinces, Patna: Government Press, 1923. First Interim Report of the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee, Bhubaneswar: Orissa Government Press, 1939. Flood-control Projects Proposed for Inclusion in the Second Five Year Plan, Delhi: Ministry of Irrigation and Power, Government of India, August 1955. Ghosh, P.C., A Comprehensive Treatise on North Bihar Flood Problem: Being a Description of the River System and their Journey and Tendencies with Suggestions for Flood Mitigation, 1942, Patna: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1948. (p.233) Guidelines and Instruction for the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Rashtriya Barh Ayog, Delhi: National Flood Commission, 1980. Harcourt, L.E Vernon, Report on the River Hugh, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1896.

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Bibliography Harris, J.C., Report on the Districts of Orissa. Considered with Reference to the Inundations of the Mahanuddy River, Report part 3, Cuttack: Baptist Mission Press, 31 August 1859. Harris, J.C., W.D. Short, and E.A. Samuells, Reports and Correspondence Relative to the Control of the Mahanuddy River at Cuttack, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1857. Hirst, F.C., Report on the Nadia Rivers, 1915, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1916. Hughes, A.J., Report on the Drainage of the Howrah Swamps, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1882. Hunter, W.W., A Selected List of 14,136 Letters in the Board of Revenue Calcutta, 1782–1807 with an Historical Dissertation and Analytical Index, vol. 3, 1798 to 1801, London: WH. Allen and Co., 1894. Hutton, CH., Report on the Utilization of Silt in Italy, n.p., 1909. Irrigation Works of India: Statistical Review of the Financial and Agricultural Results Obtained from Them in 1887–88, Calcutta: Government Printing, 1889. Inglis, W.A., Present State of the River Channels and Flood Embankments of the Puri District with Proposals for the Construction of Permanent Escapes, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1902. Inglis, W.A., Canals and Flood Banks of Bengal, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1909. Inglis, W.A., A Review of the Legislation in Bengal Relating to Irrigation, Drainage and Flood Embankments, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1911. Maconchy, G.C., Report on Protective Irrigation Works in Bengal, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1902. Maddox, S.L., Final Report on the Survey and Settlement of the Province of Orissa (Temporally Settled Areas) 1890 to 1900 A.D., 2 vols, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1900. Mahalanobis, P.C., Report on the Occurrence of Floods in the Orissa Delta, n.p., 1941. O‘Malley, L.S.S., Cuttack Gazetteer, Patna: Superintendent Government Printing, 1928. (p.234) O‘Malley, L.S.S., District Gazetteer of Puri, Patna: Superintendent Government Printing, 1929. Page 4 of 28

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Bibliography O‘Malley, L.S.S., Bihar and Orissa District Gazetteer, Patna: Superintendent Government Printing, 1933. Ottley, J.W. (1874), ‘Note 10 December 1874’ in Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, Calcutta: Bengal Secretarial Press, 1861, pp. 73–85. Orissa High Level Canal its Advantages and Disadvantages, The Balasore National Society, Raja Shyamananda De’s Street: Utkal Press, 1884. Papers of 1853 and 1854 on the Damoodar Embankments, Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1854. Papers on the Subject of the Cuttack Rivers containing Captain Harris’ 2nd Report, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1860. Papers Relating to Irrigation in Bengal and the Maghasani Hills as a Sanatorium, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1861. Papers Relating to the Orissa Canals 1869 to 1877 and 1881 to 1883, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1884. Papers Relative to the Cuttack Rivers, part 1 and 2, Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1860. Proceedings of the Fourth Regional Technical Conference on Water Resources Development in Asia and the Far East, Flood-control Series no. 19, Bangkok: United Nations, 1962. Rao, K. L. and Sain Kanwar, Report on the Recent River Valley Projects in China, Delhi: Central Work and Power Commission, 1955. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into Certain Matters in Connection with the Orissa Canals, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1885. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Administration of the Sone Canals, vol. 1, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1888. Report of the High Level Committee on Floods, General Assessment Principles and Policies, vol. 1, Delhi: Ministry of Irrigation and Power, Government of India, 1957. Report of the Indian Irrigation Commission, Simla, 1903, Calcutta: Government Printing, 1905. Report of the Orissa Flood Committee 1928, 2 vols, Patna: Superintendent Government Printing, 1929.

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Bibliography Report on the Contour Survey of the Flooded Tract of Orissa, Orissa Floods, 1920, n.p., n. d. (p.235) Report on the Direct Benefits from Irrigation of the Hirakud Dam Projects (Cuttack and Delta Zone), Cuttack: Orissa Government Press, 1954. Ricketts, Henry, Papers on the Settlement of Cuttack and on the State of the Tributary Mahals, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1851. Ricketts, Henry, Report of Pooree and Balasore, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1853. Ricketts, Henry, Report on the Districts of Midnapore (Including Hijlee) and Cuttack, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1858. Second Interim Report of the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee, Cuttack: Orissa Government Press, 1940. Third Interim Report of the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee, Cuttack: Orissa Government Press, 1942. Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government Relating to the Cossye and Seyle floods from May 1860 to September 1893, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1928. Selections from the Correspondence on the Settlement of the Khoordah Estate in the District of Pooree, vol. 1, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1928. Selection from the Records of the Government of Bengal Relating to the Nadia Rivers, 1848 to 1926, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1931. Seventh Provincials Flood Conference held at Cuttack, n. p., 1948. Summary of the Proceedings of the Technical Discussions made in the Seminar on ‘Floods in the Mahanadi Basin’, 22 January 1983, Soochana Bhavan, Bhubaneswar, on the occasion of Silver Jubilee Celebration of Orissa Engineers Service Association. (Copy available in the Central Irrigation Library, Directorate of Designs, Bhubaneswar.) Taylor, W.C, Report on the Embankments of Orissa, Cuttack: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1871. Temple, R., Report on the River Mahanuddy and its Tributaries: The Resources and Trade of the Adjacent Countries and the Proposed Works for the Improvement of Navigation and Irrigation, Nagpore: n.p., 1863.

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Bibliography The High Level Committee on Floods: General Assessment of Principles and Policies, vol. 1, Delhi: Ministry of Irrigation and Power, Government of India, 1957. The Irrigation Works of India: A Statistical Review of the Financial and Agricultural Results Obtained from them in 1887–88, Calcutta: Government Printing, 1889 (p.236) . Third interim Report of the Orissa Flood Advisory Committee, Cuttack: Government Press, February 1942. Thornton, Edward, A Gazetteer of the Territories Under the Government of the East India Company and of the Native States on the Continent of India, London: W.M.H. Allen, 1854. Books and Articles

Abul Fazi, Ain-i-Akbari, tr. H.S. Jarrett and Jadunath Sarkar, vol. 2, Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Co., 1978. Adams, W.M., Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in the Third World, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Addams, William C., Note on the Lectures of Sir William Willcocks, on irrigation in Bengal Together with a Reply from Sir William Willcocks, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1931. Addison, Herbert, Sun and Shadow at Aswan: A Commentary on Dams and Reservoirs on the Nile at Aswan, Yesterday, Today, and Perhaps Tomorrow, London: Chapman and Hall, 1959. Agarwal, Anil and Sunita Narain (eds), Floods, Flood Plains and Environmental Myths, Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1991. Agarwal, Anil and Sunita Narain (eds), Dying Wisdom: The Rise, Fall and Potential of India’s Traditional Water-harvesting Systems, Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1997. Agarwal, Shriman Narayan, The Gandhian Plan, Bombay: Padma Publication, 1944. Agnihotri, Indu, ‘Ecology, Land Use and Colonization: The Canal Colonies of Punjab’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 33(1), 1996, pp. 37–58. Agrawal, Arun and K. Sivaramkrishnan (eds), Social Nature: Resources, Representations and Rule in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Agrawal, C.M., Natural Calamities and the Great Mughals, Bodh Gaya: Kanchan Publications, 1983. Page 7 of 28

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Bibliography Alam, Muzaffar, ‘The Zamindars and Mughal Power in the Deccan, 1685–1712’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 11(1), 1974, pp. 74–91. Ali, Imran, The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885–1947, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. (p.237) Alvares, C. and R. Billorey, ‘Damning the Narmada: The Politics Behind the Destruction’, The Ecologist, 17(2), 1987, pp. 62–73. Anon., ‘The Economics of Public Works’, Calcutta Review, 33(1), 1859, pp. 172– 85. Armstrong, Philip, Andrew Glyn, and John Harrison (eds), Capitalism Since World War II: The Making and Breakup of the Great Boom, London: Fontana, 1984. Badger, Anthony J., The New Deal: The Depression Years 1933–1940, London: Macmillan Press, 1989. Balachandran, G., The Reserve Bank of India, 1951–1967, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Banerji, Rakhal Das, History of Orissa, from Earliest Times to the British Period, Calcutta: R. Chatterjee, 1931. Barker, Randolph, Robert W. Herdt, and Beth Rose, The Rice Economy of Asia, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1985. Barlow, Maude and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water, New York: The New Press, 2002. Barrow, Chris, Water Resources and Agricultural Development in the Tropics, Essex: Longman Scientific and Technical, 1987. Bayly, C.A., Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. Bayly, C.A., Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Beams, John, ‘The History of Orissa under the Mohammedan, Maratha and English Rule’ in N.K. Sahu (ed.), A History of Orissa, vol. 2(2 vols), Calcutta: Susil Gupta Ltd, 1956, pp. 292–320. Beams, John, Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian, London: Chatto and Windus, 1961.

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Bibliography Beams, John, ‘Notes on Akbar’s Subahs with Reference to the Ain-i-Akbari’ in B.P. Ambashthya (ed.), Beames’ Contributions to the Political Geography of the Subahs of Awadh, Bihar, Bengal and Orissa in the Age of Akbar, Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1976, pp. 94–114. Bellasis, E.S., River and Canal Engineering: The characteristics of Open Flowing Streams and the Principles and Methods to be Followed in Dealing with Them, London: Spon and Chamberlain, 1931. (p.238) Bhaduri, Amit, ‘The Evolution of Land Relations in Eastern India under British Rule’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 12(1), 1976, pp. 45– 58. Bhaduri, Amit, Flood-control and Allied Problems of the Orissa Rivers, part 1, Bhubaneswar: Government of Orissa, 1979. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, Financial Foundations of the British Raj: Men and Ideas in the Post-mutiny Period of Reconstruction of Indian Public Finance, 1858–1872, Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, 1971. Biswas, Arabinda, ‘The Decay of Irrigation and Cropping in West Bengal, 1850– 1925’ in Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain (eds), Dying Wisdom, pp. 101–2. Bose, Sugata, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal Since 1770, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Botkin, Daniel, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Boyce, James K., ‘Birth of a Mega-project: Political Economy of Flood-control in Bangladesh’, Environment Management, 14(4), 1990, pp. 419–28. Bray, Francesca, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies, Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Brigham, Jay L., Empowering the West: Electrical Politics before FDR, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. Burkett, Paul, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999. Ch’ao-Ting, Chi, Key Economic Areas in Chinese History as Revealed in the Development of Public Works for Water-control, New York: Paragon Books, 1963. Chakrabarti, Shubhra, ‘Intransigent Shroffs and the English East India Company’s Currency Reforms in Bengal, 1757–1800’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 34(1), 1997, pp. 69–94.

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Bibliography Chandler, William U., The Myth of TVA: Conservation and Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1933–1983, Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1984. Chandra, Satish, ’some Institutional Factors in Providing Capital Inputs and Expansion of Cultivation in Medieval India’, Indian Historical Review, 33(1), 1976, pp. 83–98. (p.239) Chandra, Satish, The 18th Century in India: its Economy and the Role of the Marathas, the Jats, the Sikhs and the Afghans, Calcutta: K.E Bagchi and Co., 1982. Chant, Colin (ed.), Science, Technology and Everyday Life, 1870–1950, London: Routledge, 1989. Chatterjee, Santimoy (ed.), Collected Works of Meghnad Saha, Calcutta: Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, 1987. Chatterjee, Santimoy and Enakshi Chatterjee, Meghnad Saha: Scientist with a Vision, Delhi: National Book Trust, 1984. Chatterjee, Santimoy and Jyotimoy Gupta (eds), Meghnad Saha in Parliament, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1993. Chaudhuri, B.B., ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’ in Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India 1757–1970, vol. 2, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984, pp. 86–126. Chaudhuri, B.B., ‘Power Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Eastern India, 1757–1947’ in Meghnad Desai, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, and Ashok Rudra, (eds), Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 100–70. Chaudhuri, Pradipta, ‘Peasants and British Rule in Orissa’, Social Scientist, 19(7), 1991, pp. 36–42. Clibborn, J. C., Treatise on Civil Engineering Irrigation Works in India, Roorkee: Thomason College, 1901. Colignon, Richard A., Power Plays: Critical Events in the Institutionalisation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997. Cronon, William, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1996. Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.

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Bibliography Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Crumley, Carole L. (ed.), Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press, 1994. Damodaran, Vinita, Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar (1935–46), Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. (p.240) Das, Manmath Nath, (ed.), Sidelights of History and Culture of Orissa, Cuttack: Vidyapuri, 1977. Datta, Rajat, ‘Agricultural Production, Social Participation and Domination in Late Eighteenth-century Bengal: Towards an Alternative Explanation’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 17(1), October 1989, pp. 68–113. Dauvergne, Peter, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1997. De, Sushil Chandra, ‘The Cowry Currency in India’, The Orissa Historical Research Journal 1(2),1952, pp. 10–21. De, Sushil Chandra, Guide to Orissa Records, Bhubaneswar: Orissa State Archives, 1961. Deakin, Alfred, Irrigated India: An Australian View of India and Ceylon: Their Irrigation and Agriculture, London: W. Thacker and Co., 1893. Dean, Warren, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Desai, Meghnad, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, and Ashok Rudra (eds), Agrarian Power and Agrarian Productivity in South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. Devine Jr., Warren, ‘From Shafts to Wires: Historical Perspective on Electrification’, The Journal of Economic History, 43(2), 1983, pp. 347–72. Dhir, P., ‘Flood Problems in Deltaic Regions’ in Proceedings of the Fourth Regional Technical Conference on Water Resources Development in Asia and the Far East, Flood-control Series no. 19, United Nations, Bangkok, 1962. Dowd, Douglas F., Capitalism and its Economics: A Critical History, London: Pluto Press, 2000. D’Souza, Rohan, ’Supply-side Hydrology in India: The Last Gasp’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38(36), 2003, pp. 3785–90.

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Bibliography D’Souza, Rohan, ‘Nature, Conservation and Environmental History: A Review of Some Recent Environmental Writing on South Asia’, Conservation and Society, 1(2), 2003, pp. 317–32. D’Souza, Rohan, ‘Canal Irrigation and the Conundrum of Flood-protection: The Failure of the Orissa Scheme of 1863 in Eastern India‘, Studies in History, 19(1), 2003, pp. 41–68. (p.241) D’Souza, Rohan, ‘Damming the Mahanadi River: The Emergence of Multi-Purpose River Valley Development in India (1943–46)’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 40(1), 2003, pp. 82–105. D’Souza, Rohan, ‘Rigidity and the Affliction of Capitalist Property: Colonial Land Revenue and the Recasting of Nature’, Studies in History, 20(2), 2004, pp. 237– 72. D’Souza, Rohan, Pranab Mukhopadhyay, and Ashish Kothari, Watery Dreams and Unfulfilled Promises: How Beneficial are Large-Scale Irrigation Projects?, Project report for Kalpavriskh, Delhi, 1994. D’Souza, Rohan, ‘Re-Evaluating Multi-Purpose River Valley Projects: A Case Study of Hirakud, Ukai and IGNP’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33(6), 1998, pp. 297–303. Dubofsky, Melvyn and Stephen Burwood (eds), The Great Depression and the New Deal, New York: Garland, 1990. Dumett, Raymond E., Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire, London: Addison-Wesley, 1999. Edsforth, Ronald, The New Deal: America’s Response to the Great Depression, Maden MA: Blackwell, 2000. Ehrlich, Paul, The Population Bomb, New York: Ballantine Books, 1963. Embree, Ainslie T., Imagining India: Essays on Indian History, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. Fairhead, James and Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest–Savanna Mosaic, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Febvre, Lucien, A Geographical Introduction to History, London: K. Paul Trench, Trubner and Co., 1925. Ferguson, Thomas, ‘From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition and American Public Policy in the Great Depression’ in Melvyn

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Bibliography Dubofsky and Stephen Burwood (eds), The Great Depression and the New Deal, New York: Garland, 1990, pp. 184–237. Finer, Herman, The T.V.A. Lessons for International Application, Montreal: International Labour office, 1944. Foster, John Bellamy, The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Planet, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999. Foster, John Bellamy, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, Kharagpur: Monthly Review Press, 2001. (p.242) Framji, K.K. and B.C. Garg, Flood-control in the World: A Global Review, vol. 2, Delhi: International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, India, 1977. Franda, Marcus F., West Bengal and the Federalising Process in India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Frykenberg, Robert Eric (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, Delhi: Manohar, 1979. Funigiello, Philip J., Toward a National Power Policy: The New Deal and the Electric Utility Industry 1933–1941, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973. Gadgil, Madhav and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. Ganguly, D.K., Historical Geography and Dynastic History of Orissa, upto the Rise of the Imperial Gangas, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1975. Gambino, Ferrucio, ‘A Critique of the Fordism of the Regulation School’, Wildcat– Zircular, no. 19, October 1996, pp. 139–60. Translated by Ed Emery (in Common Sense, no. 19, June 1996). Available on the website http://www.wildcat-www.de/ en/zirkuIar/28/z28e_gam.htm Gilmartin, David, ’scientific Empire and Imperial Science: Colonialism and Irrigation Technology in the Indus Basin’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 53(4), 1994, pp. 1127–49. Goldsmith, Edward and Hildyard, Nicholas (eds), The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams, vols 1 and 2, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986. Gordon, Stewart, Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenthcentury India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994. Goudie, Andrew, The Nature of the Environment, London: Blackwell, 1993. Page 13 of 28

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Bibliography Grajdanszev, Andrew, ‘India’s Economic Position in 1944’, Pacific Affairs, 17(4), 1944, pp. 460–77. Grigg, D.B., The Agricultural Systems of the World: An Evolutionary Approach, London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Grove, Richard H., Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Grove, Richard, Vinita Damodaran, and Satpal Sangwan (eds), Nature and the Orient: Essays on the Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. (p.243) Guha, Ramachandra, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. Guha, Ramachandra and David Arnold (eds), Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995. Guha, Ranajit, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1982. Guha, Ranajit, An Indian Historiography of India: A Nineteenth Century Agenda and its Implications, Calcutta: K. R. Bagchi and Co., 1988. Guha, Sumit, ’society and Economy in the Deccan, 1818–1850’ in Burton Stein (ed.), The Making of Agrarian Policy in India, 1700–1900, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 187–214. Gulati, N.D., Development of Interstate Rivers Laws and Practice in India, Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1972. Gupta, Partha Sarathi (ed.), Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1943–1944, vol. 1, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Habib, Irfan, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556–1707), Aligarh: Asia Publishing House, 1963. Habib, Irfan, ‘Agrarian Relations and Land Revenue’ in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, c. 1200 – c. 1750, vol. 1, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984, pp. 48–75. Habib, Irfan, ’studying a Colonial Economy without Perceiving Colonialism’, Modern Asian Studies, 19(3), 1985, pp. 355–81.

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Bibliography Habib, Irfan (ed.), Medieval India 1: Researches in the History of India, 1200– 1750, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. Habib, Irfan, ‘The Social Distribution of Landed Property in Pre-British India: A Historical Survey’ in Irfan Habib (ed.), Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception, Delhi: Tulika, 1995, pp. 59–108. Habib, Irfan (ed.), Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception, Delhi: Tulika, 1995. Haque, M.A., ‘Muslim Rule in Orissa’ in M.N. Das (ed.), Sidelights on History and Culture of Orissa, Cuttack: Vidyapuri, 1977, pp. 135–44. Haque, M.A., Muslim Administration in Orissa (1568–1751), Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1980. Hardiman, David, ‘Well Irrigation in Gujarat: Systems of Use, Hierarchies of Control’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33(25), 1998, pp. 1533–44 (p.244) . Hardin, Garett, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162, 1968, pp. 1243–8. Hargrove, Erwin C., and Paul K. Conkin (eds), TVA: Fifty Years of Grass-roots Bureaucracy, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. Hart, Henry C., New India’s Rivers, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1956. Harvey, David, The Limits to Capital, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Harvey, David, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Hasan, Saiyid Nurul, Thoughts on Agrarian Relations in Mughal India, Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1973. Headrick, Daniel R., The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Hjejle, Benedicte, ‘Indian Reality and British Conceptions: The Agrarian Scene in South Vizagapatnam in the 18th and 19th Centuries’ in Peter Robb (ed.), Meanings of Agriculture, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 132–81. Hubbard, John Preston, Origins of the TVA: The Muscle Shoals Controversy, 1920–1932, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1961. Hunter, W.W., Orissa or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province under Native and British Rule, vol. 2, London: Smith and Elder, 1872. Hunter, W.W., Statistical Account of Bengal, vols 18 and 19, Delhi: Concept Publishing House, 1973 (1877). Page 15 of 28

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Bibliography Hunter, W.W., ‘Orissa Under Foreign Government, Mughal and Maratha (1568– 1803)’ in N.K. Sahu (ed.), A History of Orissa, vol. 1, Calcutta: Sushil Gupta Ltd, 1956, pp. 155–77. Islam, Mufakharul M., Irrigation, Agriculture and the Raj: Punjab, 1887–1947, Delhi: Manohar, 1997. Iyengar, Kesava, ‘Industrialization and Agriculture in India Post-War Planning’, The Economic Journal, 54(214), 1944, pp. 189–205. James O’ Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism, New York: Guilford, 1998. Jena, A.B., ’some Flood Problems of Mahanadi’, Paper presented at a Seminar on Floods in the Mahanadi Basin, Orissa Engineers Service Association, Bhubaneswar, 22–3 January 1983. Jena, K.C., Socio-economic Condition of Orissa, Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1978. (p.245) Jenks, Leland Hamilton, The Migration of British Capital to 1875, New York: A.A. Knopf, 1927. Khosla, A.N., Orissa’s Decade of Destiny, 1963–1973: A Master Plan for the Integrated Development of the River Basins of Orissa, the Sixth Sir M. Visvesvaraya Lecture, delivered at the 43rd Annual Convention of the Institution of Engineers (India), Bangalore, May 1963. Khosla, A.N. (ed.), Mahanadi Valley Development Hirakud Dam Project, CWINC, Simla: Simla Press, June 1947. Kidron, Michael, Foreign Investments in India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Kidron, Michael, Western Capitalism since the War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968. Kovel, Joel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?, London: Zed Books, 2002. Krishna, K.B., Plan for Economic Development of India, Bombay: Padma Publications, 1945. Krishnamurti, Y.G., Sir M. Visvesvaraya: A Study, Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1941. Kumar, Dharma, Colonialism Property and the State, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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Bibliography Kumar, Dharma, ‘The Fiscal System’ in Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, c. 1757 – c. 1970, vol. 2, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984, pp. 905–46. Leuchtenburg, William E., Flood-control Politics: The Connecticut River Valley Problem, 1927–1950, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Lilienthal, David, TVA: Democracy on the March, Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966. Lipietz, Alain, Mirages and Miracles: The Crisis of Global Fordism, tr. David Macey, London: Verso, 1987. Lipietz, Alain, Towards a New Economic Order, Cambridge: Polity, 1992. Ludden, David, ‘Patronage and Irrigation in Tamil Nadu: A Long Term View’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 16(3), 1979, pp. 347–65. Ludden, David, ‘Productive Power in Agriculture: A Survey of Work on the Local History of British India’ in Meghnad Desai et al. (eds), Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 51–99. (p.246) Mahtab, H.K., ‘Resolved Orissa Flood Problem’ in M.V. (Dr M. Visvesvaraya): Birth Centenary Commemoration Volume, Bangalore: Visvesvaraya Centenary Celebration Committee, 1960. Majumdar, S.C, River Problems in Bengal, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1938. Majumdar, S.C, Rivers of the Bengal Delta, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1942. Mann, Michael, ‘A Permanent Settlement for the Ceded and Conquered Provinces: Revenue Administration in North India, 1801–1833’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 32(2), 1995, pp. 245–69. Mansergh, Nicholas (ed.), The Transfer of Power 1942–7, vol. 4, London: HMSO, 1973. Mansfield, P. T., Bihar and Orissa in 1903–31, Patna: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1932. Mapping-of Coastal Wetland and Shoreline Change along the Orissa and the West Bengal Coasts Using Satellite Data, Orissa Remote Sensing Application Centre, Bhubaneswar, 1991.

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Bibliography Markovits, Claude, Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, 1931–1939: The Indigenous Capitalist Class and the Rise of the Congress Party, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. 1, London: Penguin, 1990. McCully, Patrick, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams, London and New York: Zed Books, 2001. McNeill, J.R., Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-century World, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2000. Meadows, Donella, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Rander, and William Behrens, The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, New York: Universe Books, 1972. Metcalf, Thomas R., ‘From Raja to Landlord: The Oudh Taluqdar, 1850–1870’ in Robert Eric Frykenberg (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, Delhi: Manohar, 1979, pp. 123–42. Michel, A.A., The Indus Rivers: A Study of the Effects of Partition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Miller, Char and Hal Rothman (eds), Out of the Woods: Essays in Environmental History, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. Miller, Peter and William E. Rees, ‘Introduction’ in David Pimental, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss (eds), Ecological Integrity: Integrating (p.247) Environment, Conservation, and Health, Washington: Island Press, 2000, pp. 3– 18. Mishra, Dinesh Kumar, ‘The Bihar Flood Story’, Economic and Political Weekly, 32(35), 1997, pp. 2206–17. Mishra, S.D., Rivers of India, Delhi: National Book Trust, 1970. Misra, Maria, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and the Raj: British Policy in India between the World Wars’ in Raymond E. Dumett (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire, London: Addison-Wesley, 1999, pp. 157–76. Misra, Maria, Business, Race and Politics in British India, c. 1850–1960, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Mohanty, Durga Charan, The Mahapralaya (Deluge) in Orissa, Delhi: Communist Party of India Publication, 1982.

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Bibliography Moosvi, Shireen, ‘The Zamindars Share in the Peasant Surplus in the Mughal Empire: Evidence of the Ain-i-Akbari Statistics’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 15(3), 1978, pp. 359–74. Moosvi, Shireen, ‘Aurangzeb’s Farmon to Rasikdas: On Problems of Revenue Administration, 1665’ in Irfan Habib (ed.), Medieval India 1: Researches in the History of India, 1200–1750, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 197–206. Moreland, W.H., From Akbar to Aurangzeb: A Study in Indian Economic History, Delhi: Orient Books Reprint Corp., 1972. Moreland, W.H., The Agrarian System of Moslem India: A Historical Essay with Appendices, Delhi: Oriental Books, 1968. Mosse, David, The Rule of Water: Statecraft, Ecology, and Collective Action in South India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Mukherjee, R., Irrigation, Inland Navigation, and Flood Problems in North Orissa during the British Rule, Bhubaneswar: n.p., 1967. Nag, D. S., A Study of Economic Plans for India, Bombay: Hind Kitab Limited, 1949. Naik, B., ‘Killing Two Birds in one Shot’, Supplement to Seminar on Floods in the Mahanadi Basin:, Bhubaneswar, January 1983. (Copy available in the Central Irrigation Library, Directorate of Designs, Bhubaneswar.) Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 4, part 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Nehru, Jawaharlal, Independence and After, Delhi: Ministry of information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1949. (p.248) Neumann, Roderick, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Newhouse, Federic, M.G. Ionides, and Gerald Lacey, Irrigation in Egypt and the Sudan, The Tigris and Euphrates Basin, India and Pakistan, London: The British Council, 1950. Newhouse, Federic, M.G. Ionides, and Gerald Lacey, ‘Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible?’ in James, O’Connor (ed.), Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism, New York: Guilford, 1998, pp. 234–53. O’Connor, James, ‘Codependency and Indeterminacy: A Critique of the Theory of Production’ in Martin O’Connor (ed.), Is Capitalism Sustainable: Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology, New York: Guilford, 1994, pp. 53–75. Page 19 of 28

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Bibliography O’Connor, James, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism, New York: Guilford, 1998. O’Connor, Martin (ed.), Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology, New York: Guilford, 1994. Odum, E.P., ‘The Strategy of Ecosystem Development’, Science, 164, 1969, pp. 262–6. Padhi, Sakti, ‘Property in Land, Land Market and Tenancy Relations in the Colonial Period: A Review of Theoretical Categories and Study of a Zamindari District’ in K.N. Raj, Sumit Guha, and Sakti Padhi (eds), Essays on the Commercialisation of Indian Agriculture, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 1–50. Pandey, Manmath, ‘Maratha Rule’ in J.K. Samal and P.K. Mishra (eds), Comprehensive History and Culture of Orissa (1568 A.D.–1994 A.D.), vol. 2, part 2, Delhi: Kaveri Books, 1997, pp. 17–33. Pandian, M.S.S., The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: Nanchilnadu 1880– 1939, Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990. Paranjpye, Vijay, High Dams on the Narmada: A Holistic Analysis of the River Valley Projects, Delhi: INTACH Publications, 1990. Partridge, Ernest, ‘Reconstructing Ecology’ in David Pimental, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss (eds), Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health, Washington DC, 2000, pp. 79–97. Pati, Biswamoy Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in Orissa, 1920–50, Delhi: Manohar, 1993. Patkar, Medha (ed.), River Linking: A Millennium Folly? Mumbai: National Alliance of People’s Movements, 2004. (p.249) Patnaik, Gorachand, The Famine and Some Aspects of the British Economic Policy in Orissa, 1866–1905, Cuttack: Vidyapuri, 1980. Patra, K.M., Orissa Under the East India Company, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971. Patnaik, P.K., A Forgotten Chapter of Orissa History: With Special Reference to the Rajas of Khurda and Puri (1568–1828), Cuttack: Kanika Publication, 1979. Perlin, Frank, ’state Formation Reconsidered’, Modern Asian Studies, 19(3), 1985, pp. 415–80.

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Bibliography Pimentel, David, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss (eds), Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health, Washington DC: Island Press, 2000. Ponting, Clive, A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations, New York: Penguin, 1993. Postel, Sandra, Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1999. Prakash, Gyan, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labour Servitude in Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Proceedings of the Fourth Regional Technical Conference on Water Resources Development in Asia and the Far East, Flood-control Series, no. 19, United Nations, Bangkok, 1962. Raj, K.N., Neeladri Bhattacharya, Sumit Guha, and Sakti Padhi (eds), Essays on the Commercialisation of Indian Agriculture, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985. Rangachari, R., ’some Disturbing Questions’, Seminar, 478, 1999, pp. 62–7. Rangaiya, R.M.G., Mahanadi Valley Development: Hirakud Dam Project, (the latest proposals made in the Project Report dated June 1947 issued by the Chairman, Central Waterways, Irrigation and Navigation Commission) Bangalore: Bangalore Press, Mysore Road, 1947. Rangarajan, Mahesh, ‘Environmental Histories of South Asia: A Review Essay’, Environment and History, 2(2), 1996, pp. 129–43. Rangarajan, Mahesh, ‘Polity, Ecology and Landscape: New Writings on South Asia’s Past’, Studies in History, 18(1), 2002, pp. 135–48. Rangarajan, Mahesh, India’s Wildlife History: An Introduction, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001. (p.250) Rao, G.N., ‘Transition from Subsistence to Commercialized Agriculture: A Study of Krishna District in Andhra, 1850–1890’, Economic and Political Weekly, 20(25–6), 1985, pp. A–60–9. Rao, G.N., ‘Canal Irrigation and Agrarian Change in Colonial Andhra: A Study of Godavari District, c. 1850–1890’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 25(1), 1988, pp. 25–60. Rao, K.M. Sambasiva, Nageswara Rao, and A. Vaidyanathan, ‘Morphology and Evolution of Mahanadi and Brahmani-Baitarani Deltas’ in Symposium on

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Bibliography Morphology and Evolution of Landforms, Department of Geology, University of Delhi, 22–3 December 1978. Rao, V.S. Narayana, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya: His Life and Work, Mysore: Geetha Book House, 1973. Rao, V.S. Narayana, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, Delhi: National Book Trust, 1982. Rashid, Harun and B.K. Paul, ‘Flood Problems in Bangladesh: Is there an Indigenous Solution?’, Environmental Management, 11(2), 1987, pp. 155–73. Raut, L.N., Socio-economic Life in Medieval Orissa (1568–1751), Cuttack: Punthi Pustak, 1988. Ray, B.C., Foundations of British Orissa, Cuttack: New Students Store, 1960. Ray, B.C., Orissa under the Marathas (1751–1803), Bombay: Kitab Mahal, 1960. Ray, B.C., Orissa under the Mughals: From Akbar to Alivardi, A Fascinating Study of the Socio-economic and Cultural History of Orissa, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1981. Ray, Ratnalekha, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society, 1760–1860, Delhi: Manohar, 1979. Ray, Ratnalekha and Rajat Ray, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars: A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, 9(2), 1975, pp. 81–102. Ray, Usha, ‘Maratha Revenue Administration in Orissa’, Bengal Past & Present, LXXLV (138–9), 1955, pp. 60–7. Raychaudhuri, Tapan and Irfan Habib (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984. Reisner, Marc, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water, New York: Penguin, 1986. Richards, John E, Mughal Administration in Golconda, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. (p.251) Richards, John E, The Mughal Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Robb, Peter (ed.), Meanings of Agriculture: Essays in South Asian History and Economics, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. Ross, Eric, The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Population, and Politics in Capitalist Development, London and New York: Zed Books, 1998. Page 22 of 28

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Bibliography Rossin, R. Thomas, ‘The Tradition of Groundwater Irrigation in North-western India’, Human Ecology, 21(1), 1993, pp. 51–86. Roy, M.N., Poverty or Plenty, Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers, 1944. Roychowdhary, PC, Muzaffarpur Old Records, Patna: The Superintendent Secretariat Press, 1959. Rudolph, Richard and Scott Ridley, Power Struggle: The Hundred-year War over Electricity, New York: Harper and Row, 1986. Saberwal, Vasant, Mahesh Rangarajan, and Ashish Kothari, People, Parks and Wildlife: Towards Coexistence, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001. Sagoff, Mark, ‘Muddle or Muddle Through? Takings Jurisprudence Meets the Endangered Species Act’, William Mary Law Review, 38(3), 1997, pp. 852–993. Sagoff, Mark, ‘Ecosystem Design in Historical and Philosophical Context’ in David Pimental, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss (eds), Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health, Washington DC: Island Press, 2000, pp. 61–78. Samal, J.K., Orissa under the British Crown, 1858–1905, Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 1977. Samal, J.K. and P.K. Mishra (eds), Comprehensive History and Culture of Orissa, 1568 A.D.–1994 A.D., vol. 2, part 2, Delhi: Kaveri Books, 1997. Sandes, Lt Col., E.W.C, The Military Engineer in India, vol. 2, Chatham: Institution of Royal Engineers, 1935. Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India, 1885–1947, Delhi: Macmillan, 2003. Satpathy, Sadhana, Floods and Flood-control Policies, Trivandrum: Centre for Development Studies, 1993. Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M., The Age of Roosevelt: The Coming of the New Deal, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959. Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven: Yale University, 1998. Sen, Ranjit, Economics of Revenue Maximization in Bengal, 1757–1793, Calcutta: Nalandi Publications, 1988. (p.252) Sen, Surendranath, Administrative System of the Marathas, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1925.

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Bibliography Sengupta, Nirmal, ‘The Indigenous Irrigation Organization in South Bihar’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 37(2), 1980, pp. 157–87. Sengupta, Nirmal, User-Friendly Irrigation Designs, Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993. Sereni, Emilio, History of the Italian Agricultural Landscape, Burr Litchfield tr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Siddiqi, Asiya, Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State: Uttar Pradesh 1819– 1833, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. Siddiqi, N. A., Land Revenue Administration under the Mughals, Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1989 (1970). Singh, Arun Kumar, Inter-linking of Rivers in India: A Preliminary Assessment, Delhi: The Other Media, 2003. Singh, Arun Kumar, Privatization of Rivers in India, Mumbai: Vikas Adhyayan Rendra, 2004. Singh, Satyajit, Taming the Waters: The Political Economy of Large Dams in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Sinha, B.N., Geography of Orissa, Delhi: National Book Trust, 1971. Sitamaraiah, V.M. Visvesvaraya, Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1971. Sivaramakrishnan, K., Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. Smith, Neil, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984. Soper, Kate, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-human, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Soulé, Michele, ‘The Social Siege of Nature’ in Michele Soulé and Gar Lease (eds), Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction, Washington DC: Island Press, 1995, pp. 137–70. Soulé, Michele and Gar Lease (eds), Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodem Deconstruction, Washington DC: Island Press, 1995. Sovani, N.V and N. Rath, Economics of a Multi-purpose River Dam, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960

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Bibliography Spate, O.H.K., A.T.A. Learmonth, A.M. Learmonth, and B.H. Farmer, India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography with a Chapter on Ceylon, 3rd rev. edn, London: Methuen, 1967. (p.253) Stein, Burton (ed.), The Making of Agrarian Policy in British India, 1770–1900, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. Stirling, Andrew, An Account, Geographical, Statistical and Historical of Orissa Proper or Cuttack, Cuttack: n.p., 1822. Stokes, Eric, ‘Agrarian Society and the Pax Britannica in Northern India in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Modern Asian Studies, 9(4), 1975, pp. 502–28. Stone, Ian, Canal irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Thompson, A.S., The Rivers of Orissa, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1905. Thorat, Sukhadeo, Ambedkar’s Contribution to Water Resources Development, Delhi: Central Water Commission, 1993. Thorp, James, ’soils’ in Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies. Technology and Development in Asian Societies, Oxford: Blackwell 1986. Tomlinson, B. R., The Political Economy of the Raj, 1914–1947, London: Macmillan Press, 1979. Tomlinson, B. R., The Economy of Modern India, 1860–1970, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Toynbee, G., A Sketch of the History of Orissa from 1803 to 1828, Canal Revenue Superintendent, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1873. Tucker, Richard, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Vaidyanathan, A., Water Resource Management: Institutions and Irrigation Development in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. Venn, Fiona, The New Deal, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Visvesvaraya, M., The Flood Problem in Orissa: A Preliminary Note, Cuttack: Orissa Government Press, 1937. Visvesvaraya, M., The Flood Problem in Orissa: Second Note, Cuttack: Orissa Government Press, 1939. Page 25 of 28

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Bibliography Ward, Roy C., Floods: A Geographical Perspective, London: Macmillan, 1978. Warne, William E., The Bureau of Reclamation, New York: Praeger, 1973. Watts, Michael, Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. (p.254) Westra, Laura, Peter Miller, James Karr, William Rees, and Robert Ulanowicz, ‘Ecological Integrity and the Aims of the Global Integrity Project’ in David Pimental, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss (eds), Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health, Washington DC: Island Press, 2000, pp. 19–44. Whitcombe, Elizabeth, Agrarian Conditions in Northern India: The United Provinces under British Rule, 1860–1900, vol. 1, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Whitcombe, Elizabeth, ‘Irrigation’ in Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 2, 1757–1970, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 677–736. White, Richard, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. Willcocks, William, Sixty Years in the East, London: W. Blackwood, 1935. Willcocks, William, Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal and its Application to Modern Problems, Delhi: B.R. Publication, 1984. Willcocks, William, Egyptian Irrigation, London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1913. Wilson, Herbert M., Irrigation in India, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1903. Winterhaider, Bruce, ‘Concepts in Historical Ecology: The View from Evolutionary Theory’ in Carole L. Crumley (ed.), Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press, 1994. pp. 17–41. Wink, Andre, ‘Maratha Revenue Farming’, Modern Asian Studies, 17(2), 1983, pp. 591–612. Wink, Andre, Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth Century Maratha Svarajya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development, London: Sterling, 2000.

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Bibliography Worster, Donald, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West, New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Worster, Donald, ‘Nature and the Disorder of History’ in Michele Soulé and Gar Lease (eds), Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction, Washington DC: Island Press, 1995, pp. 137–70. (p.255) Worster, Donald, ‘The Ecology of Order and Chaos’ in Hal Rothman (ed.), Out of the Woods: Essays in Environmental History, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997, pp. 3–17. Yule, Henry and A.C. Bumell, Hobson–Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo— Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. Zaman, M.Q., ‘Ethnography of Disasters: Making Sense of Flood and Erosion in Bangladesh’, The Eastern Anthropologist, 47(2), 1994, pp. 129–55. Unpublished Dissertations

Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, ‘The Idea of Planning in India, 1930–1951’, PhD dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra, 1985. D’Souza, Rohan, ‘The Deltaic Rivers of the Bengal Presidency: The Political Economy of Flood-control in Deltaic Orissa’, PhD thesis, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 1998. Davenport, Loralee, ‘Engineering the Lower Mississippi: The Theory and Practice of Flood-control, 1717–1917’, PhD dissertation, Mississippi State University, 1996. Klingensmith, Daniel, “‘One Valley and a Thousand”: Remaking America, India and the World in the Image of the Tennessee Valley Authority 1945–1970’, PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1998. O’Neill, Karen Marie, ’state Building and the Campaign for U.S. Flood-control, 1824–1936’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1998. Padhi, Sakti, ‘Land Relations and Agrarian Development: A Comparative Historical Study of Two Districts of Orissa’, PhD thesis, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, 1986. Pearcy, Mathew T., ‘A History of the Mississippi River Commission, 1879–1928: From Levees-Only to a Comprehensive Programme of Flood-control for the Lower Mississippi Valley’, PhD dissertation, University of North Texas, 1996.

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Bibliography Rao, B. Eswara, ‘Colonialism and Rationalization of Big Dam Technology: A Case Study of Godavari Anicut’, MPhil dissertation, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad, 2000. (p.256) Sharma, Sanjay, ‘Famine, State and Society in North India, c. 1800– 1840’, PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1996. Singh, Praveen, ‘The Colonized Rivers of North Bihar: Colonial Intervention in Irrigation and Flood-control, 1880–1940’, MPhil dissertation, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 1995. Singh, Praveen, “‘Colonising the Rivers”: Colonial Technology, Irrigation and Flood-control in North Bihar, 1850–1950’, PhD thesis, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 2003. Subramaniam, C.N., ‘Aspects of the History of Agriculture in the Kaveri Delta c. 850 to c. 1600’, MPhil dissertation. Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 1983. Wang, Hongying, ‘Comparative Studies of Flood-control Measures in China and in the United States’, MA thesis, York University, Toronto, 1993.

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Index

Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India Rohan D'Souza

Print publication date: 2006 Print ISBN-13: 9780195682175 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195682175.001.0001

(p.257) Index abwabs, and cesses and, ending of 77–9; levying of 77–9; and Maratha officials 78; Surendranath Sen and types of taxes 78 Agnihotri, Indu on ecological and land use consequences 5 agriculture in deltaic tracts, Harun Rashid and B.K. Paul on 37–8 Akbar(1556–1605) 57 Ambedkar, B.R. establishment of the Central Irrigation and Water Advisory Board (CIWAB) 189; on MPRVD 188 American Civil War (1861–5) 128 anti-colonial struggle 195 Aul embankment and raja 14–15; P. Nolan, raja and government’s claim 147; zamindar against embankments 167–8 Aurangzeb’s farmarn of 1665 72 Baitarani 27–32 Balasore National Society 140 Banerjei, N.N. 44–5; on delta’s agrarian production 36 Banerji, R.D. on revenue collections 54–5 Bayly, C.A. 60 Bengal Code 67 Bengal Delta 39; E.T. Haig on embankments of 111–12; as flood-control 112; for irrigation 112 Bengal Irrigation Act III of 1876 133 Bengal, government and Flood Enquiry Committee 187; history of bunds and H.L. Harrison 110–11; revenue demand for 100 Page 1 of 10

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Index Bevin-Cripps proposals 197, 198 Bhimkund 1 Biswas, Arabinda 39 Board of Trade 199 Bombay Plan 198, 211n Brahmini Delta 27–32, 170 brahmins and peddakapus 73 Britain, economic interests in India on 199; principle of non-interference 96n; revenue demand of 66 British canal colonies, Imran Ali on 3 British East India Company displacing Marathas 55 bund breaching and W.D. Short’s report on 113–14 (p.258) bunds, R.J. Rose on information on 104 Burdwan and Regulation VI of 1806 100–2 Canal Commission of 1884 135, 137, 139, 140 Canal irrigation 216–17; and commodity-form 148–50; source for economic dynamism 3 Canal Scheme of 1863 157 canal system, Arthur Cotton’s plan of 216; vs. non-canal 160–6 capitalist private property 51–2 Central Technical and Power Board (CTPB) 187 Central Waterways Irrigation and Navigation Commission (CWINC), creation of 189, 190–1, 208n, 210–11n Centre for Science and Environment’s study on pre-British water-harvesting systems 4–5 chaudhuri/qanungo or taluqdar and the amil as revenue collectors 53 Chotanagpur Plateau 30 Civilian Conservation Corps 184 colonial, capitalism and nature 14–16; capitalism, social change and ecological impact 13; ecological watershed 223; imperatives 64–9; irrigation, Ian Stone on 3; water technologies 5–6; watershed 13–14 colonialism and private canal irrigation in Orissa 150 Committee of the Viceroy’s Council 198 Company, administration for revenue maximization 121n; introduction of tenure 75; Maratha intermediary disposition for 75; in Orissa Mughalbandi 75; rule (1803–31) and revenue written off 79–80; zamindari system 52; zamindars 71, 77 Company’s sale laws 100 Cotton, H.J.S. on protection 144–5; Page 2 of 10

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Index projects of 151n Cronon, William on nature 6 crop-sharing, N.A. Siddiqi on 89n; revenue Irfan Habib on 59 Crosby on annihilation of the indigenous populations 10 Cuttack revetment, Harris on 124n Damodar basins delta and irrigation 38 Damodar Valley Project 189 Dean, Warren on annihilation of the indigenous populations 10 delta 25–32, its build-up 27; its flood problem 126; M.H. Arnott on 35–6; military engineers and 113–15; P.T. Mansfield on land types in 162–3; zones of 160–2 deltaic, drainage in agriculture 154; flooding as natural resource 183; inundation to ‘calamities of season’ 79–85; land in Orissa classified 178n; Orissa 85n; (p.259) tracts of Bangladesh 48n; W.W. Hunter on 44–5 Devidhi, Gopal Pandit and Narendra Ray Mahashai Papers 65 drought damage assessment and G. Martindell 82 East India (Orissa) Irrigation and Canal Company (EICC) 129; capital of 129; on water and irrigation 132–7 East India Company 64; Andrew Stirling on 70–1; its financial crisis and wars 95n; its land owing zaminders 70–1; and revenue collections 64–5; and taxing strategies 88–5 ecological changes 6–9 Ecological Imperialism (Alfred Crosby) 9–10 ecosystem, 22–3; Eugene Odum on 22 Embankment Act of 1855 105 Embankment Committee 102, 105 embankment cut 99; C.B. Young on 41; W. Connan, on 41; as flood-control 99 embankment rate and Aul dispute 143–7; Haig on 155n Embankment Regulation VI of 1806, enactment of 100–1 embankment system, dismantling of 148; inception of 104; Page 3 of 10

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Index investigation and W.C. Taylor 146 embankments 98–100; C.B. Young on breach of 106–7; costs, repair and resistance 104–8; curing the root 115–17; disputes 166–71; Goodwyn on 107–8; and Military Board 123n; normal against permanent 110–12; offensive of 108–10; W.D. Short on 106 English colonizers and environment 11 environmental Orthodoxy, Leach and Fairhead on 6 Ewer, W. (1818) on, Mughal collections 54; on outstanding balances 82 famine of 1803–4 72 Federal Emergency Relief Administration 184 Flood Advisory Committee 175–6 Flood Committee 166, 170; of 1928 15, 171, 176; and reservoir construction 172 flood of 1866 37 flood of 1872 37 flood of 1927 157–8 flood of 1982 2 flood, damage reports and G. Ward 81–2; embankments, and E.T. Haig’s estimate revision 152n; Meghnad Saha on problems of 207n; Misra’s debate on Godari 168–9; Nityananda Kanungo on protection from 170–3; prone rivers 186; utilization and risk 32–8 floods of 1937 169 flood of 1855 37; Beadle on 114 floods of 1857 119 (p.260) flood-control, impacts of structures 172; in Orissa 182–3; initiatives 2; policies in Orissa Delta 15; practice of 1–2; shifts in strategies 120, 183 Flood Problems in Deltaic Areas (P. Dhir) 47n flood-utilizing strategies 45 Fordism 217, 218 forest produces 60–1 Gajaria embankment, as complex work 166–7; representation against 167–8; Uttikan embankment, Syed Zain-ud-din on 168 Page 4 of 10

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Index Gandhi, Mahatma and Visvesvaraya and advice on flood 173 Ganges Delta and irrigation 38, 39 ‘giant power’, critics on 185 Gilmartin David, on canal colonies 3 Global Integrity Project 24, 46n Great Depression (1929–33) 184, 186, 202 Groeme, Charles (1804–5) on muqaddams 64, 65 ground water irrigation and drinking water devices Thomas Rosin on 5 harvest, Biali as summer-harvested rice 32–3; Dalua as spring-harvested rice 33; Sarad as winter-harvested rice 33; Hassan, Abul (1655–70), letters of 59 Hirakud Dam 201–5, 219; construction of 183; operational in 1958 215; performance of 215–16 Hirakud project 191; H.C. Prior recommending 193 Hjejle on British decision to remove the raccavaru 73 human explosion 18 hydroelectricity as chief source of power 206n India Office in London 199 Indian Government’s Industrial Policy Statement 213–14 indigenous water systems, David Hardiman on 4–5 Indrabati 1 industrial labour, A.R. Mudalier on 196 Insatiable Appetite (Richard) 11–12 Interlinking Rivers Project (ILR) 223–4 intermediaries 70–7; Mughal-Maratha 71; of pre-colonial 71–2 Inter-provincial Council 188 Inundation Committee of 1866 36–7 Irrigation Act III of 1876 and removal of bunds 135 Irrigation Act VI 143 Irrigation Act XXXII 1855, Section 5 and embankment protection 145; and removal of bunds 135 irrigation systems, Nirmal Sengupta on 17 (p.261) irrigation, Arthur Cotton on private 127–9; Brajasunder Das on flood waters 164; overflow 38–40; private capital investors for navigation schemes and 128; profit from 147; Satyajit Singh on schemes of 125n; water rate for canal 137 jagirdari system and Mughals, Satish Chandra on 86n Jahangir (1605–27) 57 Karimuddin, Kazi Syed’s Resolution 213n Page 5 of 10

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Index Kathjuri 125n; its channel 116–19; construction of weirs on 151n Ker, Robert 65 Keynesian pump-priming, ideology of 217, 219 khoti, Andre Wink on 62 land tax 68–9 Maddox on estate revenues 69 Madras Irrigation and Canal Company (MICC) 128–9 Madras korambus 111–12 Mahanadi 1, 27–32, 203–5; as a deltaic river 27–8; Basin 219; damming of 192–4; delta 43–41; floods and schemes 151–2n; floods in 156n; Harris’ survey on 114–15; high floods in 215; irrigation in 130; J.W. Ottley on its silt 43; recommendations on 118; and regulating waters 127; restoring of equilibrium 117–20; Mahanadi Valley Scheme 192, 194 Maikal Mountains as Amarkantak Plateau 27 Manchester Cotton Supply Association (MCSA) 128 Manibadra projects 1 Maratha(s), and appeal-and remission procedures 82–3; Andrew Stirling (1822) on presence of 53; embankments by zamindars 101–2; Fletcher on 56; Garjat and the Mughalbandi. as divisions of 52–3; and Mughal practice 67; in Mughalbandi as oppressive 55; innovations 61–4; Maddox on 53–4; mode of revenue collection 77; Orissa under rule of (1751–1803) 52; period (1751–1803), policy of farming 62–3; on practice of Mughals 91n; revenue collector or kamavisdar 61–3; and revenue demand 66; Stewart Gordon on administration of 61; and social and political alliances 63; version of Mughal intermediary 64; 52–7 Mark Sagoff on Nature 22–3 Marx’s notion of ‘metabolism’ 156n mazkuri muqaddams as village headmen 75 Page 6 of 10

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Index Military Board and ‘watch and control’ 108–10 Mosse, on pre-British village communities 5; on tanks 5 (p.262) mud values 42–5 muddy water supplies and land improvement 49n Mughal administration, Satish Chandra on 59–60; intermediaries 60; intermediaries and collection strategy 57–61; and tax burden 59; crop-sharing arrangements 59; Mughalbandi and revenue demand 69; divisions of 61; revenue collection of 61; intermediary in 60 Mughal-Maratha, dispensation 66; intermediary 76; intermediary, elimination of 79; and Company zamindars 79; revenue bureaucracies 66; revenue demand 76; and Marathas and dispensing taqqavi 83–4; in the Bengal subah and imposing abwabs 78 Multi-Purpose River Valley Development (MPRVD) 184–91; in deltaic Orissa 204; in eastern India and flood-control 218, 219; as means of employment generation 197; and post-war anxieties 194–7; in South Asia 204; projects 210–11n; schemes 199 National Recovery Administration 184 Neo-Malthusianism 8–9, 12, 14 New world 9–12 North India Canal and Drainage Act. 1873 137–8 Orissa Canal Scheme of 1863 15, 106, 129, 216–17; of 1873, Haig on 35; elusive profits on 130–2; as financial failure 150; financial performance of 138; reviewing of 144 Orissa canals 15; and implementation of water rate 142–3 Orissa Delta 47n, annexation of (1803) 51; canal irrigation in 136; and embankment cuts 44; embankment and private property 222; embankment rate on 143; flood-dependent to flood-vulnerable landscape 223; Page 7 of 10

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Index and Permanent Settlement of 1793 67; and private canal irrigation 148–50; as a melting pot 219; MPRVD in 220, 222; Mughal-Maratha intermediary in 73–5; transformation by hydraulic interventions 215–16; zones of 27 Orissa Flood Committee 158–60; against embankments 163; ‘flood-control’ as obstruction 159–60; flood-control works 160; investigations of 158–9 Orissa, its deltaic rivers 25; floods in 1; kauris sea shell as currency in 87n; W.W. Hunter’s record on floods in 25–6; zamindars 102 (p.263) Orissa Landholders Association 163 Orissa Legislative Assembly, flood issues in 160 Orissa Multi-Purpose Rivers Conference, 1945 192; B.R. Ambedkar as chairman of 192 Orissa People’s Association 163 Orissa Regulations 67 Oudh taluqdar, Thomas Metcalf’s essay on 94n Owner’s Rate, imposition of 140 ‘passive resistance’, John Beames on 65 Pandit, Raja Ram (1778–92) and Mughal intermediary 63–4 Partridge, Ernest on change in nature 23 peddakapus and brahmins 73 pre-colonial dispensation 74–5; Mughal and Maratha formation 84–5 private capital, Baird Smith on 1230 private embankments 169; anger against 170 protected areas 178n Quit India campaign in August of 1942 196, 210n raccavaru, elimination of 73 Raghuji, Maratha raja 57 Reconstruction Committee of Council (RCC) 198 Regulation VI of 1806 and construction of embankments 108 Regulation XI of 1829 and construction of embankments 108, 109 Regulation XII of 1805 67–8, 77 Remembrance of Legal Affairs 145, 146 Report of the Committee on the Effects of the Inundations in Orissa in 1866, (PWD) 48n Report of the Orissa Flood Committee of 1928 47n, 158 Report on the Settlement Operations in the Districi of Balasore, (D.H. Kingsford) 47–8n revenue collection/demand 60–1; Chunderpersund Singh and plight of payment 70; Ewer on 65–6; Page 8 of 10

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Index H. McPherson on 67–8 revenue documents, I. Richardson and 65 Rice growing strategy 34 see also harvest risk-distribution cropping practices 45 river, production of 183; water floods as gold 38 Roderick Neumann 7 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1933–45) 184 sadar qanungo office 57; abolition of (1792) 91n sale laws, based on Bengal Code 69 Sarada Basin’s agrarian economy 73 channel irrigation systems, Nirmal Sengupta on 4 Siddheswar and Debikote hills 27 (p.264) silt cut 40–2; for rice crop 41; deposition 3; for fertilizing 44 Singh, Raja Man 57 social relation with nature, David Harvey on 9 Sogo Shosha 12 soil fertility, river alluvium contributes to 43; types of 35 Sone canal system 156n Soper Kate on culture and nature 24 taluqdar 88n; Eric Stock study of 72; as vilaity 58 taqqavi as loan for cultivation 92n Taylorism 218 Tennessee River, utilization of flood waters of 184; dam construction of 186 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 184; and private power rates 206n tenure holders 93n This Fissured Land (Guha and Gadgil) 220–2 Toynbee, G. (1873) on colonialism 53 trade along Orissa Coast, John Beames (1875) on 56 Trower, W. 102–3; on Maratha revenue 54 Upper Kolab 1 village(s), Sakti Padhi on headman as Janus-like entity 93n; and, Stirling and Maddox on revenue demand on 62 Visvesvaraya 180; Arthur Cotton’s survey 174–5; exposure to deltaic rivers 174–5; his study of Flood Committee Report of 1928 173–5 water harvesting systems, Rajasthan in 5 water rate, enhancement 153n; Page 9 of 10

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Index as solution 132–7 Willcocks, Sir William (1852–1932), description of zamindari bank irrigation 42; and Indian Irrigation Service 38, 39; his experiences in Egypt, 48; on kanwa 49n; on overflow irrigation 39–40 William Cronon 23–4 Williams, C. Addams 39 Worster’s Donald 24 Yangzte Delta in China 43 Young, C.B. on W.D. Short’s claim 113–14 zamindar 51, 88n, 138; see also Capitalist private property; in agrarian economy 89n; between Mughals and Marathas 90; and embankments, D.R. Sethi on 169; defaulting 100–1; /intermediary representation of 59–60; or landlords 100; of Kotdes as amil 58; pre-British 94; as sources of agricultural on 121n; G. Ward and examination of zamindaree account 81 zamindari bank irrigation 40 zamindari system, Amit Bhaduri on 94n

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