THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF WATER — Naturalising Scarcity in Western India

This book grew out of a doctoral thesis, but one quickly forgets that origin and loses oneself in the experience of immersion in a fascinating book. The book has several strands: the history of Kutch as a unique area with special ecological characteristics, and also as exemplifying the category of dry lands; the wound inflicted on it at the time of the Partition by the severance of its vital riparian links to the Indus Basin (which were ignored in the Indus Treaty negotiations); the changes in the attitudes to water management that came about with the transition from its erstwhile status as a small princely state to its merger with the Indian Union; caste, socio-economic power and ritual relations in Kutch; divergent perceptions of and responses to water `scarcity' at different levels and among different groups (within Kutch, at the popular level in the State as a whole, and at the State Government level); the relationship between Kutch and the Sardar Sarovar Project; and the kind of thinking that underlies water policy and planning in general. A brief review cannot do justice to the richness and complexity of the book. >>>