Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India

by Rohan D'Souza

The volume deals with major debates in India's environmental history. It critiques existing discourse by discussing colonial flood control strategies in eastern India. It explores the idea and practice of flood control and argues for a comprehensive reconsideration of the debate on the
colonial environmental watershed, its hydraulic legacy and questions contemporary enthusiasm for flood control in post-independent India. The emphasis is on revealing how colonial flood control measures were implicated in attempts to consolidate capitalist relations in ownership, production, and
towards commanding the deltaic rivers as a 'natural resource' for capitalist accumulation. The idea and practice of flood control was not merely a technical intervention but principally a political project, deeply implicated in the social, economic and political calculations of capitalism in general
and colonialism in particular. Such an analytical perspective also provides a useful backdrop to understanding several aspects of the contemporary water crisis in postcolonial India. The book also intends to be a necessary corrective and a useful addition to the otherwise limited writings on the
Indian subcontinent's hydraulic histories.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published November 9, 2006

Reviews

[Yugantika Mohapatra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academic Books that are written well re such a treat to read. This was beautiful. And to have written about such a niche subject so so well- I am a fan of Rohan D'Souza henceforth.

[Chandra]

I found the book a fluid read albeit a few obstructions and channelizing of the flow as I read it. Perhaps, just like its subject, which is about the flow of water, dammed and channeled in a span of around one-hundred-fifty years of the Colonial method of planning and execution, the words in the book sounded to me like echoes after a shout on how Capitalism has been killing the concept of land as a common (or no) property. The work provides notes on a possible sentiment on the historical development of the water supply for the Agrarian regime in the Orissan state of India.

The book in its beginning gives us a beautiful image of beautiful natural flood plains dealt in conjunction with nature's harmony, and then slowly ascends ascribing last two hundred years of Agriculture Water (or Flood) management Orissa to horrors of an engineered development, and subsequently an abrupt ending as the British Indian Governance was handed over to new India.

Most of the content and arguments in the book relate to development of laws in these years and subsequent litigation which becomes the arguments presented herein. With something of this title, I would have expected a more detailed and a varied account of impacts of flood control measures, as Flood Control is still an important topic to the Indian Subcontinent. Somehow, I felt that the book deliberately did not attempt spreading thin, which is perhaps an essence of a focused research objective. Since the author is a continuing researcher and faculty at JNU I would be happy to see author's opinion of what could perhaps lie ahead in the future. Maybe it it right time for a part two of the book?