From Surveys to Management

Abstract

Flood management and embankment maintenance were responsibilities of the state and the social institutions for many centuries. But as the colonial state was based on an epistemic foundation different from the previous regimes, the period witnessed the creation of a new institutional order which resulted in close collaboration between the institution of surveys and the administration of inland water management. As a result, the colonial intervention was characterised by deployment of a corps of engineers who used the knowledge gathered from surveys for managing the water channels and their banks. The process witnessed the establishment of a branch of the military devoted to engineering work in the colonies where supervision and intervention by European experts became an essential feature.

The early colonial rule in itself was in a process of transformation: from a commercial/mercantile entity to a fiscal-military state. It was also a state which was establishing a routinised bureaucracy. How both these developments were reflected on the institutions of water management is a central concern of this study. The subordination of the traditional agency in these developments is an important question.