Water and the Environmental History of Modern India by Velayutham Saravanan (review).

Abstract

Reviewed by: Water and the Environmental History of Modern India by Velayutham Saravanan Aditya Ramesh (bio) Water and the Environmental History of Modern India By Velayutham Saravanan. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. 264. Velayutham Saravanan's Water and the Environmental History of Modern India arrives at a moment when South Asia faces an acute water crisis in multiple forms—shortage, pollution, and cyclones. Saravanan chooses an important region comprising numerous water bodies and dense industrial developments over the twentieth century. The Kongu region of the erstwhile Madras presidency and present-day Tamilnadu—encompassing the Coimbatore, Erode, and Tiruppur districts—has been at the center of labor and caste movements, and is currently in considerable environmental distress. Saravanan's intervention in the rich canon of South Asian environmental history is focused on moving the attention away from forests towards water pollution, technology, and urbanization. In terms of the growing literature on rivers—such as D'Souza's Drowned and Dammed (Oxford University Press, 2006) around capitalism, and Baviskar's In the Belly of the River (Oxford University Press, 1996) around social movements—the book suggests that there has been insufficient work on river pollution. There is little dispute that this is the first book in the English language to examine the important Kongu region of southern India. However, the book does little to engage with the literature on river pollution, such as in Awadhendra Sharan's In the City, Out of Place (Oxford University Press, 2014) on the Yamuna River and Janine Wilhelm's Environment and Pollution in Colonial India (Routledge, 2016) on the Ganges River. The chapters are organized both chronologically and thematically. While the early chapters deal with the colonial era, the later chapters—where the book is at its strongest—focus on the late colonial and postcolonial era. The book is written partially with an eye to the present, and traces how projects, conflicts, and politics of the past have resulted in environmental degradation. The book begins with a detailed narrative, including key statistics, on the number of wells and canals in the precolonial era, showing how development of these significantly accelerated after 1800, following British conquest. The layout of the book following the chapter on colonialism is more thematic. Saravanan focuses individually on water use in agriculture, industry, and urban spaces. The book argues that while there have been economic and scientific microstudies of river pollution, there has been no comprehensive study of the Noyyal and Bhavani basins yet. Next, the book examines urbanization (ch. 3). Focusing on the town of Tiruppur, a garment manufacturing hub from the 1930s, Saravanan argues that while the labor history of Tiruppur is well researched, its environmental history has been neglected. From this premise, the book tracks various [End Page 1235] parameters of Tiruppur's growth—a huge inflow of migrants from 1951, changes in land-use patterns from agriculture to industry, and the capture of small industries by certain caste groups, particularly the Gounders. Importantly, Saravanan argues that these industries were not heavy water users. Rather, industries such as dyeing and agro-implements were polluting in nature, particularly due to their use of salt. Furthermore, as the population of Tiruppur expanded, the municipality constructed a series of water supply schemes. The railways also consumed water. By the 1970s, parts of the Noyyal resembled a sewage tank. The book then traces conflicts over water between urban and agricultural users in the Noyyal basin (ch. 4). Conflicts emerged over how industry and town would equally divide water, with the Tiruppur municipality wanting compensation for what it regarded as water diversion. Saravanan argues that different government agencies failed to coordinate, often resorting to legal challenges against each other. Next, where the book is at its strongest, Saravanan pursues the theme of conflict, but through the lens of the upper and lower riparian (ch. 5). Saravanan shows how water demand for agricultural purposes rose exponentially in the postcolonial era, exacerbated by the arrival of electric pumpsets. From the 1950s, tail-end farmers were badly affected, and they resorted to a series of petitions in the court to prevent upper riparian farmers from cornering water along the Bhavani River. Even when a court order in...