Whose scarcity? Whose property? The case of water in western India

Abstract

Water scarcity is usually portrayed in absolute or volumetric terms. But do most analyses of scarcity focus on how the ‘problem’ of scarcity is constructed, the need to disaggregate users and their entitlements and the imperative to look at the politics of distribution and technology choice within a frame of political economy? By taking the case of water scarcity in Kutch, western India which is supposed to benefit from the controversial Sardar Sarovar Narmada Project (SSP), the paper demonstrates how scarcity has emerged as a ‘meta-narrative’ that justifies controversial schemes such as large dams, allows for simplistic portrayals of property rights and resource conflicts and also ignores the cultural and symbolic dimensions of resources such as water. Moreover, water scarcity tends to be naturalised and its anthropogenic dimensions are whitewashed. It is thus necessary to distinguish between the biophysical aspects of scarcity that are lived and experienced differently by different people and its ‘constructed’ aspects. The paper draws on a wide range of conceptual approaches such as political ecology, common property resource theory and post-institutional approaches to highlight that scarcity is not a natural condition. Instead, it is usually socially mediated and the result of socio-political and institutional processes. It also argues that while institutional perspectives have played in a key role in moving away from alarmist portrayals of scarcity and property rights by demonstrating how local people can manage and live with scarcity, they need to be complemented by analyses that locate property rights within wider historical, cultural and socio-political processes that combine both discursive and materialist analyses.