From ‘village tanks’ to ‘evaporating pans’: Colonial and Post-colonial responses to ancient village tanks in Sri Lanka

Introduction

Water harvesting strategies have been fundamental to the emergence and existence of human cultures and civilizations. The importance of technology and the social coordination necessary to establish those strategies is such that major schemes like ‘hydraulic civilization’ have been suggested in studying the social formations in historical perspective (Wittfogel, 1956, 1957). Those ancient irrigation systems have been subjected to many alterations in recent times, especially under the colonial occupations in the regions that accommodated them. The theoretical base used in such alterations differed from that of the original constructions, and concepts like ‘hydraulic bureaucracy’, ‘hydraulic solidarity’, ‘hydro-resilience’ and ‘colonial hydrology’ have been forwarded to discuss such discourses (Lansing, 1991; D’Souza, 2006; Beattie & Morgan, 2017). Various factors would have contributed to the differences between the ‘originals’ and ‘altered outputs’, among which the following played key roles. First, the authorities who were responsible for those alterations were not aware of the indigenous knowledge systems on which the ancient irrigation strategies emerged. Second, the concept of ‘modernization’ and taking Euro-centric knowledge as ‘universal’ for achieving that modernization, distanced the non-European irrigation strategies from their original footing.

In drawing on that broader context, this article examines the colonial (especially the British occupation from 1798 to 1948) and post-colonial (since 1948) influences on village tanks, a specific water storage typology, in Sri Lanka.¹ Here, I argue that it is not the British occupation, but the Euro-centric knowledge that primarily contributed to the demolition of village tanks.² To situate my findings within a techno-socio-political framework, I first examine the technical scheme represented by technocrats and engineers, and then the political scheme represented by colonial and post-colonial political elites.

Early colonial engagements

The power struggle of the west in the sixteenth century posed serious diplomatic and political challenges to the East. Sri Lanka was one of the countries affected by the consequences of three Western nations: the Portuguese (1594-1658), the Dutch (1640-1796), and the British (1798-1948) (de Silva, 2016). All of them occupied parts of the Island and, lastly, the British occupied the whole Island from 1815 to 1948. Since the Dutch occupation, the island’s ancient irrigation works have been a point of interest. However, it was the British influence that was most felt in irrigation related matters in the long run, and the term ‘colonial’ in this paper primarily refers to the occurrences during their tenure.

Today, it is often said that some ancient irrigation works were restored during the colonial period. This is in the sense of the comment made by Henry G. Ward, Governor of the Island (1855-1860),

Later, H.T.S. Ward, the first Director of the Irrigation Department (1900-1908), noted,

Despite the intention of returning to the previous system, the colonial authorities made their own decisions based on the system components they observed. This was basically because there were no information sources to ascertain what the original system would have been. As Kamaladasa correctly points:

This left the colonial authorities with many options in interpreting the ‘scattered physical evidence’, especially their original function and their contribution to the overall system. Naturally, and probably unknowingly, they went for the easiest option they could have. That is, they interpreted the evidence based on the knowledge and training they have received in the field of irrigation and water utilization technologies. One such interpretation was the sluice operation of large tanks, which resulted in converting ‘uncontrolled community water flows’ to ‘controlled and state-owned water flows’ by installing sluice gates (Jayawardana, 2013). Another example is survey measures of some parts of the ancient Yoda äla as six inches per mile, which resulted in taking ‘an ancient inter-basin elongated tank’ as an equivalent of the ‘modern water conveyance channel’ (Brohier, 1979b; Panapitiya, 2010). Adding to the list, resurrecting the ancient sluice sites of Kala wäwa and Maduruoya at locations complying with modern hydraulic engineering calculations was taken as an example of the superiority of then knowledge (Mendis, 2002; Jayawardana and Pieris, 2010). This is because of making colonial knowledge the yardstick for assessing ancient non-European knowledges.

Colonial misinterpretations and misrepresentations of the local irrigation history are not limited to the physical structures but transcend to the ideological sphere as well. The oft quoted visionary statement made by King Parakramabahu I (1153-1186 CE), as appears in the Cūḷavaṃsa, “[appakampīdise]-dese — salilaṃvuṭṭhisambavaṃ — vinālokopakarena — jātumāgañchi-sāgaraṃ” has been translated into German and then to English by W. Geiger (Cūḷavaṃsa 68:11, 1996).³ There, the Pali term ‘lokopakarena’ has been translated as ‘benefitting man’, which is an obvious misrepresentation of the relevant Pali term ‘lokopakarena’. The term ‘lokopakarena’ means ‘benefiting the world’, including living creatures, plants, and the entire ecological system. Limiting such a broader spectrum to a single term ‘man’ would have been the result of the anthropocentric worldview, illustrating the dichotomy between the European and non-European ways of human – nature interaction. Several scholars writing on the irrigation history of Sri Lanka, such as Brohier (1979a), Nicholas (1954), Weeramantry (2000) and Mendis (2002), used Geiger’s translation unchallenged, assimilating the colonial misrepresentations into the modern literature on the subject.⁴ Both the physical engagements and the ideological backgrounds necessitate revisiting the colonial encounters in local irrigation to understand how waterscapes were reshaped during colonial times.

Identifying ‘village tanks’ as a typology⁵

In modern irrigation, several parameters are used to categorize water storage utilities, and the criterion may depend on the purpose of the categorization. In the Sri Lankan context, the rainfall model, the water balance method, the hydrological endowment, and the physical state of the storage are some of the parameters used in such categorization (Witharana, 2004). This is in addition to criteria like the location of the storage, purpose of the storage, demographic features of the settlement, the command area, and water spread area, which are more or less general for the evaluation of any storage. However, no such technically based methodologies were used during the British period, and instead, more pragmatic factors such as water retention capacity, command area, and time consumed for repair work were used to categorize the tanks.

Morgan classified irrigation works under three headings, based on the demographic features of the settlements; (1) tanks and water courses of magnitude in a ruinous condition remote from the population, (2) district irrigation works situated in or contiguous to population neighbourhoods, and (3) small village tanks, drains, and watercourses (Sessional Paper, 1867). Ievers (1899) noted that a better classification would be; (1) storage tanks, (2) village tanks, (3) dams or anicuts across streams, and (4) canals, usually called yoda-elas’.⁶

Dickson and Woodward anticipating the respective time periods needed for the restoration, divided the tanks into two broad categories; (1) the tanks which were too large to be restored by the shareholders themselves, even within a period of seven years, and (2) the tanks which could be restored by the shareholders within seven years provided the Government supplied the required masonry sluices and spills (Administration Report, 1873).

Lewis (1895), differentiating the water works based on the command area, noted, “In addition to the large irrigation reservoirs, there are hundreds of small tanks all over the country; some with villages attached to them, others under which cultivation is regularly carried on by people of the neighbouring villages, but without adjacent villages (called tāvadi tanks), and others wholly abandoned.”

Murty, categorizing the tanks according to their contributory potential in restoration works, noted:

According to Kennedy (1934), “[The total area under paddy in Ceylon] may be divided into four main categories according to the system of irrigation in vogue in each: - major works, village tanks, village elas and direct rainfall.”⁷

Going through the above, it is evident that ‘village tank’ is a well identified tank typology as noted by the British.⁸ These are comparatively small in storage capacity as well as in command areas and cater only to the villages attached to them. Lewis notes that the villagers depended on the tank to irrigate their paddy fields, and no life was possible without a tank in the dry zone of the Island. The village and the tank are so bonded together and inseparable, that many of the villages were named after the tank attached to them (Lewis, 1896).

Cascade form of village tank distribution

Further to identifying ‘village tanks’ as a distinctive typology, British records note their multiplicity and also the standard character of their occurrence, in a chain form. Robert Knox (1673-1679), observed the frequent occurrence of village tanks and their contribution to food security, and noted:

Ievers (1899) also highlighted the contribution of land topology to the large number of small tanks. According to Ievers, “As the North Central Province, although apparently flat, is in reality undulating, the ancient tank builders took advantage of this conformation to make chains of tanks in the valleys.” Observing this character during his extensive travels in the southern part of the Island, Woolf made some diary entries, saying,

Later, Brohier (1979b) also subscribed to this identification, when noting the water distribution pattern adopted in Jaya Gaṅga scheme, “In each of the subsidiary valleys on its course the water is diverted by channels into little village tanks, or chains of tanks – the tanks lower down receiving the overflow from the tanks placed higher in each chain” (Brohier, 1979b)⁹. The physical occurrence of these ‘chains of tanks’ is illustrated by Modder, “The tank which bears the same name as the village [Vendakaduwa] is fed by the surplus water from the Madawakkulama tank, which draws the supply from Ihalagama tank, when in its turn is fed by the Ratambala-oya” (Modder, 1993).

Figure 1. A schematic presentation of cascaded occurrence of village tanks – Mahakanumulla and Thirppane cascades as a typical case.

Both these cascades are situated at Anuradhapura District, North Central Province (This figure has been reproduced from Panabokke et al., 2002 – Copyright owner IWMI).

Colonial reflections on the viability of village tanks

At this point, it is necessary to investigate the status of small tanks as perceived by British authorities, because such perceptions would have influenced policy decisions, technical designs, and subsequent restoration work implementation. One important observation in this direction is that the cultivation, mainly paddy, was provided from these village tanks and not from the large tanks occupying the major river water sheds. According to Nagel (1887-88), one of the functions fulfilled by the large tanks was, “when the small tanks are filled with rain and again become empty, either by the irrigation of the fields or by drying up-to afford the agriculture, the needful supply of water from this large tank by replenishing the small tanks near their fields and to save expenses” (Nagel, 1887-88). Later, Liesching noted,

This bondage between the village tank and the village community forced Government intervention to maintain those tanks in proper order. Several ordinances, such as the Irrigation Ordinance (No. 9 of 1856; No. 21 of 1861), the Paddy Cultivation Ordinance (No. 21 of 1867; No. 2 of 1873) and the Village Committees Ordinance (No. 26 of 1871) have either been introduced or amended to ensure the repair and maintenance of the village tanks (Karunananda, 2006; Kamaladasa, 2007).

In parallel with the above regulatory provisions, an officialdom that was exclusively dedicated to the maintenance of the village tanks, had also been formed. Karunananda summarizes this initiative, which was launched primarily to avoid delays and expenditure on the village tanks maintenance works (Karunananda, 2006). In this new setup, all proposals for the repair and restoration of village tanks were to be settled by the Government Agent and the Irrigation Assistant. The Director of Public Works, the technical authority on the subject, was to be consulted only in cases of any doubt or difficulty, or any permission needed. Under the command of the Irrigation Assistant, the posts of Superintendent of Village Tanks and Provincial Irrigation Assistant were established (Sri Lanka National Achieves, 6/3728 no. 51; 5/61 no. 34; 4/124 no. 122; 5/61 nos. 8 & 20). The office of Provincial Irrigation Assistant was subsequently changed to the Provincial Irrigation Engineer in 1886 (Sri Lanka National Achieves, 6/5046 no. 76; 41/3 no. 59). For districts such as Anuradhapura, the above cadre was not adequate to handle the increasing volume of repair and maintenance work, so the additional Irrigation Officers were recruited. They were formed into a separate branch within the Public Works Department, directly reporting to the Irrigation Assistant (Administrative Report, 1876). Under his command, Assistant Superintendents of Village Tanks, who were in charge of the earthwork, functioned. The Tank Overseers, who were commonly called kaṭṭikankānis, were subordinate to them (Sri Lanka National Achieves, 6/6909 no. 334).

As per the above discussion, it is obvious that a well-established official hierarchy, exclusively dedicated to the village tanks, was in place by the late 1800’s. Along with such institutional establishments, executable work schedules were also in practice. For instance, Governor Henry G. Ward (1855-1860) adopted a practice of villagers shifting the earth and the government providing the sluice and masonry without charge (de Silva, 2016). Governors such as William H. Gregory (1872-1877) also implemented the same policy to some extent and noted the progress, ‘work is now going on vigorously upon hundreds of tanks in the North-central province where the experiment began at the suggestion of Mr. Dickson [the first Government Agent of the North-central province] and now applications for similar assistance are coming in from the Western, North-western and Northern provinces’ (Sessional Paper, 1878).¹⁰ With the establishment of the new North-central province in 1873, the village tank repair works intensified, and the government revisited the financial and labour aspects. For the works within this province, Government Agent was entrusted to decide the most feasible option based on the paying abilities of the villages. Such options varied between either the entire cost of repair was passed to the villages, or half of the cost was passed to the villagers or providing the sluice free of charge by the government and villages to complete the earthwork (Sri Lanka National Achieves, 20/308 no. 185; Roberts, 1971; Bandarage, 2005; de Silva, 2016).¹¹

Despite all the above regulatory measures, exclusive officialdom, and executable schemes, the suitability of village tanks to fulfil their intended purpose, technically, was a matter of concern. Its roots transcend the British, going back to the Dutch period. Nagel notes to that effect, “These small tanks might be made smaller, and if it be possible to conduct the water from the large tanks into the fields by means of excavations, then these small tanks, though very good, will yet be unnecessary” (Nagel, 1887-88). When time passed by and the British authorities were regulating the irrigation policies for the Island, this idea of the un-productivity of the village tanks gathered further momentum. Presenting a paper about village tanks, Kennedy (1934), then the Deputy Director of Irrigation, said:

Kennedy’s above-mentioned paper was to have a significant impact on the subsequent development of irrigation works. According to Mendis (1988), this paper was used as a Handbook in the Irrigation Department for the next 25 years. Another technical development that supplemented this move was the advances in the related technologies such as bund construction. Kennedy’s above statement should represent a combination of both the criticism of the village tanks as well as the appreciation of the potentials offered by the new technological developments to go for large reservoirs. Commenting on this trend by the mid-1930s, Brohier (1975) recorded:

Criticism of village tanks was aggravated by another factor, the mimicking of the same pattern in the fields fed by those tanks. This character was highlighted by Knox (1673-1679), “They [cultivators] all observe one time of reaping to prevent their corn being trampled or eaten up by the cattle. Thus they time their corn to their harvest; some sowing sooner, some later, but all reaping together, unless they be fields that are enclosed by themselves; and peculiar to one man” (Knox, 2006). Ievers (1899), observing ‘unproductive’ water utilization due to the scattered arrangement of fields, notes, “A great deal of wastage is unavoidable owing to the scattered position of the fields, and the impossibility of making all the cultivators begin work at the same time. These evils will only be remedied by the growth of the population and the extension of cultivated areas, which will force the people into economy of water” (Ievers, 1899).

To summarize, British authorities did not consider the patterns of occurring village tanks and village paddy fields in a technically favourable manner. The suggested strategy for higher efficiency was to concentrate on the large reservoirs and include the lands occupied by the village tanks in the command areas of those reservoirs. This criterion occupied colonial minds since the late 19^th century. As Parker noted, “Two reasons are given for urging the abolishment of the village tanks: (1) a desire to void the present excessive waste of water in them by evaporation, (2) a wish to render possible the cultivation of the area of rich soil now forming their beds” (Sessional Paper, 1881).

From perceptions to realities

Despite highlighting the advantages of large tanks and the importance of converting village tanks into their command areas, such implementation was not feasible for several reasons. Firstly, the cost associated with such an initiative was prohibitively massive. After working out a detailed cost-benefit analysis of implementing this strategy for the village tanks fed by the Giant’s Tank (in Mannar district), Parker concludes that the eradication of the village tanks is not a financially feasible option, and noted;

Another reason that prevented the demolition of village tanks was the claims made by the provincial administrative officers, who were more exposed to the ground level realities than their technical and policy making counterparts. Examining the attitudinal dichotomies among colonial officers, Warnapala (1974) identifies two major schemes between those who occupied the administrative centre (Colombo) and those who occupied the periphery (the Districts). The former believed that district officials were only concerned with local issues and not with the high-level colonial administration. The latter were more informed of the needs of the people and the environment in which they operated and wanted to address those needs through policy formation. There were constant clashes in attitudes between the two troupes, which frequently affected policymaking at the district level. This is well evident in the policy towards allowing villagers to continue chena cultivation.¹² Despite the repeated attempts by the central government to abolish chena practice, some provincial officials acknowledge its importance for the subsistence of the peasantry. They pointed out that peasants turned to chena cultivation not out of indolence, but out of despair, particularly over the neglect of irrigation facilities necessary for paddy cultivation (Bandarage, 2005). Many provincial administrators emphasized the importance of village tanks and their proper maintenance, thus ensuring the peasantry’s access to irrigation water as much as possible. For example, Murty noted, “The steady restoration of abandoned village tanks is the best means of bringing back the ancient prosperity of the Wanni” (Administrative Report, 1900). Leonard Woolf, Assistant Government Agent and well known for his book Village in the Jungle, noted, “There are village tanks in these villages, and I am compelling the people to restore them, and the people are restoring them” (Woolf, 1962).

The inherent dislike of villagers for shifting to the new territories, leaving their traditional settlements, also contributed to the decision not to demolish the village tanks. Due to the lack of mobilization, the traditional villages had to sustain, so did the village tanks. As a result, Kennedy himself recommended that proper maintenance of village tanks, despite the fact that their command areas could not be expanded further, was an urgent and significant necessity (Brohier, 1975).

The Irrigation Department, the prime organization responsible for the irrigation development on the Island was declared a non-revenue organization in 1920, based on the recommendations made by the Food Supply Committee (de Silva, 2016). This could be considered a radical change as it allowed irrigation authorities to evaluate their projects without much weight on the financial returns to justify implementation. Further supplementing this move, all irrigation rates were waived off in 1926 with the view of encouraging paddy cultivation (Kamaladasa, 2007). The village tanks, on which the village level paddy cultivation depended and did not generate reasonable revenue for continuous maintenance, again proved their claim to existence.

It is with this background, that the Island’s irrigation works entered a new phase – the implementation of land colonization schemes. The Government has launched several land colonization projects in sparsely populated dry zone with the goal of increasing food supply and addressing the ever-increasing population density in wet zone regions. Starting from the Minneriya scheme (1933), major schemes like Minipe, Kagama, Elahera, Parakramasamudraya, Gal oya, and Udawalawe were implemented (Farmer, 1957, 1984; Amerasinghe, 1976; Peebles, 1990).¹³ These colonization schemes focused on the large ancient tanks, restored and feeding either village tanks or newly cleared forest areas, that had been converted to paddy fields and residential plots. These newly developed areas were designed in such a way that they were directly fed from the large tanks through canal irrigation. For example, the Gal Oya project (1949) implemented in this manner marked 124,140 acres fully allocated, 51,640 acres under village tanks serving the villages, and 72,500 acres under feeder canals serving the colonies (Brohier, 1975). This illustrates the fact that while acknowledging the relevance of village tanks for the sustenance of villages, the new developments were adopting the downstream development model based on canal irrigation. This was an obvious deviation from the ancient practice of feeding the settlements from a tank exclusively dedicated to them. Instead, the village level sustenance depends on a centrally controlled large tank, for which the maintenance and operation was well beyond the capabilities of the user community.

Post-colonial designs — New waterscapes

Ceylon gained independence within the Commonwealth in February 1948. As discussed above, the general perception towards the village tanks by that time was that they were technically inefficient but could not be demolished due to the social, economical, and financial reasons. This dichotomy took a different shape during the early post-independence era. The budding thoughts of the newly formed independent state offered new hopes and challenges to the entire society. The irrigation sector, which took the challenge of marching towards self-sufficiency in food, derived new plans and policies towards that end (as naturally it should be). These initiatives were well supported by the modern developments in concrete technology, soil mechanics, and research on hydraulics, a worldwide trend after World War II. Sri Lankan achievements in the sphere of hydraulics and soil mechanics in the 1940’s were said to be the first of their kind in South East Asia, with new initiatives such as laboratories for hydraulic research (1936), soil mechanics (1943), material testing (1946) and divisions for river gauging (1942), hydrology measurements (1943) and forming models for new irrigation projects (1943) (Kamaladasa, 2007). All these factors would have contributed to the strategy adopted in new irrigation projects, which is well illustrated in a statement made by D.W.R. Kahavita;

Kahavita, being the head of the design division of the Irrigation Department, should have represented not only his personal ideas but the vision and mission of the entire Department, as well as the technological insight of that time. Such insight would have been influenced by the global trends in hydraulic engineering at that time. The 1960s are regarded as the watershed decade of modernism, as well as the decade of major Third World dam and river regulation projects (Cosgrove, 1990). It was the decade of Kariba and Aswan, and of similar mega-structural projects in Mexico, Colombia, Ghana, Mozambique, and India, as well as in the wilderness regions of Canada and eastern Siberia. Engineering control of water would, it was argued, be the mechanism for leaping forward into the industrial future for developing countries, the status aimed at by the Sri Lankan irrigation technocrats, also.

The perceptions conceived during the colonial era regarding village tanks actually came to the reality during the post-colonial period. The new irrigation strategy adopted by the Irrigation Department was to avoid village tanks and promote downstream development through canal irrigation, fed from large reservoirs. Later, this trend transcended even to demolishing the functioning village tanks, if their location is not in line with the modern designs. Commenting on the general design criteria adopted in the Mahaweli Development Project (1970’s), the largest in the Island¹⁴, Panapitiya noted that:

Figure 2. Typical arrangement of land allocation in Mahaweli settlements.

(This figure has been reproduced from Pfaffenberger, 1990).

Discussing the social dimension of Irrigation in general, Pfaffenberger points out that engineers’ involvement is limited to creating well designed and reliable irrigation structures (Pfaffenberger, 1990). The management of water, as engineers understand it, is a ‘people problem’ that lies beyond their professional responsibilities and competence. Pfaffenberger (1990) brings this scenario to the Sri Lankan post-colonial setup, in three schemes. First, the social design of irrigation was not by engineers but by administrative officers, the majority of whom were still British nationals, and local political elites. Second, engineers’ inattention to the social and cultural dimensions of technology, provided enormous opportunity and power to political elites to infiltrate irrigation-related matters. Third, engineers, for their part, continued to create the system that incorporated the British designs to which they had been trained in during their professional careers.

The first and second schemes in Pfaffenberger’s assertions could be directly aligned with Panapitiya’s comment, elaborating the involvement of political authorities in irrigation related engineering accomplishments. Pfaffenberger’s third point positions the Sri Lankan case within broader colonial knowledge transfer schemes in the sphere of water utilization. Goubert (1989) notes that the European engineers, whose skills had pushed the arteries of European trade across Asia, Africa, Australia, and America, came to be seen as the architects of a brave new world. Heffernan (1990) elaborates on the attempts to irrigate the northern Sahara, where the simpler technologies employed by indigenous communities in colonial territories were regarded as primitive by the European masters. Challenging the universal adaptation of Euro-centric irrigation techniques in a global context, Pacey (1991) questions the validity of replacing indigenous and ecologically sustainable irrigation practices in Africa, Meso-America, and Asia with the former, challenging the universal adaptation of Euro-centric irrigation techniques in a global context. Lansing (1991) discusses the Dutch engagement in Bali irrigation, and Horst (1998) discusses the inherent characteristics of British, Dutch, and French irrigation schools, both highlighting the misinterpretations and mishandling of non-European irrigation systems by European authorities.

Once the above comments by Panapitiya, Pfaffenberger, Goubert, Heffernan, Pacey, Lansing, and Horst are placed in an array, where does that lead us with regard topost-colonial irrigation practice in Sri Lanka? Panapitiya (2010) describes the ‘demolition of village tanks by engineering designs’ and the ‘saving village tanks by political elites’. Pfaffenberger describes how “engineers’ limitation to purely technical outcomes’ gave way to “politicians’ power to manage the water’. At face value, it appears that Panapitiya makes an example of Pfaffenberger’s assertion. However, the findings of Goubert and the rest reveal a hegemonic approach based on Euro-centric knowledge of irrigation and agriculture in non-European regions. As such, it is not the hegemony of British rule during colonial times, but the hegemony of British knowledge during post-colonial times that contributed to the demolition of village tanks, thus bringing the colonial equation of ‘village tanks = evaporating pans’ to materialization. Rather than an endeavour by a certain individual or institution, that is a result of evaluating an ancient local system using modern Euro-centric knowledge, thus creating a huge gap between perception and reality.

Conclusion

Adopting proper water harvesting strategies is critical to preserving cultures and civilizations. The societies that have recently been subjected to colonial occupations have seen significant changes in those strategies, adopted by the colonial authorities. Such changes were based on the knowledge systems and worldviews possessed by the colonial authorities and were executed in the name of ‘modernization’, where the norms and definitions were again Euro-centric. This article tried to investigate the colonial and post-colonial engagements with a salient component of ancient Sri Lankan irrigation, the village tanks, positioning the discussion on this background.

The Dutch had the most influence in changing Sri Lanka’s ancient irrigation works in the eighteenth century, and the British had the most in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although those changes were implemented under the guise of ‘restoration of the ancient system’, ignorance of the physical character and the ideological background of the ancient system remove that cover, distancing the altered outputs from the original system. ‘Village tanks’ were one of the components of that ancient system, thus changed. The criterion for categorizing a particular body of water as a ‘village tank’ was based on several factors, but the basic one was that it should be coupled with a village. Village tanks were not occurring as isolated water bodies, but connected as clusters, leading to the identification of ‘chain of tanks’. During the colonial period, village tanks were treated as technically unproductive means of water usage. However, they had to be maintained as they were so bonded with village life and, without village tanks, village life would not be sustained. Several regulatory provisions, well established hierarchical officialdom, and executable schemes were in place to ensure the proper maintenance and functioning of village tanks under the British occupation.

Since independence, this techno-social dichotomy has taken on a different shape. As the forerunners of a nation that earned its independence recently, the irrigation engineers were eager to march towards ‘modernity’ in faster steps. The colonial perception of village tanks as an unproductive water use strategy was fully acknowledged and the new irrigation schemes were designed based on the downstream development models with an emphasis on canal irrigation. Many of the village tanks were bulldozed and converted to the command areas of the canal irrigation schemes, totally neglecting the social bondage between the village tanks and the village communities. This post-colonial response could be attributed to two prime factors. First, the nature of technical education and professional training gained by engineers. Being Euro-centric in character, that education and training did not appreciate the relevance of the village tanks in broader irrigation network. Second, the attitude of the engineers, towards the social context of water harvesting. Leaving the responsibility to the political elites, engineers confined themselves to technical solutions, not accounting for the social component of technology. As such, it was not the colonial occupation that demolished the village tanks, but the Euro-centric knowledge that brought the equation ‘village tanks = evaporation pans’ to reality.