Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Evolutionary Technologies in Knowledge-Based Management of Water Resources: Perspectives from South Asian Case Studies

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Perspectives on Environmental Management and Technology in Asian River Basins

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Geography ((BRIEFSGEOGRAPHY))

Abstract

Water management technologies and approaches in South Asia can be considered the result of two opposite forces: on the one hand, the modernist push for technological advance and reductionist thinking supported by local bureaucracies and international competition; on the other, local attempts to develop adaptive approaches and technologies, increasingly supported by NGOs and more recent international aid policies. Despite the disproportionate power between the two, evolutionary patterns of technologies are not the result of linear domination forces. On the contrary, local technologies and knowledge seem to evolve through complex interplay between local and global pressures as a result of cognitive and practical interactions. In the attempt to deal with these issues, our paper analyses some case studies from India. Our particular concern is with the evolutionary patterns of water management approaches and technologies with reference to the changing local–global interaction dynamics. In this context, we discuss the innovation potential of actual interaction spaces and the role local and global actor networks play in shaping mechanisms of cognitive interaction and technological innovation.

The present chapter is the result of a joint research work carried out by the authors. Nevertheless, A. Barbanente wrote Sects. 4.1, 4.3, D. Borri wrote Sect. 4.6, L. Grassini wrote Sects. 4.2, 4.4, 4.5, 4.7.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Soon after independence obtained in 1947, an average of 23% of public funds were given to the irrigation sector on a nationwide basis.

  2. 2.

    These critiques developed because of the popular rhetoric on cognitive and epistemological differences between western and indigenous knowledge. Kloppenburg (1991), for instance, used paired concepts drawn from a range of sources to highlight differences between the two ways of knowing (e.g. tacit versus explicit, concrete versus abstract, intuitive versus rational, feminine versus masculine, craft versus science, relative versus absolute, indigenous versus scientific and so on).

  3. 3.

    One example was the quick popularity of hand pumps in Indian rural villages, since they were considered an optimum compromise between simplified western technological input and local desire to manage water resources in a decentralized way (Black 1998).

  4. 4.

    Among them, two of the most important are the Global Water Partnership and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, both promoting global forums and smaller scale working groups with the aim to foster a dialogue among governmental and non governmental bodies, donor organizations, professional and research bodies, and the private sector.

  5. 5.

    If specific sources of data are not cited, information contained in this section is directly taken from field observations and interviews.

  6. 6.

    Grassroots movements range from religious groups, acting on the basis of spiritual belief in conservation practices, to community based associations later developed into the Saurashtra Lok Manch NGO.

  7. 7.

    In 1999, the total number of check dams in Saurashtra was around 2000.

  8. 8.

    While in the 1950s and 1960s the ‘slum clearance’ approach prevailed and led to great demolition processes and relocation strategies in developing countries, in the 1970 s more comprehensive upgrading strategies emerged, where house rehabilitation was part of a broader process of community development (Cohen 1983). More focused sectoral strategies then emerged around the Nineties, with increasing attention being paid to institutional and participatory mechanisms (Kessides 1997).

  9. 9.

    The Slum Networking Project was implemented in 183 slums of Indore between 1989 and 1997 and in some pilot schemes in Baroda in 1994. Implementation in Ahmedabad started in 1996 (Tripathi 1998).

  10. 10.

    The Slum Networking Project in Ahmedabad, Indore and Baroda received several international awards, like the Best Practices award at the Habitat II conference in Istanbul in 1996 and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1998. It was among the best practices list of Habitat II in 1998 and part of the best practices examples in the Cities Alliance, as a global partnership among cities launched by the WB-UNCHS in 1999 with the final aim to be freed from slums and to make a contribution to the improvement of the living conditions of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. For further details see Grassini (2007).

  11. 11.

    Since slum areas are usually illegally built along main drainage patterns of the cities, the improvements of their drainage and sewerage patterns and their connection to the city main network should result in a general improvement in the gravity based infrastructural network of the city as a whole (Parikh 1995). From here the project name, ‘Slum Networking’.

  12. 12.

    In Ahmedabad, the partnership envisaged three major groups: the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), the local community and a private industry, with additional support from a local NGO and Parikh himself.

  13. 13.

    By primary level we mean the level consisting of pieces of information about the objects and their cause-and-effect, spatial, and temporal relationships; by secondary level we mean the level consisting of the overlying ‘concepts’, which are abstracted from the information level and explain the information pieces in a meaningful whole.

  14. 14.

    In this respect, some studies (Brodt 2001) have demonstrated that a knowledge system as a whole may survive better in the face of changes if it is organized into relatively independent subsections which can have their own independent pattern of development. On the other hand, the erosion of traditional knowledge is also related to the scale of application, the possibility being to scale-up practices which are likely to be maintained even within changing economic circumstances. This is particularly relevant given the unequal scale power that modern technologies can have because of their mode of production and ease of diffusion.

  15. 15.

    Simplified modelling of technological change is of course trivial, in the light of the high complexity of situations and dynamics: it can help to understand the structure and functioning of the technical space under consideration. New techniques replace the old ones according to a process which evolves in a multidimensional space. When this hyperspace is reduced to a 3D—cognitive, political, and economic—space, three mechanisms (macro-agents) rule this evolutionary technical space: (i) cognition of a new technique somewhere replacing an old one is precondition for the adoption of a new technique elsewhere (or in given multi-agent space) and for building organizational environments around it; (ii) politics—endogenously or exogenously driven—influences penetration of a new technique into the space of an old one; (iii) economy allows the replacement of a given technique with a new one on the basis of the economic convenience or inconvenience of this replacement. This schematic model is, partly, an agent-based transposition of the well known technology life cycle model (Moore 2002; Rogers 2003). At the top level of the technological arena macro-agents (institutional, social) continuously operate technological change within this technological multidimensional space while at the bottom micro-agents (technique raiders-representatives, individuals) continuously implement and contribute to the evolution of this technical change (Henderson and Clark 1990).

  16. 16.

    In this perspective, religious and other symbolic attitudes towards science and technology could be considered as greatly influencing the alternation of scientific and technological visions and arrangements.

  17. 17.

    See the rise and the development of the ecological movement, which has highlighted failures of, and ecological risks from, new techniques (Worster 1985).

  18. 18.

    The acknowledgement of their substantial role does not mean ignoring the fact that relevant doubts have been raised about the ability of agents to control the evolution of techniques in their compulsory and dominating relation with the world (Vattimo 1997; Severino 1998; Galimberti 1999).

  19. 19.

    In this view, globalization is mainly seen as bringing homologation of techniques and therefore decontextualization and deterritorialization, i.e. dangerous detachment from the structures and constraints of the local environments.

References

  • Agarwal A, Narain S (eds) (1997) Dying wisdom. Rise, fall and potential of India’s traditional water harvesting systems, State of India’s environment: a citizens’ report, 4, Centre for science and environment (CSE), New Delhi

    Google Scholar 

  • Agrawal A (1995) Dismantling the divide between indigenous and scientific knowledge. Dev Change 26:413–439

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amin A, Thrift N (1994) Living in the Global. In: Amin A, Thrift N (eds) Globalization, institutions, and regional development in Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 1–22

    Google Scholar 

  • Antonelli C (2007) The system dynamics of collective knowledge: from gradualism and saltationism to punctuated change. J Econ Behav Organ 62:215–236

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Appadurai A (1996) Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis [Italian translation: modernità in polvere. dimensioni culturali della globalizzazione. Meltemi, Roma, 2001]

    Google Scholar 

  • Argyris C, Putnam R, McLain Smith D (1985) Action science: concepts, methods, and skills for research and intervention. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Asheim BT (1999) Interactive learning and localised knowledge in globalising learning economies. GeoJournal 49:345–352

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barbanente A, Camarda D, Grassini L, Khakee A (2007) Visioning the regional future: globalisation and regional transformation of Rabat/Casablanca. Technol Forecast Soc Chang 74(6):763–778

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baviskar A (1997) In the belly of the river. Tribal conflicts over development in the Narmada valley. Oxford University Press, New Delhi

    Google Scholar 

  • Bebbington A (1996) Movements, modernizations and markets. Indigenous organizations and agrarian strategies in Ecuador. In: Peet R, Watts M (eds) Liberation ecologies. Environment, development social movements. Routledge, London, pp 86–109

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhabha H (1994) The location of culture. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Black M (1998) Learning what works. A 20 year retrospective view on international water and sanitation cooperation, report, UNDP-WB water and sanitation program

    Google Scholar 

  • Borri D, Camarda D, Grassini L, Barbanente A, Khakee A (eds) (2004) Local resistance to global pressure. A Mediterranean social/environmental planning perspective. L’Harmattan, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Borri D, Camarda D, De Liddo A (2008) Multi-agent environmental planning: A forum-based case-study in Italy. Plan Pract Res 23(2):211–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Braun B, Castree N (1998) The construction of nature and the nature of construction: analytical and political tools for building survivable futures. In: Braun B, Castree N (eds) Remaking reality. Nature at the millennium. Routledge, London, pp 3–42

    Google Scholar 

  • Brodt SB (2001) A systems perspective on the conservation and erosion of indigenous agricultural knowledge in Central India. Hum Ecol 29(1):99–120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brodt S (2003) Beyond the local/global divide: knowledge for tree management in Madhya Pradesh. In: Sivaramakrishnan K, Agrawal A (eds) Regional modernities. The cultural politics of development in India. Stanford University Press, CA, pp 338–358

    Google Scholar 

  • Brunsson N, Olsen J (1998) Organizing organizations. Fagbokforlaget, Bergen

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers R, Pacey A, Thrupp LA (eds) (1989) Farmer first: farmer innovation and agricultural research. Intermediate Technology Publications, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen M (1983) Learning by doing: World Bank lending for urban development, 1972–82. World Bank, Washington DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Critchley WRS (2000) Inquiry, initiative and inventiveness: farmer innovators in East Africa. Phys Chem Earth Part B 25(3):285–288

    Google Scholar 

  • Dattée B, Birdseye Weil H (2007) Dynamics of social factors in technological substitutions. Technol Forecast Soc Chang 74:579–607

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Certeau M (1990) L’invention du quotidien. I Arts de faire. Gallimard, Paris (Italian translation: L’invenzione del quotidiano. Edizioni Lavoro, Roma, 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  • Dosi G (1982) Technological paradigms and technological trajectories: a suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technical change. Res Policy 11:147–162

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elzen B, Wieczorek A (2005) Introduction: Transitions towards sustainability through system innovation. Technol Forecast Soc Chang 72:651–661

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Emmerij L (2002) Aid as a flight forward. Dev Chang 33(2):247–260

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Escobar A (1995) Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Escobar A (1996) Constructing nature: elements for a post-structural political ecology. In: Peet R, Watts M (eds) Liberation ecologies. Environment, development, social movements. Routledge, London, pp 46–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Escobar A (1998) Whose knowledge, whose nature? Biodiversity, conservation, and the political ecology of social movements. Journal of Political Ecology 5:53–82

    Google Scholar 

  • Escobar A (2001) Culture sits in places: Reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization. Political Geography 20:139–174

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feinberg Y, Stewart C (2008) Testing multiple forecasters. Econometrica 76(3):561–582

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferber J (1999) Multi-agent systems: an introduction to distributed artificial intelligence. Addison-Wesley-Longman, Harlow

    Google Scholar 

  • Forester J (1999) The deliberative practitioner. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Galimberti U (1999) Psiche e Teche (Psyche and Techne). Feltrinelli, Milan

    Google Scholar 

  • GEC–Gujarat Ecology Commission (2002) Reconciling water use and environment. Water resources management in Gujarat: Resources, problems, issues. strategies and framework for action. Sectoral report on hydrologic regimes subcomponent, GEC, Vadodara

    Google Scholar 

  • Geschiere P, Meyer B (1998) Globalization and identity. Dialectics of flow and closure. Development and Change 29:601–615

    Google Scholar 

  • Gifford A (2005) The role of culture and meaning in rational choice. J Bioecon 7:129–155

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert AG (1994) Third World cities: poverty, employment, gender roles and the environment during a time of restructuring. Urban Studies 31(4/5):605–633

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grassini L (2002) Spazi di interazione tra locale e globale: Pianificazione e pratiche di gestione delle risorse idriche in India (Interactions between local and global: Water planning and management practices in India). PhD thesis. University La Sapienza, Rome

    Google Scholar 

  • Grassini L (2007) Local-Global interactions: Silent practices of change in a slum upgrading project in India”, paper presented at the AESOP Conference, Naples, July 10-14, 2007

    Google Scholar 

  • Grover B (1998) Twenty-five years of international cooperation in water-related development assistance, 1972–1997. Water Policy 1:29–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guha R (2000) Environmentalism. A global history, Longman, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gupta A (1998) Respecting, recognising and rewarding local creativity: knowledge networks for biodiversity conservation and natural resource management, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (mimeo)

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson R, Clark KB (1990) Architectural innovation: the reconfiguration of existing. Adm Sci Q 35(1):9–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hirschman AO (1967) Development projects observed. The Brookings Institution, Washington DC [Italian translation: I progetti di sviluppo, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1975]

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobart M (1993) Introduction: The growth of ignorance? In: Hobart M (ed) An anthropological critique of development. the growth of ignorance. Routledge, London, pp 1–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemp R, Rotmans J (2004) Managing the transition to sustainable mobility. In: Elzen B, Geels FW, Green K (eds) System innovation and the transition to sustainability. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp 137–167

    Google Scholar 

  • Kessides C (1997) World Bank experience with the provision of infrastructure services for the urban poor: preliminary identification and review of best practices. World Bank, Washington DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Ketelar T, Todd P (2001) Framing our thoughts: ecological rationality as evolutionary psychology’s answer to the frame problem. In: Holcomb HR (ed) Conceptual Challenges in Evolutionary Psychology: Innovative Research Strategies. Kluwer, Norwell, MA, pp 179–211

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kloppenburg J (1991) Social theory and the de/reconstruction of agricultural science: Local knowledge for an alternative agriculture. Rural Sociology 56:519–548

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lanzara GF (1993) Capacità negativa. Competenza progettuale e modelli di intervento nelle organizzazioni (Negative capacity. Planning competencies and intervention models in organizations). Il Mulino, Bologna

    Google Scholar 

  • McCully P (1996) Silenced rivers: the ecology and politics of large dams. Zed Books, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo W (2000) Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Millar J, Curtis A (1999) Challenging the boundaries of local and scientific knowledge in Australia: Opportunities for social learning in managing temperate upland pastures. Agric Hum Values 16:389–399

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mishra A (1994) Rajasthan Ki Rajat Bundein. Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi (English translation: The radiant raindrops of Rajastan, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi, 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore GA (2002) Crossing the chasm: Marketing and selling high-tech products to mainstream customers. Harper&Collins, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Norton JA, Bass FM (1992) Evolution of technological generations: the law of capture, Sloan Management Review, Winter: 66-77

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Hare GN, Jennings NR (1996) Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Okamoto S, Sycara K, Scerri P (2009) Personal assistants for human organizations. In: Dignum V (ed) Organizations in multi-agent systems. IGI-Global Handbook of Research, Hershey, PA, pp 514–540

    Google Scholar 

  • Parikh H (1995) Slum networking. A community-based sanitation and environmental improvement programme: experiences from Indore, Baroda and Ahmedabad. Report, Human Settlement Management Institute New Delhi, and Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, The Netherlands

    Google Scholar 

  • Parikh KS (1998) Poverty and environment. Turning the poor into agents of environmental regeneration. UNDP Working Paper 1

    Google Scholar 

  • Peet R, Watts M (1996) Liberation ecologies. Environment, development, social movements. Routledge, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pendharkar PC (2007) The theory and experiments of designing cooperative intelligent systems. Decis Support Syst 43:1014–1030

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Postel S (1998) Pillars of sand: Can irrigation miracle last?. Norton, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Prasad E (2001) Emulating civil society. In: Agarwal S, Narain S, Khurana I (eds) Making water everybody’s business. Practices and policy of water harvesting. Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, pp 364–382

    Google Scholar 

  • Ritzer G (2003) Rethinking globalisation: glocalization/globalization and something/nothing. Sociological Theory 21(3):193–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rogers EM (2003) Diffusion of innovations. The Free Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Roy A (2002) Guerra è pace. Ugo Guanda, Parma

    Google Scholar 

  • Schön DA (1973) Beyond the Stable State. Penguin, Harmondsworth

    Google Scholar 

  • Severino E (1998) Il Destino della Tecnica (Technique and its Destiny). Rizzoli, Milan

    Google Scholar 

  • Shah T (2000) Mobilising social energy against environmental challenge: Understanding the groundwater recharge movement in western India. Natural Resources Forum 24:197–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shakun M (1999) Consciousness, spirituality and right decision/negotiation in purposeful complex adaptive systems. Group Decision and Negotiation 8:1–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shiva V (2001) Water wars. Privatisation pollution and profit. Pluto Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Shiva V (2002) Privatisation, pollution and profit. South End Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Shiva V, Bandyopadhyay J (1990) Asia’s forests, Asia’s cultures. In: Head S, Heinzman R (eds) Lessons of the rainforest. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Sivaramakrishnan K, Agrawal A (2003) Regional modernities: The cultural politics of development in India. Stanford University Press, Stanford and Oxford University Press, Delhi

    Google Scholar 

  • Sridhar A (2001) Study, documentation and assessment of the feasibility of revival of traditional drinking water harvesting systems and practices prevalent in the state of Gujarat. Report, Pravah, Ahmedabad

    Google Scholar 

  • Swyngedouw E (1992) Territorial organization and the space/technology nexus. Transactions Institute of British Geographers NS 17:417–433

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swyngedouw E (1997) Neither global nor local: ‘glocalisation’ and the politics of scale. In: Cox K (ed) Spaces of Globalization. Guilford Press, New York, pp 137–166

    Google Scholar 

  • Tripathi D (1998) Alliance for Change, A Slum Upgrading Experiment in Ahmedabad. Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi

    Google Scholar 

  • van de Kerkhof M, Wieczorek A (2005) Learning and stakeholder participation in transition processes towards sustainability: Methodological considerations. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 72:733–747

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vattimo G (1997) Tecnica ed esistenza (Technique and existence). Paravia, Turin

    Google Scholar 

  • Weick KE (1995) Sense making in organizations. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Weick KE (2001) Making sense of the organisations. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • World Bank (1998) Assessing aid: what works what doesn’t and why. Oxford University Press and World Bank, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • World Bank (2001) World Development Report: attacking poverty. Oxford University Press and World Bank, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Worster D (1985) Nature’s economy. A history of ecological ideas. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • WSSCC (1999) Water supply and sanitation collaborative council vision 21. A shared vision for water supply, sanitation and hygiene and a framework for future action. Report, WSSCC

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The empirical material on which the paper is based has been developed as part of the PhD research of Laura Grassini in Urban and Regional Planning at the University La Sapienza, Rome, with funding from the same University. A first draft of this paper was presented at a special session on ``Changing Perspectives on Technology in Environmental Transformation and Management” of the conference ``Asian Horizons: Cities, States and Societies”, held in Singapore with funding support from the National University of Singapore. Special thanks are due to David Higgitt for the organization of that session and the opportunity for in-depth discussion.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Polytechnic of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Angela Barbanente, Dino Borri & Laura Grassini

Authors
  1. Angela Barbanente
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Dino Borri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Laura Grassini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Laura Grassini .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 129792, Singapore

    David Higgitt

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Barbanente, A., Borri, D., Grassini, L. (2012). Evolutionary Technologies in Knowledge-Based Management of Water Resources: Perspectives from South Asian Case Studies. In: Higgitt, D. (eds) Perspectives on Environmental Management and Technology in Asian River Basins. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2330-6_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation