A sociological study of water management institutions in agasteeswaram and thovalai taluks of kanyakumari district

Abstract

Technology offers a number of options towards augmentation/conservation - storing rain waters in reservoirs (and tanks) and releasing the same in the lean season, even taking it to distant places through canals; making further use of ground water through pumpsets and borewells, (that at times invite recharge of ground water sources by water spreading, sub-surface dams, injection wells, and induced recharge) water harvesting; resorting to sprinkler, drip and drop strategies of watering; adoption of apt cropping cycles and cropping pattern; conjunctive use of ground water with surface water; recycling of polluted/saline water etc. Choice of particular technologies depends not on their own potential efficiency but on their economic efficiency costs and benefits. It is no secret that the colonial rulers were very much interested in excavating big dams and canals, for such efforts and assured very high returns to investments. Technological and economic measures to augment/conserve water resources, to be effective, require some sort of organisation an association to manage the technological and financial infrastructure and to control wastes and misuse while augmenting/conserving. It is pointed out that the social set-up, cultural modes and the behavioural pattern exert a far-reaching influence on the will and ability of a society to adopt and absorb technology. The history of experience of Japan stands in sound testimony to this fact. Not only technology, its economics as well, is to be worked out in a particular milieu. Palanyi states, the outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man s economy as a rule is submerged in his social relationships he acts as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets . newline