IN the Bombay Deccan, rapid change in the countryside began with construction of the Deccan Canals. The Mutha Canal, a small but important first step, opened in 1874. The Nira Left Bank Canal was the first really big canal, running along the northern edge of the Nira valley in eastern Pune District. It was completed in 1885 as a “protective work,” meaning it was intended to save food crops from periodic droughts. But for more than a decade, the canal seemed to be one of those well-intentioned projects that were little used by their intended beneficiaries. Despite the semiarid climate, local farmers did not use much canal water in ordinary years. They used it only as a last-ditch effort to save their crops in case of severe drought.

Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, Executive Engineer for irrigation in Pune, diagnosed the conditions that led to this situation and proposed a solution. Born in 1860 in a Mysore village, Visvesvaraya earned a BA from Madras University and then studied at the College of Engineering in Pune. On graduating, he joined the Public Works Department. In later years, he supervised construction of the huge Krishnaraja Sagara Dam, in the Kingdom of Mysore. (This feat provides evidence that an indigenous state could have built the Deccan Canals. The key factor was training for engineers.) Visvesvaraya was appointed Diwan to the Kingdom of Mysore and was knighted in 1915 by George V.

Around 1900, the future Knight Commander was pondering what to do with the Nira Canal, given that its water was not being used on a regular basis. The Bombay Deccan has many types of soils, but the silt in the large river valleys, known as black cotton soil, is highly moisture retentive (although the Nira Valley seems to have been too dry for cotton grown on rainfall). The primary foodgrains of the region, pearl millet and sorghum, are drought-resistant; in black cotton soil they can survive with minimal rainfall. Local farmers were always short of cash and had no wish to pay for canal water that might be superfluous if only the rains would come. Thus many farmers waited until all hope of rain was gone before turning in desperate haste to the canal staff. […]

IN the 1890s, a group of migrant farmers began demonstrating how the water could be put to regular use. These were Malis, market gardeners, and members of the same caste as Baburao. They came from the town of Saswad, near Pune city. Local farmers in the Nira Valley had been focused on growing subsistence crops at minimal cost; they had no experience with expensive, irrigated cash crops. The Malis had such experience and were drawn to the valley by the scent of water and money. There was plenty of land for the Malis to rent. Much of the Bombay Deccan consisted of lightly used dry land. Water was far more valuable than land, and renting land gave one a place to put the water.

The Malis found that sugarcane was best suited to the soils and other conditions in the Nira Valley. Unlike fruits and vegetables, sugarcane is not difficult to grow, and the resulting product, raw brown sugar, or gul, need not be rushed quickly to distant urban markets. What sugarcane does require is plenty of water, all year round. […]

In addition to their skills as farmers, the Malis had experience with financing and selling cash crops. They were soon making big profits in the Nira Valley, and the locals began following their example. This sent a clear signal to the canal officers that irrigation could be in demand every year, all year round. But if canal operations were reorganised to suit an expensive cash crop, would that undercut the original mission of protecting food crops? Visvesvaraya came up with an elegant compromise: the sugarcane block.

Sugarcane blocks were introduced on a trial basis in 1900. Visvesvaraya found that farmers would be willing to sign up for year-round irrigation of sugarcane for five or six years in advance. Moreover, these blocks served a dual purpose: only one-third of each block received year-round irrigation for cane. Two-thirds were devoted to irrigation of seasonal foodgrains for eight months a year. As farmers signed up for cane blocks, then, foodgrains came to be irrigated on a larger scale, and the Nira Canal became more protective against famine. In years of severe drought, irrigation for sugarcane was rationed to protect foodgrains. Visvesvaraya reconciled the original protective purpose with finding a regular use for surplus water. He did not want to waste the precious water.

Farmer behaviour led to the introduction of sugarcane blocks, an irrigation system that is still in place. By “farmer behaviour” I mean that, in the first place, local farmers were reluctant to use canal water to irrigate foodgrains on a steady basis. And then the Saswad Malis revealed how the water might be put to more regular use.

It was fortunate that cane blocks worked well on the Nira Canal, because the fate of half a dozen future canals hung in the balance. The Indian Irrigation Commission (IIC) was convened in 1901. It held hearings in every province with a view to improving irrigation policies and performance. The Government of India was already displeased with results in the Bombay Deccan, particularly with Nira Canal. In a memo quoted in the minutes of the IIC, the central government emphasised that the Deccan Canals were quite expensive to build, yet much of the water was going to waste. […]

To remedy the problems of high costs and low returns, Visvesvaraya proposed to extend his early experiments with sugarcane blocks. He calculated how much water was needed for foodgrains in normal years and proposed to allocate the remaining surplus to cane blocks. He outlined this system to the Commission, which accepted the new policy. Thus if farmer behaviour in the Nira Valley shaped Visvesvaraya’s new cane blocks, it also affected IIC policies. Not only did the Commission approve sugarcane blocks, it approved construction of new dams and canals which multiplied the canal-irrigated area in the Bombay Deccan about five times over. The new canals were made possible because sugarcane blocks saved the Nira Canal from official opprobrium. Again, this was a result of farmer behaviour.

The newer canals lured the Saswad Malis away from the Nira Valley. Many local farmers had begun growing sugarcane, so the ready availability of surplus canal water diminished. Land along the Nira Canal became more expensive as more acres were planted to cane. So the Saswad Malis moved to new canal zones in Ahmednagar, Nashik, Satara, and Sholapur districts. Along the new canals, water and land were abundant and cheap before the local farmers learned how to grow sugarcane.

By the time they left the Nira Valley (c. 1920), the Malis had introduced new equipment, machinery, and systems for organising labour in the production of cane and gul. For example, from about 1890, heavy iron mouldboard ploughs began to replace the wooden scratch-plough. Iron ploughs turned the soil deeper, improving its texture under heavy irrigation. The shift to modern equipment, such as iron ploughs and iron canecrushers helped stimulate India’s industrialisation.


Excerpted with permission from:

Inside–Outside: Two Views of Social Change in Rural India

(Development)

By B.S. Baviskar (University of Delhi) and D.W. Attwood (McGill University, Montreal, Canada)

Sage Publications, India, 2014

ISBN 978-81-321-1350-8

472pp.

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