Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia
Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia
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克服无政府状态：南亚地下水治理
DOI：
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Deakin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Tushaar Shah;A. Deakin
沙阿首先说，后来成为澳大利亚杰出总理的阿尔弗雷德·迪肯（Alfred Deakin）于1890年访问印度，发现印度有1200万公顷的灌溉土地，这个数字远远超过当时所有其他著名的灌溉用户。沙阿说，如今，印度次大陆有9000万公顷的灌溉土地。但是这种方法被滥用了，因为过度的提炼，把印度海底时代的原始盐带了出来。将污水沃茨排入印度河是一个问题。另一个是恒河-雅鲁藏布江-梅克纳盆地地下水中的砷。沙阿将普遍的问题诊断为无政府状态。这种现象最好被称为腐败的影响。在印度、巴基斯坦和孟加拉国，不可靠的行政体系和公开腐败的政治阶层让灌溉带来的虚幻好处似乎无限量地泛滥，尽管滥用这些好处会导致大规模的环境破坏。沙阿并没有直接提出这样的问题。然而，他确实准确地定义了他的讨论领域。“地下水无政府状态”发生在前海得拉巴王子国，在尼泊尔的特莱，在斯里兰卡的北方和南部地区，并通过“南亚”沙阿指的是孟加拉国，印度，尼泊尔和巴基斯坦的平原，斯里兰卡。但他在地理上远远超出了这一领域，远离任何分析或实际补救行动的坚实前提。例如，运河灌溉和水泵灌溉之间的划分：后者走向无政府状态，因为国家无法控制水泵灌溉。政府所能做的就是控制电力供应。有人会认为这一点需要进一步思考。安全计量用水，农业推广官员的干预？不，你再找个借口！Shah和印度规划委员会（2007）一样，指责1882年的地役权法案，该法案将所有地表水作为国家财产，但将地下水作为土地所有权的地役权（第139页）。如果沙阿费心调查印度法律或其起源的英国法律中的地役权概念，争论会更好。但他却依赖于Hardiman（1998），并在复述了他的观点后得出结论：
Shah begins by saying that Alfred Deakin, who became an eminent Australian Prime Minister, visited India in 1890 and found that it had 12 million ha of irrigated land, a figure greatly in excess of all other notable users of irrigation at that time. Nowadays, Shah says, the Indian sub-continent has 90 million ha of irrigated land. But this is being used badly, through excessive abstraction which brings up original salt from the days when India was under ocean. Discharge of drainage waters into the Indus is one problem. Another is arsenic in the groundwater of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin. Shah diagnoses the general problem as anarchy. It might better be called the effects of corruption, by which an unreliable system of administration and an openly corrupt political class – in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – allow the illusory benefits of irrigation to flow in apparently unlimited profusion, although their abuse leads to environmental damage on a wide scale. Shah does not put matters like this directly. He does, however, accurately define his area of discussion. The ‘groundwater anarchy’ occurs in the former princely state of Hyderabad, in the Terai of Nepal, in northern and southern areas of Sri Lanka, and by ‘South Asia’ Shah refers to the plains of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. But he ranges well beyond that area geographically, and far from any solid premises for analysis or indeed remedial action. For example, the division between canal irrigation and pump irrigation: the latter goes towards anarchy because the state cannot control the pump irrigators. All the state can do is control electrical supply. One would think this point demanded further thought. Secure metering of water use, intervention by agricultural extension officers? No. Just find another excuse! Shah, like the Indian Planning Commission (2007), blames the Easement Act of 1882, which made all surface water the property of the state but treated groundwater as an easement attached to landownership (p. 139). If Shah had bothered to investigate the idea of an easement in Indian law or its originating English law, the argument would have been better. But instead he relies on Hardiman (1998), and having rehearsed his views concludes: