Hardiwar: the bifurca- tion of the Ganges Canal from the Ganges River
The goal of large scale irrigation projects begun during the nineteenth century was to increase agricultural productivity to mitigate famine. 2 Within British India, these projects of irrigation were advanced as part of an elaborate network of roads, railways and wells. 3 Conceptualised as such, the economic and ultimately moral development of India depended upon the development of mobile infrastructures to extract India’s then untapped resources of labour and agricultural production. John Strachey, a nineteenth century official in the North-West Provinces, observed that ‘in India, the very existence of people depends on the regular occurrence of the periodical rains, and when they fail through a wide tract of country, and, still worse, when they fail in successive years, the consequences are disastrous’. 4 Managing water extended to mediating social structures and economic wealth. The construction and maintenance of the canals put thousands to work. The increases in crop production were intended to provide greater yields for farmers and consumers alike. While there has been fierce debate as to whether or not the canal has provided economic and ecological incentives, 5 the Ganges Canal has been continually lengthened and adjusted up to a now total length of 6540 kilometres. 6 Today a variety of agrarian and urban conditions line the edges of the Ganges Canal as it passes along farming villages and dense urban centers such as Kanpur. Whereas originally the canal was intended to extend an ecological super-surface for agriculture and navigation, today it is also used for bathing, waste disposal and drinking water. More staggering than the canal bridging rivers or passing beneath them, is the canal’s implication in what I would call a hydraulic pastoralism . 7 The spaces next to this expansive infrastructure might appear rural and rustic with minimal intervention, almost a-temporal with the constant sight of oxen and donkeys, the reliance on human versus mechanical labor on the farm or in the historic city, and the seemingly endless ad hoc construction of homes and markets. However, this landscape is highly organised around hydrological features that range in scale from a hand pump to a diesel-powered tube well, and to brick-lined, serpentine canals. An infrastructurally-engineered existence is at play within the doab, sharing the same degree of infrastructural excess and detail as that of the city. Yet for some reason the hinterland does not appear to capture the imagination of contemporary design culture. One would think that these spaces would be rife with design potential.
Sitapur: moment where river passes over Gan- ges Canal
Roorkee: Ganges Canal passes over the Solani River
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weather matters: On Site review 21
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