Paper short abstract:

This research focuses on the standpoint of water technocrats (hydrocrats) to understand the trans-local power relations that coordinate their work and perpetuate dominant paradigms of water governance. It draws on preliminary insights from ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in India’s water ministry.

Paper long abstract:

The Indian water policy discourse is highly polarized and a key intellectual debate among experts remains whether large water infrastructures are the key to solving India’s most challenging water problems, and what kind of expertise must inform water governance. In July 2016, a committee to restructure India’s federal water technocracies (hydrocracies) released its recommendations, stoking debates over how restructuring them ought to meet India’s pressing water challenges. While there is ample literature supporting the recommendations, there is little understanding of the fiercely resistant stance of the hydrocracies. This research is built on a premise that the debate missed out an important perspective beyond the paradigms of large-scale infrastructure and technical solutions i.e. the trans-local institutional relations of expertise and work, and hydrocratic subjectivities that persist despite evolving policy ecosystems. To-date, the Indian hydraulic state lacks any institutional ethnographic study.

The key focus of this institutional ethnography is the lived experience of state hydrocrats at work, from early years of education and training to middle and senior-level positions. This paper draws on the standpoint of Indian federal hydrocrats about how they co-produce state-legitimized (colonial and modernist) knowledge on water, are trained and recruited, and carry out everyday work in coordination with others, to make visible the ruling relations embedded in these processes. In doing so, this research sheds light on the hidden cracks within the Indian hydraulic state where the light can get in and inform transformative action. Thereby, ensuring that state water institutions better serve those they are supposed to.