The Harsh Facts of Hydraulics: Technology and Society in SriLanka's Colonization Schem

The HarshFactsofHydraulics:
Technologyand Societyin Sri Lanka's

Colonization
Schemes
BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER
From the close of the FirstWorld War to the present,the govern-

ment of Sri Lanka (formerlyCeylon) has attempted a series of
ambitious irrigationand resettlementprojects, called "colonization
schemes" in the literature.'These projects seek to settlelandless Sri
Lankan "peasants"in Sri Lanka's sparselypopulated Dry Zone, where
ancient Buddhist civilizationsonce flourishedin valleys watered by
rivers flowingfrom the central mountain massif.2(See fig. 1.) The
colonization schemes have several goals, including achieving self-
sufficiencyin rice production and preservingthe traditionalpeas-
antry by insulating it from the evils of a society deformed by
colonialism. Although such schemes have substantiallyincreased Sri
Lanka's riceoutput,theyhave almostuniformlyfailedto achieve their
social goals.3 Indeed, they seem inclined to reproduce (rather than
DR PFAFFENBERGER, an anthropologist,is associate professor in the Division of

Humanities, School of Engineeringand Applied Science, Universityof Virginia,and
the chairman of the Sri Lanka Studies Group (an affiliate organization of the
Association for Asian Studies). He thanks the School of Engineering and Applied
Science, Universityof Virginia, for summer support that aided the draftingof this
essay,and also thanksthe Technology and Culturereviewers,whose constructivecriticism
helped clarifythe issues thisarticleraises.
'For a general survey,see B. H. Farmer,PioneerPeasantCultivation in Ceylon(Oxford,
1957), and his more recent"The Origins of AgriculturalColonisation in the Dry Zone
of Sri Lanka," in John Farrington,FrederickAbeyratne,and Gerald J. Gill,FarmPower
and Employment in Asia: Performance and Prospects(Colombo, 1984), pp. 224-38. See
Nihal Amerasinghe,"An Overview-ofSettlementSchemes in Sri Lanka,"AsianSurvey32
(1982): 620-36, for a reviewof recentsettlementexperimentsand theiroutcomes.
2LandCommission: InterimReport,Sessional Paper No. 2 of 1928, p. 19. "Peasants" are
defined(p. 10) as persons who "cultivateland by [theirown] labour withor withoutthe
aid of paid labour" on newlyirrigatedlands "outside theirnative villages."
3On the shortcomingsof colonizationschemes,see the stingingcriticismsin the Report
oftheGal Oya EvaluationCommittee, Sessional Paper No. 1 of 1970, and the perceptive
analysisof water management problems by Robert Chambers, WaterManagementand
PaddyProductionin theDryZone ofSri Lanka (Colombo, 1975).
? 1990 by the Societyfor the Historyof Technology.All rightsreserved.
0040-165X/90/3103-0007$01.00
361
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
362 BryanPfaffenberger
ameliorate) the worstaspects of Sri Lankan peasant society,such as
indebtedness,land fragmentation,sharecroppingon a massive scale,
socioeconomic differentiation, and low agriculturalproductivity.
Joininga chorus of voices raised in protestagainst the ill effectsof
Westerntechnologyin Third World societies,some observerssuggest
that these problems might be attributedto the unavoidable social
effectsof gravity-flow irrigationtechnology itself,which seems to
entail an inevitabledifferentiationprocess given by the brute realities
of water's nature-particularly the fact that the peasants at the top
end receive water more regularlyand in greater amounts than the
peasants at the tail end. The differentiatingpotentialof the technol-
Hill Country
:: : Elevation over 900 meters
over 1500 meters
mmElevation
DRY
ZONE
WET
ZONE
O 50
km
FIG. 1.-Sri Lanka's climaticzones

Technologyand Societyin Sri Lanka's ColonizationSchemes 363
ogy is accentuatedbythe use of high-yieldingrice varieties,fertilizers,

herbicides,and pesticides,whichonly the richerpeasants can afford.
Because such varieties require expensive inputs such as herbicides
and fertilizer,
theybenefitthe richfarmersfarmore than theybenefit
the poor ones, thusexacerbatingrural stratification.4 For Third World
criticsof Western technology,the differentiatingeffectsof gravity-
flowirrigationschemes and Green Revolution technologyamount to
a Trojan horse: a Third World countryimportsWesterntechnology
to improve social welfareon an equitable basis, only to findthat the
technologyinsidiouslyreproduces the class structureand class rela-
tionsof capitalism.5The resultis a class of rural capitalistscreated by
the state.This class commercializesagriculture,expands itslandhold-
ings at the expense of poorer colonists,and fostersthe growthof a
pauperized or landless ruralpeasantry.Pointingto thisdifferentiation
process, criticsof Westerntechnicalassistanceask whetherimprove-
ments in productivityare worth the high cost of rural impoverish-
ment.6Such thinkingis behind a growing resistance to Western-
backed technicalinnovationsin agricultureat preciselythe timewhen
the world'sburgeoningpopulation may need Westerntechnicalassist
ance more than ever.
The critics of gravity-flow irrigationschemes sketch a plausible
portraitin accord with technologicaldeterminism,the doctrine that
deems the effectsof a technologyto be so rooted in the imperativesof
4For critiques of the Green Revolution generally,see JeffreyM. Paige, Agrarian

Revolution:SocialMovements and ExportAgriculturein theUnderdevelopedWorld(New York,
1975); Keith Griffin,The PoliticalEconomyof AgrarianChange: An Essay on theGreen
Revolution(Cambridge, Mass., 1974); and Carl H. Gotsch,"Technical Change and the
Distributionof Income in Rural Areas," American Journalof AgriculturalEconomics54
(1972): 326-41. For studiesof South Asian communities,see Nihal Amerasinghe,"The
Impact of High-Yielding Varietiesof Rice on a SettlementScheme in Ceylon,"Modern
CeylonStudies3 (1972): 19-35; and C. GeoffreySwenson,"The Distributionof Benefits
from Increased Rice Production in Thanjavur District,South India," IndianJournalof
Agricultural Economics31 (1976): 1-12.
5E.g., Susantha Goonatilake, "Technology as a Social Gene,"Journalof Scientific and
IndustrialResearch38 (1979): 339-54.
6E.g.,V. I. Lenin, TheDevelopment ofCapitalismin Russia (Moscow, 1956), pp. 177-78.
For South Asia, see Francis Frankel,India's GreenRevolution:EconomicGainsand Political
Costs(Bombay, 1971); C. H. H. Rao, Technological Changeand Distribution of Gains in
IndianAgriculture (Delhi, 1975); and B. Dasgupta, "India's Green Revolution,"Economic
and Political Weekly12 (1977): 241-60. For Sri Lanka, see Satchi Ponnambalam,
DependentCapitalismin Crisis: The Sri Lankan Economy,1948-1980 (London, 1980),
pp. 62-78; and N. Shanmugaratnam,"Some Aspectsof the Evolutionand Implemen-
tationof the Policyof Peasant Resettlementin the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka, 1930 to the
Present," in Charles Abeysekera, ed., Capital and Peasant Production:Studiesin the
Continuity and DiscontinuityofAgrarianStructuresin Sri Lanka (Colombo, 1985), p. 81.

nature thattheylie beyond the controlof human choice and values.7
And Sri Lanka's experience withcolonizationschemes is widelycited
as a textbookexample of the "inevitable"equity problems associated
withgravity-flow irrigationtechnology.8 This articleargues, however,
that the supposed causal relationshipbetween gravity-flow irrigation
works and socioeconomic differentiationis, in the Sri Lankan case,
illusory and deceptive. The appearance is created, and becomes
convincing,only to the extentthatobserversadopt a highlyrestricted
definitionof technology,a definitionthatincludes only the hardware
of irrigation(such as dams, pumps, and canals). As scholars in the
historyof technologyfrequentlyargue, a more useful definitionof
technologywould certainlyinclude cultural values and social behav-
iors, which are, afterall, vital to the operation and maintenanceof a
technicalsystem.9
Stripped of itsculturaland social content,irrigationtechnologycan
indeed be made to appear as if it were an inhuman juggernaut,
forcinghuman lives into the mold of capitalistclass relationsdespite
all effortsto the contrary.Yet people's lives are not necessarilyso
easily shaped by the flowof water.The traditionalvillage irrigation
systemsof Sri Lanka itselfshow thatcustomsand social behaviorscan
mitigate or cancel the stratifyingeffectsof gravity-flow irrigation
technology.The question thisarticleaddresses, therefore,is not why
Sri Lanka's modern irrigationtechnologycreates socioeconomic dif-
ferentiation;on the contrary,the question is why the schemes' social
design omittedthecustomsand behaviorsthatcould have mitigatedthe
differentiationprocess. As historiansof technologyfrequentlypoint
out, a technologicalsystemdoes not stem purelyfromthe inexorable,
inner logic of nature as it unfolds in technicalform;on the contrary,
'On technological determinism generally,see Jacques Ellul, "The Technological

Order,"Technology and Culture3 (1962): 394-421; and Leslie A. White,TheEvolutionof
Culture(Chicago, 1972). Such views are summarized and critiqued in John Stauden-
maier, Technology's ReweavingtheHuman Fabric(Cambridge, Mass., 1985);
Storytellers:
and Langdon Winner, AutonomousTechnology: as a Themein
TechnicsOut-of-Control
PoliticalThought(Cambridge, Mass., 1977).
8Forexamples of such citations,see D. W. Bromley,D. C. Taylor,and D. E. Parker,
"Water Reform and Economic Development: InstitutionalAspects of Water Manage-
ment in Developing Countries,"EconomicDevelopment and CulturalChange 28 (1980):
365-87; Randolph Barker,"Barriersto EfficientCapital Investmentin Agriculture,"in
T. W. Schultz,ed., Distortions Incentives
ofAgricultural (Bloomington,Ind., 1978); Melvin
D. Skold, Shinnawi Abdel Atty El Shinnawi, and M. Lofty Nasr, "Irrigation Water
Distributionalong Branch Canals in Egypt: Economic Effects,"EconomicDevelopment
and CulturalChange32 (1984): 547-67.
'This point is well argued by Arnold Pacey, The Cultureof Technology (Cambridge,
Mass., 1983), pp. 1-12.

Technology and Societyin Sri Lanka's ColonizationSchemes 365
its formstemsfromchoices thatpeople make when the technologyis
created or transferred.'0To understand why Sri Lanka's modern
irrigationsystemsreproduce the structureof capitalistclass relations,
then,one must ask whochose to design and transferthe systemsthat
way--and why.
The facileway to deal withthesequestions is to blame the engineers
involvedin the projectfortheirshortsightedness or tunnelvisionwith
respect to the social dimension of irrigationtechnology.And it is quite
true that,so far as these engineers are concerned, theirjob involves
only creatingwell-designedand reliable dams and canals; the man-
agement of water and socioeconomic differentiation, in theirview,is
a "people problem" thatlies beyond theirprofessionalresponsibilities
(and competence)." Yet this article will demonstratethat the social
design of Sri Lanka's irrigationsystemswas not a creation of these
engineers. On the contrary,this social design was created by British
public servants during the colonial period; a supremely peculiar
artifact,it was socially constructedin the face of a varietyof con-
straints,ranging frompaternalismto a broad-based colonial crusade
against traditionalformsof land tenure. Subsequently,it was adopted
without question and promoted zealously by the nationalist Sri
Lankan political elite, the members of which had much to gain
politicallyfromthe design the Britishhad created. They continued to
promote thisdesign, in fact,long afterit was made clear to themthat
the design was gravelyflawed,and the engineers--believingthe whole
question was beyond the bounds of theirprofessionalcompetence-
continued to create systemsthat incorporated the Britishdesign. As
the pages to follow will demonstrate,the tunnel vision of Western
engineering,its inattentionto the social and cultural dimensions of
technology,provides a resource thatThird World politicalelites may
verywell findof immense politicalvalue.
'0On the social shaping of technological systemsgenerally,see D. MacKenzie and

J. Wajcman, "Introduction,"in MacKenzie and Wajcman, eds., The Social Shaping of
Technology:How theRefrigerator GotIts Hum (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 1-25. On the role
of choice in the design process, see David Noble, ForcesofProduction:A Social Historyof
DesignAutomation (New York, 1986). On the social processes that influenceone design
choice over another,see T. Pinch and W. Bijker,"The Social Constructionof Facts and
Artefacts,Or, How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might
Benefit Each Other," in W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. Pinch, eds., The Social
ConstructionofTechnologicalSystems (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 17-50. On the "black
boxing" of technicalsystemsand artifactsafterstabilizationoccurs, see Bruno Latour,
Sciencein Action:How toFollowScientists and EngineersthroughSociety(Cambridge, Mass.,
1987), pp. 103-44.
"For a classic example of this thinking,see A. Maheshwaran, "Engineer's Role in
Water Management,"Jalavrhudi1 (December 1976): 48-54.

DryZone Colonization:An Introduction
Receiving an annual rainfallof less than 75 inches per year and
coveringabout 60 percentof Sri Lanka's land area, the Dry Zone has
long been seen as the key to solving several problems, including
overcrowdingin the populous Wet Zone, insufficient rice production,
the exploitation of peasants by village moneylenders (mudalalis),
excessive fragmentationof rice plot holdings, increasing economic
in rice-growingcommunities,and growingpeasant land-
stratification
lessness. And the Dry Zone itselfbears a potentlure: withinit are the
ruinsof the great irrigation-basedcivilizationof antiquity,the Sinhala
Buddhist civilizationsof Anuradhapura and Pollunaruva, with their
prodigious (and technicallyimpressive)networkof dams and canals."
Sri Lankan rulers have generallyagreed withthe Earl of Carnarfon
who, on learning of the greatness of these ruined works, wrote in
1866 that it would be a "reproach on civilizationand governmentif
[such] greatand princelyworks[were allowed to] lie neglectedlonger
than absolutelynecessary.""
The idea of Dry Zone colonization has found advocates-both Sri
Lankan and foreign-for more than a century.The firstattemptsof
the Britishcolonial governmentto establishsuch schemes, however,
foundered owing to the Dry Zone's unhealthy reputation; it was
dangerous and malarial, and the Britishdeveloped several projects
only to findthattheycould persuade no peasants to take up the newly
irrigated lands.'" Dry Zone colonization received renewed impetus
during the latter phase of the British colonial regime (1931-48),
when Ceylon was internallygoverned by ajoint Ceylonese and British
legislativecouncil. Colonization in earnest,however,had to await the
1945 onset of DDT spraying.Since thattime,the Sri Lankan govern-
ment has constructeddozens of new irrigationworksand refurbished
old ones.
The government's interest in Dry Zone colonization has been
matched by spending commitments.Spending on such projects has
consumed as much as 87 percentof the country'sannual agricultural
budget. By 1970, state-sponsored colonization schemes contained
20Onthe irrigationworks of classical Sri Lanka, see R. L. Brohier,AncientIrrigation

Worksin Ceylon(Colombo, 1934); C. W. Nicholas, "A Short Account of the Historyof
IrrigationWorks Up to the Eleventh Century," JournaloftheCeylonBranchoftheRoyal
AsiaticSociety,n.s. 7 (1960): 43-69; and Nicholas, "The Irrigation Works of King
Parakramabahu I," CeylonHistoricalJournal4 (1954-55): 52-68.
13ColonialOffice (hereafter CO) (Public Records Office, Kew, London), 54/424
(no. 3), Robinson to Carnarfon,minute by Carnarfon,January 9, 1967.
14B.H. Farmer,"The Origins of AgriculturalColonisation in the Dry Zone of Sri
Lanka," in Farrington,Abeyratne,and Gill (n. 1 above), p. 5.

Technologyand Societyin Sri Lanka's Colonization
Schemes 367
210,000 acres of paddy,one-sixthof the country'sentirerice-growing
acreage. By 1974, the independent governmenthad spent nearlyRs
4 billionon such projects,and, by 1980, nearlyone hundred thousand
familieshad been settledon one-halfmillionacres of newlyirrigated
land.'" Dwarfingall past efforts,however,is the massiveprogram now
under way to develop the 4,000-square-milebasin of the Mahaweli
Ganga, the nation's longest river. Begun in 1970, the project was
originallyintended to bring900,000 acres under irrigation,generate
more than 500 megawattsof electricalpower,and provide new homes
for 225,000 families.'"The scaled-down version (called the Acceler-
ated Mahaweli Project) seeks to settle some 140,000 families on
320,000 acres of newlyirrigatedland."7
What troubles many Sri Lankans about this massive effortis that
theeconomic and social resultsof past colonizationschemesare, to say
the least, far fromencouraging."8The pre-Mahaweliprojectsconsis-
tentlyfailto meet theirproductiongoals and, in consequence, do not
repay the massive investmentthe Colombo governmenthas made in
them.'9 What is even more discouraging about the colonization
schemes,however,is theirfailureto meet theirsocial goals, namely,to
create egalitariancommunitiesof peasant owner-proprietors.At the
Minipe scheme, for example:
a few colonistsachieve high incomes and high living standards

amid a mass of settlerswho eke out a day-to-dayexistence.Lack
of savinghabits and a subsistenceorientationhelp to exacerbate
the povertyof the poorer groups and leave them vulnerable in
the face of drought or a fall in the price of paddy. Such minor
disasterslead the poor to lease or rent theirlands [illegallyand
"'The figuresare drawn fromPonnambalam (n. 6 above), p. 50; MartinE. Gold, Law
and Social Change:A StudyofLand Reformin Sri Lanka (New York, 1977), pp. 57, 122.
'6UnitedNations Development Program and Food and AgriculturalOrganization of
the United Nations, Mahaweli Ganga Irrigationand Hydropower Survey,Ceylon,Final
Report,vols. I and 3 (Rome, 1969).
'7JanLudqvist, "IrrigationDevelopment and Central Control: Some Features of Sri
Lankan Development,"in I. Norlund, S. Cederroth, and I. Gerdin, eds., Rice Societies:
AsianProblemsand Prospects (London, 1986), p. 61.
'8See, for instances of this concern, Ponnamabalam (n. 6 above), pp. 155-57, and
Mallory E. Wijesinghe,Sri Lanka's Development Thrust(Colombo, 1981), pp. 50-57.
"9S.Amunugama, "Chandrikawewa: A Recent Attemptat Colonization on a Peasant
Framework,"CeylonJournalofHistoricaland Social Studies8 (1965): 130-62; Chambers
(n. 3 above); H. N. C. Fonseka, "Problems of Agriculturein the Gal-Oya (Left Bank)
Peasant Colony" ModernCeylonStudies2 (1971): 69-75; J.Jogaratnamand R. Schikle,
SummaryReportof the Socio-Economic Surveyof theNine ColonizationSchemesin Ceylon
(Peradeniya,Sri Lanka, 1969); R. D. Wanigaratne,The Minipe ColonizationScheme:An
Appraisal(Colombo, 1979).

covertly]to the more fortunatehouseholds. The already affluent
become richerand the poor become increasinglydependent on
themforsurvival.But at the same timeas the poor are obliged to
lease out their own lands on unfavorableterms,others of their
numbers pay high rents--reaching50% of the crops-to obtain
cultivationrights on land owned by wealthy landowners and
traders.Some workas ... tenantson theirown lands whichhave
been mortgaged to the rich.2"
A varietyof explanationsforsuch developmentshave been offered,

but perhaps the mostcompellingis the technologicaldeterministview
taken by M. P. Moore and his colleagues, who attributethe schemes'
disappointing performance to what they term the "harsh facts of
hydraulics": the inherent economic disparities that are built into
gravity-flowirrigationtechnology.Used in the pre-Mahawelischemes,
thistechnologyemploysgravity-flow irrigationstructuresthatcapture
riverwater in reservoirs,conveyingit to rice-growingareas via very
long distributoryand fieldchannels thatare designed to command as
large an area as possible (see fig.2). Although cheap to construct,
such workscreate inequitiesbetweentop-end and tail-endcultivators:
"Top-ender" and "tail-ender"refer broadly to the distance, on

gravityflow irrigationschemes, between the farmer'sirrigated
plotand thepointat whichwateris issued intothe channel system.
This distance is, everythingelse being equal, a good indicatorof
the farmer'saccess to irrigationwater.. . . For two reasons, "top-
enders" almost always obtain more water per unit of land than
"tail-enders,"and thusenjoy more successin theircultivation.The
firstreason is thatthe volume and pressureof waterin irrigation
channels is greater at the top ends. Even withouthuman inter-
ference, the harsh facts of hydraulicsfavor "top-enders." The
second and related reason is that it is physicallymuch easier for
"top-enders"ratherthan "tail-enders"to poach or steal fromthe
irrigationchannels more than their alloted share of water....
Unequal access to irrigationwater is the major single cause of
socioeconomic inequalitybetween top-endersand tail-enders.21
20R.D. Wanigaratne,"A Peasant Settlementin the Dry Zone," in Barry M. Morrison,

M. P. Moore, and M. U. Ishak Lebbe, eds., The DisintegratingVillage?Social Changein
Rural Sri Lanka (Colombo, 1981), p. 146; see also Wanigaratne(n. 19 above), p. 42.
21M. P Moore, Approachesto ImprovingWaterManagementon Large-ScaleIrrigation
Schemesin Sri Lanka (Colombo, 1980), p. 3. For a comprehensive statementof this
viewpoint,see M. P. Moore, F. Abeyratne,R. Amarakoon, and J. Farrington,"Space
and the Generation of Socio-Economic Inequality on Sri Lanka's IrrigationSchemes,"
Marga 7 (1983): 1-133.

Tank \*--- Road
ILeft Bank Main Channel
Distributing Channel
Dra
Town --
-B -M
SRight Bank Main Chann
FIG. 2.-Gravity-flowirrigationscheme

In identifyingthe "harsh factsof hydraulics"as the principalcause
of stratificationin colonization schemes, Moore and his colleagues
echo the growing Third World condemnation of Western-backed
technical innovationsin agriculture.Does their thesis have a foun-
dation in fact? Although it cannot be denied that gravity-flow
irrigationsystemsdistributewater inequitably,studies of traditional
irrigationpractices-those rooted in centuriesof custom-show that
countervailingcustoms can nullifythe differentiatingpotential of
gravity-flow irrigationtechnology.22 Studies elsewhere show,similarly,
that Green Revolution technology(fertilizers,pesticides, and high-
yielding rice varieties) does not necessarilyproduce socioeconomic
differentiation, so long as countervailingcustoms assure the equita-
ble use of agriculturalinputs."2As William Kelly reminds us, "forms
of irrigationorganizationare . .. too frequentlyattributeddirectlyto
'natural facts of water' . . . rather than to the variable cultural
meanings of those natural and technical'facts'for the social actorsin
a given setting."24
Remarkably,the evidence about traditionalvillage irrigationsys-
tems in Sri Lanka itselfprovides even more evidence in support of
this point-and what is more, it helps to elucidate the structural
principlebywhichequitycan be maintainedin the face of gravity-flow
irrigationtechnology'sstratifying potential. These systemsallocated
to
rights water, not to land. If Sri Lanka's modern irrigationworksare
associated withsocioeconomicdifferentiation, then,the reason cannot
be attributedin isolationto gravity-flow irrigationtechnology.On the
contrary, it must be attributed to the social and historicalprocesses
that stripped this technology of the social design that could have
contributedto its equitable operation.
22Onthe role of customin mitigatingthe stratifyingeffectsof gravity-flow

technology
in traditional irrigation systems,see E. Walter Coward, Jr., "Principles of Social
Organization in an Indigenous IrrigationSystem,"Human Organization38 (1979): 35.
On the rise of such customsin a government-sponsoredirrigationproject,see Richard
H. Goldman and Lyn Squire, "Technical Change, Labor Use, and Income Distribution
in the Muda IrrigationProject,"EconomicDevelopment and CulturalChange30 (1982):
753-76.
2SFor a study that questions the inevitabilityof socioeconomic differentiationin
irrigationprojects, see Donald W. Attwood, "Why Some of the Poor Get Richer:
Economic Change and Mobilityin Rural WesternIndia," Current Anthropology20 (1979):
495-514. On the role of countervailingcustoms in mitigatinginequalityin irrigation
projects,see Goldman and Squire (n. 22 above).
4""Concepts in the AnthropologicalStudy of Irrigation,"AmericanAnthropologist 85
(1983): 881.

and Societyin Sri Lanka's ColonizationSchemes
Technology 371
Rightsto Water:The TraditionalPattern
The great Sinhala Buddhist civilizationsof the Dry Zone collapsed
centuriesbefore the Europeans' arrival,and the large-scaleirrigation
systemscreated by the Buddhist kings had fallen into disrepair and
disuse. Still extant in colonial times, however, were thousands of
small-scalevillage irrigationsystems.Characteristicof such systems
was a one tank-one village pattern,in which the tank (wewa), the
village (gama), and the Buddhist shrine (dagoba) constituteda closely
integratedsystem,regulated farmore by customand religionthan by
coercion.25Dwellingas theydid on land thatwas symbolically"owned"
by the king,26the villagersowed him service,called rajakariya,which
frequently(and congenially) amounted to self-help: for the high
castes, the major communityresponsibilitywas the maintenance of
village irrigationworks. Since most villages were the domicile of a
single caste, there was no barrierto the full emergence of a frankly
egalitarianvillage ideology-and, as John D'Oyly observes,there was
little incentive for the high castes to acquire low-caste land, since
vested in that land was the requirement to serve the king in a
caste-specific(and demeaning) way.27Such villages preserved the
egalitarian spiritof Sri Lanka's traditionalirrigationcustoms intact
well into the 19th century,and in some cases even later.
To be sure, the historicalevidence about these survivingcustoms,
which was provided mainlyby Britishcolonial officials,is colored by
the English penchant to romanticizethe village as a self-sufficient,
egalitarian,democratic,and morallyintegratedcommunityof self-
respectingpeasants,who are altogetherto be preferredto the rowdy
(This penchantis observablefromthe earliesttimes:
masses in cities.28
the English sailor Robert Knox, who was captured and held prisoner
by the kingof the Kandyan kingdomin the 17thcentury,praised the
Sinhala peasant in these terms:"Take a ploughman fromthe plough
25A.Abeysinghe,"Historical Evidence of Water Management in Ancient Sri Lanka,"

EconomicReview6 (September/October1980): 6-7.
26W.I. Siriweera, "The Theory of the King's Ownership of the Land in Ancient
Ceylon: An Essay in HistoricalRevision,"CeylonJournalofHistoricaland Social Sciences1
(1971): 48-61.
27John oftheKandyanKingdom(Colombo, 1929),
S. D'Oyly,A SketchoftheConstitution
pp. 44, 93.
28Compare,e.g., MartinJ. Wiener,EnglishCultureand theDeclineoftheIndustrialSpirit,
1850-1980 (Harmondsworth,1985), pp. 50 ff.,and Vijaya Samaraweera, "Litigation,
Sir Henry Maine's Writings,and the Ceylon Village CommunityOrdinance of 1871,"in
L. Prematilleke,K. Indrapala, and J. E. Van Lohuizen-De Leeuw, eds., The Senerat
ParanavitanaCommemoration Volume(Leiden, 1978), pp. 199-213.

and wash off his dirt and he is fitto rule a kingdom.")29Even while
bearing the limitationsof such evidence in mind, however,there is
sufficientinformation on precolonial and postcolonial irrigation
customs to suggest a consistentpattern: these Customsmuted socio-
economic differentiationin irrigation-basedcommunitiesby (1) allo-
cating rightsto water,not land, and (2) assuring regular means by
which new communitiescould be created afterpopulation increased.
Epigraphical and literary evidence suggests that the irrigation
settlementsof the ancientcivilizationswere founded on strongnorms
of equityin the distributionof water.These norms "ensured thatone
individual did not obtain an advantage to which he was not entitled
and thatthe maximumbenefitwas derived fromthe cultivation."30 In
settlementsworkedby Buddhist monasteries,forinstance,all the men
in the village communitywere considered to be joint proprietorsof
the "waterin the reservoir."31The waterflowingthroughchannels was
also considered common property,and the maintenance in good
repair of dams and channels was a communityresponsibility.In the
dry season, when water fromthe reservoirand channels is required
forthe crops,waterwas allocated by turns.Any attemptto subvertthe
allocation was defined as a crime and held the criminal liable for
paymentof prosecution and expulsion fromthe monasticorder.32
Such evidence from classical antiquity might be dismissed as
irrelevant,since it stems not from secular societybut frommonastic
life,were it not for its strongresemblanceto secular peasant customs
observed in the early colonial period. Early attempts by British
observersto record the "constitution"of the Kandyan kingdomof the
central highlands,which the Britishbrought down in 1815, stressed
the obligation(rajakariya)of villagersto serve the kingby maintaining
irrigation works in good repair; village councils could mete out
corporal punishment on the king's behalf if farmers refused to
cooperate in such self-beneficial maintenancework.Bound as itwas to
caste-specificservices,rajakariyaoffended Britishprinciplesof social
justice, and it was officiallyabolished in 1832. A major and unwanted
consequence, however, was the rapid deterioration of dams and
channels, and the even less desirable onset of protractedlitigationas
2Quoted (with evident approval) by Tilak Hettiarachchy,The Sinhala Peasant in a

ChangingSociety:EcologicalChangeamongtheSinhala Peasantsfrom1796 ADto 1909 AD
(Colombo, 1982), p. 41.
SOIbid.,p. 163.
31Samantapasadika,trans. S. Paranavitana, "Some Regulations concerning Village
Irrigationin AncientCeylon,"CeylonJournalofHistoricaland Social Sciences1 (1958): 4.
32Ibid., pp. 4-5.

villagerssquabbled (oftenviolently)over diminishingwatersupplies.33

As a result, some British officials,with the encouragement of Sir
Henry George Ward, Ceylon's governor from 1855 to 1860, under-
took minute investigationsof traditionalirrigationcustoms with a
view toward formulatinglegislationto restorethe old spiritof village
cooperation. One such investigationwas undertaken by Ward's son-
in-law,John Bailey, the capable and popular assistant government
agent of Badulla Districtin the centralhighlands.
Bailey's study was stimulated,he recounts, by the "melancholy"
panorama of deterioratingand abandoned villages in the Kandyan
highlands."3 Sufficientevidence of traditionalirrigationcustoms re-
mained, however,for Bailey to adduce its ten principles,which were
remarkablyreminiscentof the classical monasticpattern.All propri-
etors of paddy plots, for instance, were jointly responsible for the
maintenance of the water supply, and the village council could
enforce sanctionsagainst those who shirkedtheirresponsibilities(or
damaged dams or channels for selfish gain). What is particularly
interestingabout Bailey's material, however, is his discovery of a
cultural distinctionbetween top-end and tail-end plots, which he
rendered (respectively)as moolata(root fields)and agata (end fields),
and of culturalpracticesthatmuted the economic liabilitiesof tail-end
holdings.The interestsof tail-enderswere protectedbecause agata or
tail-endplots were plowed and watered first,the water subsequently
being diverted by rotationprogressivelytoward the top end of the
reservoir;wateringa fieldout of turn was ipso facto theft.Further-
more, in seasons where insufficient water was available to water both
top-end and tail-end plots, the top-end (moolata) holdings were
temporarily redistributed among all top-end and tail-end holders so
thateveryonecould benefitin proportionto his share in the fieldas
a whole. Such principlesshowclearlythatlandholdingsin an irrigated
field did not really amount to landownership in the Westernsense,
but rather a kinship-basedshare (called pangu) in the community's
water resources. Even allowing for Bailey's quintessentiallyEnglish
tendencyto romanticizeancient customs,it seems indisputable that
"3CO 54/328, enclosure "Report on the Patipola-aar," in dispatch of Ward to

Labouchere, February 27, 1857; CO 54/438, enclosur-e"Depopulation of the Vanni
District,"in dispatchof Hodgson to Duke of Buckingham,December 24, 1868; and CO
54/432, enclosure "Report of the IrrigationCommittee,"in dispatch of Robinson to
Duke of Buckingham,January 14, 1868.
34"Reporton Irrigation,"in Speechesand MinutesoftheLate Sir HenryGeorgeWard...
withOtherPapersConnected oftheGovernment
withHis Administration ofCeylon,1855-1860
(Colombo, 1864), p. 98.

such customscould be attributedonly to the wisdomand, as he put it,
the "experience of centuries."
Twentieth-centuryanthropological studies corroborate the essen-
tial point of thissystem(namely,thatit establishedequitable rightsto
water),although much regional variationis apparent."3Everyholding
in the well-wateredUpper Field of the Northern Province village
called Pul Eliya, for instance,was observed by Edmund Leach in the
1950s to be matched by a corresponding plot in the less advanta-
geously situated Lower Field. A villagercould not simplysell off his
Lower Field holdings in favorof those in the Upper Field; theywere
irretrievablylinked in all transactions, including inheritance. In
effect,the land tenure systemdid not functionso much to allocate
land as it did to allocate water,and it operated so that each share
(pangu)of villageland was entitledto a waterallocationpreciselyequal
to those allocated to all other shares.
During times of water scarcity,especially in the dry season, the
village, in a practice called bethma,collectivelydecided to cultivatea
smaller portion of the whole field,again with steps taken to ensure
equal access to waterby each shareholder.Commentingon the tradi-
tional system,Leach notes correctlythata share (pangu)was "an equal
share in a corporation,"like a modern stock market share, which
entitlesone to a share of thedividends(but notto controlof anyspecific
part of the company's real property).36 Echoing Leach's conclusions,
Obeyesekere notes that"the characteristicofpangu is that... theyare
'floating,'rather than irrevocablyattached to a particular unit of
land.""7
Thus informed by the researches of Bailey and other colonial
observers, and with Ward's leadership, the colonial government
implementedthe Paddy Lands IrrigationOrdinance (No. 9) of 1856,
whichrestoredto village headmen and councils the sanctionsneeded
to compel communal cooperation in the maintenance of irrigation
structuresand the equitable distributionof water.Flexible provisions
were made, too, for the enactment of additional local customs as
needed and as ratifiedby local farmers'organizationsin consultation
with a colonial official.Welcomed by the peasantryand considered
successful by the colonial government,the ordinance (with a few
"3Cf. Edmund R. Leach, "Village Irrigation in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka," in
E. WalterCoward, ed., Irrigation and Agricultural inAsia: Perspectives
Development fromthe
Social Sciences(Ithaca, N.Y, 1980), p. 116; and Gananath Obeyesekere,Land Tenurein
VillageCeylon:A Social and HistoricalStudy(Cambridge, 1967).
36Leach (n. 35 above), p. 149, citing H. W. Codrington, AncientLand Tenureand
Revenuein Ceylon(Colombo, 1938).
37Obeyesekere(n. 35 above), p. 18.

and Societyin Sri Lanka's Colonization
Technology Schemes 375
subsequent amendments) became part of British Ceylon's colonial
Even so, grounds existforarguing thatthe ordinance
legal heritage.38
did not really accomplish its aim, which was to preserve traditional
irrigationcustoms,but ratherchanged them unwittingly according to
Westernnotionsof politicalpower and land tenure.
The major palpable effectof the ordinance in most villages was to
restoreto village irrigationheadmen (vel vidane)the rightto compel
villagers to maintain irrigationworks-a right that the Britishhad
themselvestakenawaywhen royalservice(rajakariya)was abolished. In
most cases, however,there appears to have been scant attentionpaid
to restoringtraditionalcustomsof land tenure-a move, anyway,that
would have proved singularlyunpopular in Britishcolonial circles,
whichconsistentlyheld that unclear land titleswere preventingCey-
lonese farmersfrom making needed capital investmentsin the land
theyfarmed.And in viewingthe headman's officesas secular offices,
the ordinance may have misinterpretedthem in yet another way,as
19th-century observationsof threshing-floorceremonies suggest.39
38The offices established under the ordinance persisted until 1958 when, amid
accusationsthattheseofficeshad fallenunder the controlof richlandowners,theywere
abolished by the 1958 Paddy Lands Reform Act. On the social historyof the Paddy
Lands Irrigation Ordinance, see Michael Roberts, "The Paddy Lands Irrigation
Ordinance and the Revival of Traditional Irrigation Customs, 1856-1871 " Ceylon
JournalofHistoricaland Social Studies10 (1967): 114-30; Michael Roberts,"Irrigation
Policy in BritishCeylon during the NineteenthCentury,"SouthAsia: Journalof South
AsianStudies2 (1972): 47-63; B. Bastiampillai,"The Revivalof IrrigationEnterprisein
Ceylon, 1870 to 1890," CeylonJournalofHistoricaland Social Studies10 (1967): 1-26.
"On the ceremonies of the threshingfloor,see D. J. Abeyratne,"Paddy or Rice
Cultivation in Ceylon," TropicalAgriculturalist25 (1905-06): 569-75; A. Ashmore,
"Paddy Cultivationin Ceylon,"TropicalAgriculturalist 30 (1908): 269-74; H. C. P. Bell,
"Paddy CultivationCeremonies in the Four Korales,"Journalof theRoyalAsiaticSociety
(CeylonBranch) 11 (1889): 167-71; Bell, "Sinhalese Customs and Ceremonies Con-
nected with Paddy Cultivationin the Low Country,"Journalof theRoyalAsiaticSociety
(CeylonBranch)8 (1883): 44-93; Bell, "SuperstitionsConnected withthe Cultivationof
Alui or Hill Paddy,"Orientalist3 (1888-89): 99-103; Henry W. Cave, "The Terraced
Hillsides of Ceylon," Timesof CeylonXmas No. (1910): 52-53; Ananda K. Coomar-
aswamy,"Notes on Paddy CultivationCeremonies in the Ratnapura District,"Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society(CeylonBranch) 18 (1905): 413-28; C. M. Austin de Silva,
"Harvesting Ceremonies and Practices of the Sinhalese,"Buddhist20 (1949): 33-34;
R. W. levers, "Customs and Ceremonies Connected withPaddy Cultivation,"Journal of
theRoyalAsiaticSociety(CeylonBranch)6 (1880): 46-52; C. J. R. Le Mesurier,"Ceremo-
nies Connected with Paddy Cultivationin the Nuwara Eliya District,"in Manual of the
Nuwara Eliya District(Ceylon, 1893), pp. 135-37; Le Mesurier,"Customs and Super-
stitionsConnected withthe Cultivationof Rice in the Southern Partsof Ceylon,"Journal
oftheRoyalAsiaticSocietyofGreatBritainand Ireland 17 (1885): 366-72; John P. Lewis,
"Paddy CultivationCeremonies in the Central Provinces,"CeylonAntiquary and Literary
Register9 (1924): 243-45.

These ceremonies may well have played a crucial role, perhaps
more crucial than the irrigationheadman's, in ensuringthe equitable
distributionof resources. Anthropologistshave long noted that one
way to control economic relations is to put mattersof distribution
beyond the bounds of rational discourse, especially by embedding
them in ritual. The literatureon the threshing-floorceremonies is
indeed replete with references to their "strange conventionalism,"
which required even economicallysignificanttransactionsto be con-
ducted with a "superstitiousscrupulousness of detail" and a special,
virtuallyincomprehensiblelanguage. This ritual language required
participantsto adopt "an odd shibbolethfor the ordinarycolloquial
talk of everydaylife."40For the 19th-century civil servantswho wrote
detailed descriptionsof these threshing-floor ceremonies, such con-
ventionswere engaginglyquaint, testifying only to bucolic irrational-
ity.But theymissed the underlyingrationale. Conventionalismof this
sort puts the ceremonial activities beyond the scope of secular
give-and-take;as Maurice Bloch puts the point for the economic and
political functionsof conventionalismgenerally,"you cannot argue
witha song.""41
The penchant for conventionalism found expression in more
secular matters as well. In his early 1950s study of Pul Eliya, the
Northern Province village mentioned earlier, Leach observed the
arcane calculationsused by the irrigationheadman to compute water
allocations in a Northern Province village. "Although the present
generation of Pul Eliya villagers is not at all clear about the inner
logic of it all," Leach recounts, "they are keenly aware that the
numerical formulae handed down from ancient times are very
important.The general view seems to be: We don't understand why
things are arranged like this,but this is how they are, and we had
better leave them alone."42An importantfunctionof these calcula-
tions, in short, was to put the matter of water allocation beyond
argument; anyone who wanted to get involved in disputing them
would be obliged, besides going against tradition,to express the
argument in a symbolic form whose principles were unknown to
villagers (and probably even to the irrigationheadman who used
them by rote). These findingsare hardly surprising.Ritual regula-
tion appears prominentlyin other traditionsof communityirrigation
40Bell,"Sinhalese Customs" (n. 39 above), pp. 54-55.

41MauriceBloch, "Symbol,Song, Dance, and the Features of Articulation,"European
JournalofSociology15 (1974): 55-81.
42EdmundLeach, Pul Eliya: A Villagein Ceylon:A Studyof Land Tenureand Kinship
(Cambridge, 1971), pp. 164-65.

management. In Bali, for example, water management was a matter
for temples, not political figures,and functionedvery effectivelyto
regulate the distributionof water resources where naked political
power alone may well have failed.43
Rational argumentand coercive forcemay workat timesto control
situations,but the experience of traditionalsocietyshows that it is
often betterto find some means by which contentiousissues can be
put beyond argument and made unalterable.44As Robert McC.
Nettingnotes about a small-scaleirrigationsystemin the Swiss Alps,
a systemin which "no one possesses comprehensiveand comprehen-
sible knowledge of its total operation" may well possess a kind of
"organicstability."45By the 1950s, theirofficeshavingbeen secularized
and deconventionalized,irrigationheadmen were widely viewed as
little more than henchmen for rich landowners.4' The Irrigation
Ordinance's failureto provide forritualizedstabilitymay have proved
fatalto the intended reforms.
The traditional customs of rice irrigationassured the equitable
portioningof water rightsnot only by ritualizingthem but also by
providinga regularprocessby whichnew tank-basedvillagescould be
established when population increase threatened to subdivide the
shares below subsistence level. When the size of shares became
sufficientlysmall to pose serious threatsto equity,a varietyof customs
were broughtto bear to equalize access to waterand productiveland;
among themwere crop sharingand cultivationby rotation(tattumaru),
whichgave everyonean equal chance for fertileland.47When further
subdivisionof shares would make the estate uneconomical,all shares
were frozen in a process called karamaru(relief). At thisjuncture, a
group of kinsmenwould hive offfromthe villageand set out to create
a new tank and village in thejungle; the kinsmenbecome sharehold-
ers in the newlycreated assets.48
4SOnwitnessinga squabble over water,a Balinese temple scriberemarked,"So finally

I went to them. I said, 'Who created this water? Who decides if this spring is full,or
dries up?' And theyhad to answer! I said, 'Do you understandthatif we fightover this
giftfromthe goddess, her spring mightjust dry up? Completelyvanish?' " Quoted in
J. Stephen Lansing, "Balinese Water Temples and the Management of Irrigation,"
AmericanAnthropologist 89 (1987): 337.
"Leach (n. 42 above), p. 165.
45RobertMcC. Netting,"The SystemNobody Knows: Village Irrigationin the Swiss
Impacton Society
Alps,"in T. E. Downing and M. Gibson,eds., Irrigation's (Tucson, 1974),
p. 73.
46W.A. Warnapala, Civil ServiceAdministration in Ceylon:A Studyin Bureaucratic
Adaptation(Colombo, 1974), pp. 339-43.
47Hettiarachchy(n. 29 above), p. 25.
48Obeyesekere(n. 35 above), p. 17.

The traditionalsystemof irrigatedrice agriculturein Ceylon, in
sum, was by nature an expansiveone, and it depended on the
availabilityof virginjungle lands intowhichirrigatedsettlementcould
be projected. The kings of classical antiquitywere probablydeemed
great, not because they were all-powerful or because they built
irrigationsystemsthataffectedmassivenumbersof people, but rather
because the state's activitiesopened up new areas in which commu-
nitiescould establishtheirown small-scaleworks.49
Process
The Rise oftheDifferentiation
The traditionalcustomsof water rightsand villageexpansion were
deeply vulnerable to a latter-daycolonial administrationbent on
establishingprivatepropertyrightsand vestingwildernessland in the
colonial government.A varietyof forces-population increase,therise
of privatepropertynotions,land scarcity, a taxationpolicyruinous for
peasants, and the onset of a rural cash economy-united to create a
culturallypatternedprocess of socioeconomicdifferentiation in colo-
nial Ceylon, a process that well antedates the first colonization
schemes. This process created a new kind of rural landlord-cum-
moneylender(the mudalali)and the dependent, indebted sharecrop-
ping tenant. Rooted in traditionalnotions of rank but crosscut by
entirelynew modes of economic and political relationships,these
roles belong neitherto Ceylon's quasi-feudal past nor to the future
envisioned by development experts; theyare, rather,an odd defor-
mityproduced by the collisionof images drawn fromthe new as well
as the old.
The rise of a new class of rural landowners as land came on the
marketwas assisted not a littleby the Britishcolonial government's
mountinghostilityto all formsof precapitalistland tenure,a hostility
that by the late 19th century led almost to a crusade to destroy
multiple claims to land. Inimical to the legalities of clear title,such
claims were believed to pose a persistentbarrier to economic devel-
opment in rural areas, thus diminishingthe flowof revenue to the
government.When faced with all the strategiesCeylonese peasants
used to juggle landholdings to preserve equity in water access, the
Britishreactionwas to view such customsas powerfuldisincentivesto
investment,production,and progress.5"
'4Leslie Gunawardana, "Irrigation and Hydraulic Society in Early Medieval Sri

Lanka," Past and Present14 (1971): 14-18.
5L. J. de S. Seneviratne,"Land Tenure in the Kandyan Provinces,"CeylonEconomic
Journal9 (1937): 35-56.

To speed the transitionto privateproperty,the colonial government
enacted the PartitionOrdinance No. 10 of 1863, which allowed any
shareholder in the village to sue for partitionof the estate. The Par-
titionOrdinance had very pernicious effects;as a districtofficerin
Matara Districtput it,"the Ordinance enables a capitalist,by purchas-
ing a verysmall share of a land, to eject the familieswhichhave held
it forcenturies,the capitalistbecomingowner of the whole fora great
deal less than its value, owing to the want of competition."'' Once
partitionhad occurred, outside speculators could assemble plots of
prime land in a way that would not have been possible under the
traditionalsystem.52 From this new class of speculators emerged the
landholding families, mostlyLow CountrySinhalese, who led Ceylon
to itsindependence in 1948 and have dominateditspoliticsto thisday.53
This point is of great significancefor the argumentin the restof this
article:It was preciselythiselite thatwas to promotethe policyof Dry
Zone colonizationwithgreatestfervor.It is hardlysurprisingthatthey
would embrace a settlementdesign that emphasized clearly demar-
cated plots of land free frommultipleclaims; preciselythisnotion of
land tenure had been instrumentalin making theirfirstfortunes.
It would be wrong, however,to view this class as having much in
common withthe "stereotypical"Asian landlord, who amasses thou-
sands of acres and exploitslarge numbersof sharecroppers.Far closer
to the realityis the village schoolteacherwho owns 10 acres of paddy
and maintainsa faithfulretinueof dozens of clients,54 or the coconut
plantation owner who works a 50-acre tractand engages much of a
local or adjacent village in patron-clientrelations that are far from
purely exploitive. Although the landlord charges usurious interest
rates,and the resultforthe tenantis oftenlandlessnessand servitude,
the clientcan neverthelessturnto the landlord forhelp when a child
fallsill,a house needs repair aftera storm,or a wedding takes place.55
"1Citedin Michael Roberts,"Aspectsof Ceylon'sAgrarianEconomyin the Nineteenth

Century,"University ofCeylonHistoryofCeylon,vol. 3 (Colombo, 1970), p. 150.
52Obeyesekere(n. 35 above), pp. 165-88.
53Onthe rise of this new class of rural capitalistlandholders, see Michael Roberts,
Caste Conflictand Elite Formation:The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931
(Cambridge, 1978); PatrickPeebles, "The Transformationof a Colonial Elite: The
Mudaliyars of XIXth Century Ceylon" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Chicago, 1973);
D. Jayanntha,"The Economic and Social Bases of Political Allegiance in Sri Lanka,
1947-1982" (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University,1982).
54MickMoore, The Stateand PeasantPoliticsin Sri Lanka (Cambridge, 1985), p. 182.
"5RonaldJ. Herring,"Embedded ProductionRelationsand the Rationalityof Tenant
Quiescence in Tenure Reform,"Journalof Peasant Studies8 (1981): 131-72; Richard
Slater,"Tenurial Relations: A Declining Power Elite in a North-WestSri Lankan Rice
FarmingCommunity,"SouthAsia Research5 (1985): 113-41.

The patron-clientrelationshipin the Ceylonese contextis, in short,by
no means merelyone-sided and exploitive.
BritishCeylon's politicalevolutionserved to moderate thisrelation-
ship in some cases. Afterthe 1931 Donoughmore Constitution,which
extended universalsuffrageto all adult Ceylonese, village landlords
often sought to transformtheir loyal retainers into loyal political
supporters.The aim of one who seeks politicalsupport is not merely
to provide some small measure of securityto one's clients,as any good
patron would, but rather to redistributeresources so copiously that
one creates goodwill (honda hita) in the local community.6" A land-
holder whose orientation is "too economic," as D. Jayanntha has
shown, will quickly lose political support.57Many Ceylonese-owned
tea, rubber,and coconut estateswere managed so uneconomically,in
fact, that operations-especially those that employed hundreds of
local villagers-were funded out of capital,58probably because their
owners viewed such ostensiblypoor management as an eminently
rational investmentin building a political clientele. The Ceylonese
elite has been increasinglywilling, in short, to "make or accept
sacrificesin the materialsphere" to achieve the noneconomic goal of
"politicaldominance.""59
In the absence of concertedpoliticalresistanceat the local level,this
new class of rural landholders-cum-politicians has been able to resist
quite successfullyany state-sponsoredattemptto undermine its local
power.This pointwas proved conclusivelyin the attemptby leftistsin
the Sri Lanka Freedom partygovernmentto reformland tenure in
1958. They sought to regulate sharecropping(or ande tenure,as it is
known in Sri Lanka) so thatlandlords could not abuse theirtenants;
but the Paddy Lands Act of 1958 was emasculated by landholders
before it leftParliament.When it became law,its ineffectiveness was
soon apparent; elite familiesfound a varietyof ways to subvertthe
legislation so that their local dominance was, if anything,actually
enhanced." By the time colonization schemes came to be attempted
on a large scale, in sum, legal and economic changes setoffduring the
Britishcolonial period had created an islandwidepatternof socioeco-
nomic differentiation, in which local elite familiesmuted their eco-
56NamikaRaby,Kachcheri in Sri Lanka: TheCultureand PoliticsofAccessibility

Bureaucracy
(Syracuse, N.Y., 1985), p. 61.
57Jayanntha (n. 53 above), p. 38.
58N.Ramachandran, ForeignPlantationInvestment in Ceylon,1889-1958 (Colombo,
1963).
59Moore(n. 54 above), p. 210.
'R. D. Wanigaratne,"FamilyDominance in AgriculturalActivities," EconomicReview
2 (September 1976): 23.

nomic dominance by redistributiveactivitiesaimed at creatingpoliti-
cal clienteles,and theyhad learned to defend theirhome turfagainst
liberal reform.It was in thissocial environmentthata major govern-
ment commitmentto peasant colonization schemes was made.
The new patternof differentiation, whichwas to become so evident
in later projects, is visible, tellingly,in the very first irrigation
development project the Britishattempted.In an 1857 report,J. M.
Birch,the assistantgovernmentagent forthe Batticaloa Districtin the
Eastern Province, noted the social evils which he attributed to
avariciouscompetitionover increasinglyscarce water in villages with
dilapidated irrigationworks: "moneylending at usurious rates, in-
debtedness, land loss, and litigation."'' All this derived, Birch be-
lieved,fromBritishcolonial policy,whichhad abolished rajakariyaand
thereforeremoved the coercive basis by which communityleaders
could harness labor to maintainthe irrigationworks.Afterrestoring
the works,Birch found that litigationvirtuallyceased, much to the
reliefof the beleaguered colonial administratorsand judges. But the
process of socioeconomicdifferentiation had not ceased; some of the
resettledvillagerslost their lands through transactionswith money-
lenders. From such experiences as these was to emerge a consistent
strain of paternalism in Ceylonese land reform policies, whether
framed by the Britishor by the Ceylonese themselves.Such policies
had to be framedin such a way thattheysaved the peasant fromhis
own worsttendencies.This strainof paternalismwas to play a major
role in shaping the formthatirrigationtechnologywas to take in Sri
Lanka's massive commitmentto 20th-centurycolonization schemes.
RightstoLand: The Social Construction ofColonization-Scheme Technology

Contrary to the determinist thesis,then, colonization-scheme tech-
nology did not create the culturallyspecificpattern of socioeconomic
differentiation observableon the schemes; the question,rather,is why
the creators of this technologyfailed (as did Birch) to organize the
socialdimensionof irrigationtechnologyso thatthisexternal process
could not reproduce itselfon the schemes.
One reason that traditional irrigation customs were not really
revived-that is, a community'srightsto equitable shares in waterleft
intact-is thatdoing so would have run againstthe entirethrustof the
colonial land program. Nineteenth-century Britishland policy,as is
demonstratedmost clearlyin the PartitionOrdinance, was in many
respects a single-mindedwar against multiple claims to property.62
6CO 54/328 (n. 33 above).

62Seneviratne(n. 50 above).

The objectiveof Britishland policy was to cut a swath throughsuch
claims,conduct surveys,create finelyfocused maps, identifya single
owner withclear titleforeverypiece of land, and therebyremove the
constraintsthat were perceived to exist on capital investmentin
agriculture. A cornerstone of this policy was the Crown Lands
(Encroachment) Ordinance of 1840 (and its subsequent amend-
ments),which relegated all land not currently"owned" (by proof of
clear titleor continuous use) to the Crown. Of a total area of almost
exactly 16 million acres, some 6 million-more than a third of Sri
Lanka's surface-has at one timeor anotherbeen Crown land, under
the termsof the ordinance.63
The 1840 Crown Lands legislationmay well have been expressly
intended to make the highlands available to European capitalistsat
low cost; the lands acquired byfiatin 1840 were sold foras littleas five
shillings per acre. Beginning in the 1830s, British coffee planters
began to amass substantialamountsof land in the highlands;by 1869,
the peak year forcoffeeexports,some 300,000 acres had been given
over to European-owned plantations.To go against this policywould
be tantamountto opposing the dominantdirectionof Britishcolonial
interestsin Ceylon, so that-arguably-no Britishcivil servantin his
rightmind would have proposed a land policy at odds withit.
It is not surprising,then,thatthe firstcomprehensivedesign foran
irrigation-basedsettlementscheme-a design thatemerged fromthe
workof a Britishcivilservant,C. V. Brayne-blended paternalismwith
carefullydefined, clearly titled plots of land. The resultingscheme
could not fail to have appeal to those for whom colonization-scheme
technologyhad come to mean "land for the peasant"-as opposed to
"equitable water access to rice cultivators.'""And as will be seen, the
groups were many who came to view the technologythat way.
Brayne worked diligentlyin the 1920s to create what he called the
"peasant proprietor"systemof irrigationtechnology.65 The scheme
63Moore(n. 54 above), p. 31.

'It is in thissense thatcolonization-schemetechnologyis sociallyconstructed.There
is no "one bestway"to create an artifact.Rather,the groups participatingin an artifact's
design and deploymentdefine the problems to be solved in design according to the
meaning that the artifact has for them. These groups and meanings vary, but
sometimes controversydies and an artifact stabilizes around a standard design
configuration.Precisely this process can be observed in the social constructionof
irrigationtechnologyin Ceylon, where stabilizationcame quickly because, from the
perspective of virtuallyall the groups participatingin the technology'sdesign and
deployment,irrigationworks came to mean "land for the peasant," as the following
discussion makes clear.
65CO54/891/3,enclosure "Report on the Workingof the Peasant ProprietorSystem,"
in dispatch of August 25, 1928.

was based on an unscientific(but politically viable) idea of an
"economic holding,"one that would provide an adequate livelihood
for a familyof average size withoutrequiring them to hire outside
labor. To preventthe loss of-theplot to village moneylendersand also
to discourage its fragmentation,it was not sold to the peasant, but
rather leased as a block in perpetuity.State officerssupervised the
scheme to ensure thatthe workswere keptin good order and the land
used for productivepurposes. Brayne's work resulted in a technical
design that blends tanks and canals with rigidlydemarcated land
plots.
Brayne's motives in framing this design were those of a public
servant,ever mindfulof revenue issues, who neverthelessfelt sym-
pathy for the peasants' plightand took an active interestin agricul-
ture. Firstand foremost,he was searching for a formula that,while
preservingclear titlesand fixed boundaries for all land plots, would
neverthelesskeep paddy land out of the hands of speculators and
moneylenders.But therewas a more importantharvestto be reaped
from Brayne's scheme than the mere improvementof the peasant's
life. Brayne's peasant-proprietorscheme was to find additional sup-
port froma host of politicalfigures,beginning with Hugh Clifford,
then governor of British Ceylon, who saw it as a useful reply to
mountingcriticismof governmentpolicy.
Under increasingattack in the court of Ceylonese public opinion
for failingto protectthe peasantry,and increasinglycriticizedby the
nationalistelite for favoringplantationover peasant agriculture,the
British colonial government wholeheartedly embraced the new
scheme as a solution to its growing public relations problem. This
problemwas exacerbated byserious economic problemscaused bythe
roller-coasterrise and fallof tea, rubber,and coconut productsprices
in the world market,whichensured thata period of prosperitywould
almost certainlybe followed by a time of hardship, which would
naturallyhitpeasants the hardest.There was stingingcriticism,too, of
the way in which the colonial governmentwas allocating the massive
expanses of Crown land; the mechanism by which such lands were
sold all but placed it beyond the reach of peasants, and most of the
land was going to Ceylonese and other capitalists.66
The idea that funding irrigationworks could counter nationalist
pressure was by no means new. In 1855, GovernorWardjustifiedthe
restorationof several irrigationprojects to the Colonial Office by
stressingtheir role in "balancing" the government'scommitmentto
6Vijaya Samaraweera, "Land Policy and Peasant Colonization, 1914-1948," in

of CeylonHistoryof Ceylon,vol. 3 (Colombo, 1970), p. 447.
University

plantation agriculture." With mounting pressure from Ceylonese
nationalist organizations, Clifford likewise saw investmentin irri-
gation land for "natives" as a valuable tool for disarming adverse
sentiment.In a dispatch to the Colonial Office,Cliffordargued that
investments in colonization schemes should help to clear up
animosities against the planting community,"both European and
Ceylonese," by showing that there is "ample land of first class
quality still available in the most fertileareas of the island ... for
the occupation of self-respecting and self-supporting peasant
cultivators.'"68
Brayne's design, as reflected in later colonization schemes (see
fig. 3), has obvious merits for those who would like to be seen
distributingland in nice, countable units.The pigeonhole configura-
tion of preciselysurveyedplots,for instance,admits easily of quanti-
fication,so it is easy to count (and publicize) the number of families
settled,the number of plots allocated, and the number of acres given
over for the preservation of the peasantry.Traditional modes of
irrigation organization, although they are much better suited to
preventingsocioeconomic differentiation, would have admittedonly
grudgingly of such counts, given the potentialthatany given piece of
land was ipso factosubjectto multipleclaims,and the totalacreage of
the wewa(tank and paddy land) would have been adjusted upward or
downward depending on ecological conditions.
Later, the technology'sclear symbolismof equity in land distribu-
tion would play a key role in projecting"undertones of an agrarian
populism which idealized the peasantry as an undifferentiated
category"6--and which,as will be seen, was pregnant with meaning
for both the English and the Ceylonese nationalistelite (albeit for
differentreasons). For the waning Britishcolonial presence,however,
the key point is that Brayne blended a genuine (if paternalistic)
concern for the peasant with a design that did not upset colonial
notionsof land tenure and clear titlebut, on the contrary,could only
appeal to the colonial mentalitythat favored mechanisticstructures
and precise role definitions.7" Such a mentalitywould hardly have
67CO 54/317,July 11, 1855.

6CO 54/886/11,enclosure "Some Reflectionson the Ceylon Land Question," in
dispatch of Cliffordto L. C. M. S. Avery,July 13, 1927.
69N.Shanmugaratnam,"Some Aspects of the Evolution and Implementationof the
Policy of Peasant Resettlementin the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka," in Charles Abeysekera,
ed., Capitaland PeasantProduction:Studiesin theContinuity
and DiscontinuityofAgrarian
Structuresin Sri Lanka (Colombo, 1985), p. 71.
7Tony Barnett,The GeziraScheme:An IllusionofDevelopment (London, 1977), p. 171.

Hamlet
8 4 0 8 16
Chains
FIG. 3.--Land allocation in a Mahaweli settlement(1979)
favored a proposal, it might be added, to allocate key agricultural

inputs (as did the traditional system) by using arcane systemsof
reckoningthat not even the participantscould comprehend.
The paternalisticnotion of creatingcolonization schemes stocked
with a nicely undifferentiatedpeasantry ("robust, sturdy,and self-

respecting"peasant proprietors,as Cliffordput it),7 dwellinghappily
on clearlydefined and protectedplots of land, had obvious value in
the propaganda contest with Ceylonese nationalists,but it had the
additional virtue of resonating nicely with English notions about
English agriculturalhistory,which have been described tellinglyby
Martin Wiener.72Observing a "green and pleasant land" becoming a
nation of "dark, Satanic mills,"a generationof anti-industrialEnglish
squirearchs,such as G. K. Chestertonand his friend Hilaire Belloc,
bemoaned the loss of the rural way of life, and-in the opening
decade of the 20th century--called for peasant proprietorshipin
England as a way of restoringthe true English nation. Nostalgia for
the virtues of rural life was not seen as only a moral imperative;
"contactwithMother Earth,"argued Lord Bledisoe some years later,
"is the most powerfulantidote for Bolshevism."
Industrialismand urbanization may have had their defenders in
Britain, but it was from ranks of families holding the opinions of
Chesterton, Belloc, and Bledisoe that most colonial administrators
were drawn. Indeed, the appeal of servicein the imperial expansion,
Wiener suggests,"was thatof escape fromthe pressureof unwelcome
social change at home, and the recreationof 'traditional'English life
overseas." The benefits were not merely for the British in their
enclaves: a Britishcolonial officerlamented deeply in 1913 that the
nativesof Fiji would someday be made into replicasof the inhabitants
of Denver and Birminghamand Stuttgart,and he spoke for many
Englishcivilservantswho saw the colonies-not altogetherforreasons
of imperial exploitation-as a place where the virtuouscountrylife
mightbe preserved.In thiscampaign the Englishcolonial presence in
Ceylon was singularlysuccessful; Ceylon is virtuallyunique among
Third World nationsforhavingexperienced verylittlealterationin its
rural-urbanbalance over the past century,and the countryhas proved
singularlyresistantto industrialization.
In BritishCeylon, the effectsof the Crown Land (Encroachment)
Act of 1840, which arrogated all unused and communal lands to the
Crown, could have been compared only by English civil servantsof
this turn of mind with the English parliamentaryenclosure acts,
whichfromthe second quarter of the 18thcenturyto the firstquarter
of the 19th centuryhad put 6 million acres of English communal
lands into the hands of politicallydominant landowners. In the
growing traditionof anti-industrialliteratureand sentiment,much
71CO 54/886/11(n. 68 above).

7Wiener (n. 28 above), esp. pp. 56-62, 84-85, and 107, fromwhich the following
quotations were drawn.

favored at Oxbridge, the enclosure movement emerged early as a
major evil, a travestythat ruined the lives of "independent and
honorable men, livingin a workingrural democracy,who were coldly
and 'legally'destroyedby the new enclosing order."73
The outcome of enclosure, it was felt, was landlessness, and
eventuallymigrationto the cities,where rowdyurban masses posed a
constantthreatto politicalorder and the tranquillife.For Ceylon,the
only cure was the distributionof land, for-as the governmentagent
of the WesternProvince wrote in 1900-"when every villager has a
piece of land-small though it may be--of his own, he is given a stake
in the interestsof law and order,and feels thathe is at least removed
from the fear of urgent want.""74 In this cultural context,a colonial
governmentprogram that distributedland to the peasantrywould
have as much meaning, and appeal, to English and Colonial Office
officialsas itwould to the Ceylonese criticsof the formergovernment
policy.There can be no doubt thatthe Englishvoices raised in defense
of the sufferingCeylonese peasant were sincere ones.75 Yet the
sinceritywas molded by a view of the world thatsaw the possession of
inalienable land, not the equitable distributionof water,as the crucial
variable in peasant welfare.
Brayne's and Clifford'spaternalisticcalls for peasant proprietor-
ship were taken up by the Land Commission, a government-
appointed body that included several prominent members of the
Ceylonese nationalistelite (including the man who would become
Ceylon's firstprime minister,D. S. Senanayake).76The commission
advocated the distributionof Crown lands to peasants in colonization
schemes designed in accordance with Brayne's work,with the addi-
tional stipulation that-as Brayne and Clifford had both
recommended-the subdivision of plots on the settler's death be
prohibitedby requiringeach settlerto name a single successor.The
Ceylonese membersof the commissionadopted Brayne's plan even in
spirit, including its paternalism: agricultural policy, Senanayake
noted,should be devised to "secure the welfareof [the peasant] classes
even against themselves.""77 And, significantly, the commission made
the case successfullythat the Crown lands are held in trustby the
"Raymond Williams,The Country and theCity(Harmondsworth,1985), p. 100.

74AdministrationReportoftheGovernment Agent,Western Province,quoted in Samarawe-
era (n. 66 above), p. 448.
75See,e.g., Leonard Woolf,TheVillagein theJungle(London, 1913); and C. V. Brayne,
"The Problem of Peasant Agriculturein Ceylon,"CeylonEconomicJournal6 (December
1934): 34-46.
76Final ReportoftheLand Commissionof1927, Sessional Paper No. 18 (Colombo, 1929).
"Agriculture (Colombo, 1935), p. 18.
and Patriotism

government for the benefitof the people of the island, including
generationsnot yet born.78
Despite itsbias towardsmallholderinterests,it should be noted that
the commission'sreport did not in any sense stem fromsmallholder
political demands (beyond a vague sense of discomfortabout the
outcomes of landlessnessand overcrowdingin the overpopulated Wet
Zone). Rather,the commission'sreport reflectedthe Ceylonese na-
tionalistelite'sdesire to paint a portraitof itselfas the "self-appointed
champions" of smallholder interests7--forreasons that Vijaya Sa-
maraweera has recently clarified." Samaraweera argues that the
Ceylonese nationalistelite, as it was represented on the Land Com-
mission, would have had an excellent reason for calling for the
funding of irrigation works and the distributionof lands to the
peasants-the same reason, in fact,thatthe colonial governmenthad:
to deflectanimosityaway fromplantationowners,among whom were
increasingnumbers of wealthyCeylonese (such as Senanayake him-
self) and fromthe government'sfailure(whetherunder the Britishor
under the Ceylonese nationalistelite) to sponsor meaningful land
reformlegislation.By portrayingthemselvesas the true champions of
the peasant vis-a-visthe plantation sector,however, the nationalist
elitemanaged to obfuscateitsown strongand growingpresence in the
plantationsector and to lay a convincingclaim for politicalsupport.
To make the claim as persuasive as possible, this elite created and
elaborated a remarkablypowerfulmythabout the vicissitudesof the
rural peasantry,a myththat was to findexpression in several works,
including Senanayake's own Agriculture and Patriotism, and the 1951
Reportof the KandyanPeasantryCommission,8 which presents the most
influentialaccount. Central to this mythwas a powerful,if factually
questionable, depiction of the plantationsector'sdeleterious effect.82
78A. T Mahinda Silva, "The Evolution of Land Policies in Sri Lanka-an Overview,"
Marga 7 (1983): 44-52; Farmer (n. 1 above), pp. 116-21.
79Moore (n. 54 above), p. 35.
80VijayaSamaraweera,"Land, Labour, Capital, and Sectional Interestsin the National
Politicsof Sri Lanka," ModernAsian Studies15 (1981): 127-62. Echoing Samaraweera's
analysis is David Dunham, "Politics and Land SettlementSchemes: The Case of Sri
Lanka," Development and Change 13 (1982): 43-61.
8'SessionalPaper No. 18 of 1951 (Colombo, 1951). In sayingthatthe nationalistelite
created and elaborated thismyth,I do not mean to suggestthattheydid so in a rational,
cold calculation of its potential political utility.On the contrary,it stems in the first
instancefromthiselite'sattemptat self-justification: here, afterall, were Ceylonese who
were steppinginto the shoes of departing Britishtea planters,and such a move could
notbe made withoutat least some effortbeing expended to excuse orjustifythisaction.
8On the mythof the plantation'seffect,see Michael Roberts,"The Impact of the
Waste Lands Legislation and the Growth of Plantationson the Techniques of Paddy
Cultivationin BritishCeylon: A Critique,"ModernCeylonStudies1 (1970): 157-98.

Blame is placed particularlyon the Crown Lands (Encroachment)
Ordinance of 1840 and the subsequent growth of plantationsthat
circumscribed traditional (purana) villages, with disastrous conse-
quences for peasants, including the fragmentationof land plots into
ludicrouslynoneconomicslivers,pauperizationand landlessness,eco-
logical catastrophe, and technological retardation.83Owing to the
severe fragmentationof paddy acreage caused by hemming the
villages in, and abetted by the loss of fertilizerand draft power as
highland land (chena) formerlyused for grazing disappeared, rural
incomes are seen to have declined drastically,and more than 60
percentof rural familieswere (in thisview) forcedagainsttheirwillto
depend on sources of income outside agriculture.84 At the same time,
village moneylenders found easy pickings among peasants whose
plots had shrunk past the marginof subsistence,leading to the spread
of sharecropping (which is notorious for low productivity).85 The
result,in thisviewof the plantation'seffect,was the destructionof the
traditionalpeasant economy and the substitution,in its place, of a
grotesque and unproductiveparody of rural capitalism.Mick Moore
summarizesthe mythin the followingterms:
a belief in the harmony,unity and self-sufficiency of the pre-

colonial village, i.e., a reiterationof the myth,widespread in
South Asia in particular,of a golden village-based past; the
identificationof Buddhism as the centralsocio-culturaltheme of
this village community; the conviction that autonomous and
quasi-democraticvillage self-governmentwas replaced by a bu-
reaucraticadministrativestructureas part of the general process
of decay associated withcolonialismand plantationdevelopment;
the identificationof ricecultivationas the materialfocusof village
life; a concern withthe moral deteriorationof the peasantry;the
advocacy of remedial state action in the areas of marriage,
divorce, and child labour; and a stress on the importance of
protectingthe peasantryfromthe "grave danger" of persons of
"8Asa measure of the severityof land fragmentationin some Ceylonese villages,

consider that 64.3 percentof all landholdingsin the island at independence were less
than one acre; indeed, plots as small as a one-thousandth of an acre have been
reported.See L. Arulpragasm,"A Considerationof the ProblemsArisingfromthe Size
and Subdivisionof Paddy Holdings in Ceylon and the Principlesand Provisionsof the
Paddy Lands Act Pertainingto Them," CeylonJournalof Historicaland Social Studies4
(1961): 60.
"N. K. Sarkar and S. J. Tambiah, The Disintegrating Village (Colombo, 1957),
pp. 18-20.
85E.g.,in the Dry Zone village called Terutenne, 3.2 percent of the adult population
held 40.8 percent of all paddy acreage. Nur Yalman, UndertheBo Tree: Caste,Kinship,
and Marriagein theHighlandsofCeylon(Berkeley,1968), p. 42.

non-peasant character,for they encouraged "gambling, drink,
and immorality.'"86
One must here reiterate Moore's caution that, in calling such

thinkinga myth,one is not necessarilyarguing that all the myth's
claims are false. What is characteristicof a mythis that its claims,
which may well have some foundation in fact, are "accepted and
transmittedwithout regard for, or enquiry into, [their] veracity.'"87
This mythis a potent package of truths,near-truths,and some false
but verycompellingvisionsof English as well as Ceylonese history.In
its portraitof a peasantrydevastated by greed and social change, it
obviously draws on English ideas about countryvirtues and parlia-
mentaryenclosures,but it adds an elementthe Englishcould not and
would not include: the stresson Buddhism, whichthe nationalistelite
proposed to champion, and which had already undergone a signifi-
cant nationalistrevivalin the face of Christianproselytization."In this
way,the nationalistelite succeeded in developing a highlyeffective
claim forSinhalese Buddhist politicalsupport,in view of the factthat
its only real competitor,the Ceylon Civil Service and, more broadly,
the remnants of the colonial order, could hardly espouse state
protectionfor one of Ceylon's four world religions.89
As Samaraweera pointsout, however,the nationalistelite wenteven
furtherin its campaign to best its adversaries: prominent in this
mythicedifice was a thinlyveiled (and highly effective)appeal to
Sinhalese ethnicchauvinism.In portrayingDry Zone colonizationas
a way of revitalizingthe Sinhalese civilizationsof antiquity,and in
insistingthatthe Crown lands of the wildernessbe distributedto what
D. S. Senanayake called "the island's first inhabitants" (i.e., the
Sinhalese), the nationalistelite spoke clearlyto fearsgenerated by the
growing population of Indian Tamils in the central highlands (and
the increasingpresence of indigenous Ceylon Tamils, who tradition-
ally resided in the north and east, in Ceylon's public life). The fear
that Tamils mightoverwhelm the Dry Zone was no mere paranoid
fantasy:In the 19thcentury,colonial officialsspeculated thatCeylon's
labor problemscould be solved by importingmillionsof Tamils from
southernIndia to live in Dry Zone villages,fromwhichthe plantations
could draw excess labor. In stressingboth the revival of Buddhism
8Moore (n. 54 above), p. 68.

87Ibid.,p. 243.
"On the Buddhist revival, see Kitsiri Malalgoda, Buddhismin Sinhalese Society,
1750-1900 (Berkeley,1976).
89Samaraweera(n. 80 above), pp. 135 ff.

and the policyof Dry Zone colonization,the nationalistelite champi-
oned an approach whose elementsthe Sinhalese Buddhist electorate
could not fail to connect: ancient Buddhist texts identifythe entire
island as a sacred land destinedto preserveBuddhism. To cementthe
connection, Senanayake went so far as to claim descent from the
ancient Buddhist kings of the Dry Zone civilizations."
As the colonization program accelerated in the 20th century,the
ethnicdimensionof the programbecame increasinglyapparent. With-
out specifically excluding Ceylon Tamils from the colonization
schemes,thenationalisteliteneverthelesscalled, priorto Ceylon's 1948
independence, forthe exclusionof Indian Tamils fromdisbursements
of Crown land of all forms."9Since independence, the bias toward
Sinhalese and Buddhist settlershas become increasinglyplain; the
opening of new colonizationschemes,for instance,is celebratedwith
specificallyBuddhist ceremonies, as the late Serena Tennekoon so
compellinglydocumented.92Although the officialgovernmentpolicy
is to allot land in the schemes to Sinhalese and Tamil peasants in
proportions paralleling the ethnic composition of the country,this
policycreateslarge Sinhalese constituenciesin the Northernand East-
ern Province areas claimed by Tamils as theirtraditionalhomelands.
Colonizationhas thereforebecome a major issue in thedeteriorating
relationsbetween the Sinhalese and Tamil communitiesin Sri Lanka:
Tamils charge thatthe Sinhalese-dominatedgovernmenthas used the
colonizationprogramas a ploy to settleSinhalese peasants in electoral
districtsthatwere previouslydominated by Tamils,thus emasculating
Tamils politicallyby makingthem (as one Sinhalese politicianactually
put it) a minorityin theirown provinces.93Between 1946 and 1971,
for instance,the Sinhalese proportionof the population in fiveDry
Zone provinces increased from 33 to 51 percent, thanks largely to
government-sponsoredsettlementof Sinhalese colonists.94 Given the
directappeal of the colonization programs to Sinhalese ethnic chau-
vinism, Sinhalese political leaders would see the schemes' poor
economic and social performance as a minor matter indeed; what
matteredis distributingcountable amountsof land to equally countable
"JaniceJiggins,Casteand Familyin thePoliticsoftheSinhalese,1947-1976 (Cambridge,

1979), p. 111.
99Samaraweera(n. 80 above), p. 150.
92""Ritualsof Development: The Accelerated Mahavali Development Program of Sri
Lanka," AmericanEthnologist 15 (1988): 294-310.
"9Foran essay on colonizationfromthe Tamil point of view,see C. Manogaran, Ethnic
Conflict in Sri Lanka (Honolulu, 1988), pp. 78-114.
and Reconciliation
9CensusofCeylon,1946, vol. 1, pt. 2, table 28; CensusofCeylon,1971, GeneralReport,
pp. 33, 84.

numbers of Sinhalese peasant settlers,and what is more, doing so in
traditionallyTamil districts.Afterthe 1931 Donoughmore Constitu-
tion, which establisheduniversaladult suffrage(the firstsuch devel-
opment in Asia), this eminentlycalculatable facet of Brayne's land
distributiondesign, as it played into the hands of the nationalistelite,
became even more valuable as Ceylonese politicianslooked forsupport
in the rural Sinhalese masses.
Postindependence political trends, which have seen a thorough
politicizationof the public service,have only furtheredthe political
functionsof land distribution,since political parties have come to
use colonization-schemeland allocations (particularlyat the top end
of the scheme) and jobs in the irrigationbureaucracy as a way of
rewardingthe partyfaithful."9 Commentingon such uses, Karunati-
lake speaks of a "consistentdesire" to set up administrativestructures
thatsustainand institutionalizepartydominance by creatingretinues
of party supporters.96The result is a highly politicized,top-down
administrativestructure that often betrays serious shortcomings
as political goals take precedence over economic or social ones."9
Throughout such structures(and in the Sri Lankan economy gener-
ally), one finds evidence of what Shanmugaratnam aptly terms a
"precedence of politicsover economics.""98 The way in which land is
allocated in the schemesmaybe counterproductive,and the irrigation
bureaucracy may be inefficientand politicized,but neither can be
lightlydiscarded; there are few political resources in Sri Lanka that
can equal the vote-gettingpotentialof handing out a clear titleto a
plot of land, or a job in the much-valuedcivilservice.The concept of
land tenure and paternalism implicit in Brayne's design for the
colonization schemes continues, in short, to serve new political
purposes.
The one remaininggroup relevantto the constructionand deploy-
ment of irrigationtechnology,the civil engineers who worked on
these schemes,would have also had strongincentivesto focus on the
95Dunham(n. 80 above), p. 49.

'H. N. S. Karunatilake, "An Evaluation of the Development Programmes under
Divisional Development Councils in Sri Lanka," Sri LankaJournaloftheSocialSciences1
(1978): 1-38.
97MurrayStraus, "Cultural Factors in the Functioningof AgriculturalExtension in
Ceylon,"Rural Sociology18 (1953): 249-56; R. LaPorte, "Administrative,Political,and
Social Constraints on Economic Development in Ceylon," InternationalReview of
AdministrativeSciences36 (1970): 158-74; S. Goonatilake, "EnvironmentalInfluences
on an Industrial Organization in Ceylon,"ModernCeylonStudies3 (1972): 36-59.
98Shanmugaratnam(n. 69 above), p. 67.

distributionof land ratherthan of water.Like mechanical engineers
who exclude frictionfromtheir computations,civil engineers evade
the complexitiesof water,thus avoiding "the maddening nature of
water itself,withits tendencyto flow,seep, evaporate, condense, and
transpire,and the problems it presents in measurement-problems
which tie down natural and physical scientiststo research-intensive
tasks,denyingthem time,even if theyhad the inclination,to branch
out and examine wider aspects such as the people who manage the
water and how theybehave."99
Using highlyabstractcomputations,the engineering design team
ensures that-if all the farmers manage water correctly--all the
plots on the settlementwill be adequately watered. But of course
the farmers do not manage the water properly; there are few
incentivesto do so. In reply,the engineers place the blame for the
schemes' economic and social failuressquarely on the farmers.'00 In
their view,water management is a "people problem," not a matter
for engineers or technology;to get involved in water management
and people problems would be to set sail in an unfathomableocean
in which no known formula applies, and in which there would be,
in any case, few professionalrewards or incentivesfor a competent
professional engineer to pursue.'0' And, by the 1980s, there was
little question anyway of experimentingwith new forms of social
organization of irrigation;a series of experiments with communal
tenures and self-governance in the 1970s showed clearly that
irrigationbureaucracy was far too entrenched,and far too valuable
as a fund of political rewards, to be expected to relinquish its
authoritariancontrol over irrigationcommunities,and the experi-
ments failed.'o2
By the late 1960s, it was becomingquite clear thatthe techriicaland
organizationaldesignof the schemeswas producinga hostof unwanted
socialoutcomes,whichamounted-ironicallyand frustratingly--to a list
of the veryevilsthatthe schemeswere designed (in part)to prevent.In
response to mounting criticism,the Mahaweli project's designers
sought better to "understand the interdependenciesbetween social
and technical phenomena in designing and building an irrigated
"Robert Chambers, "Men and Water: The Organization and Operation of Irriga-
tion,"in B. H. Farmer,ed., GreenRevolution?Technology and Changein theRice-Growing
Areasof TamilNadu and Sri Lanka (Boulder, Colo., 1977), p. 341.
'ooSeeMaheshwaran (n. 11 above).
"'M. P. Moore, "The Sociologyof IrrigationManagement in Sri Lanka," WaterSupply
and Management5 (1981): 126-27.
'02A.Ellman and D. Ranaweera,NewSettlement Schemesin Sri Lanka (Colombo, 1975).

settlementscheme."'03The understandingof social phenomena that
was employed,however,seems to have been predicatedon the notion
that farmersare not likelyto manage the water effectivelyin large
communities,so the solution chosen is a classic "technicalfix": water
is to be deliveredvia centrallycontrolledturnoutunitsto small groups
of only twelve to fifteen households, which are encouraged to
participate in farmers' organizations to handle water distribution
internally.
Mounting evidence indicates that this technical fix has not eradi-
cated the problem of socioeconomic differentiationon the new
schemes; in fact,preciselythe same patternis appearing, repletewith
increased incidences of sharecropping, land concentration in the
hands of moneylenders,pauperization as colonists become increas-
inglyindebted and lose theirland, and the growthof a class of rich
peasants-cum-mudalalis, who covertlyamass large "estates"withinthe
irrigatedacreage.'04 One studysuggeststhat the process of socioeco-
nomic differentiation has actuallyaccelerated in the Mahaweli settle-
mentscompared to their predecessors.'o5
The reappearance of the differentiationprocess in the new Ma-
haweli settlementshas been attributedto manycauses, such as delays
in the deliveryof water,cutbacksin governmentfundingof agricul-
turalinputs,and technicalproblemscaused by shoddy workmanship.
From the perspectiveof this analysis,however,chief among them is
the failure of the technical fix to repair the problem. Since the
irrigationtechnologywas not actually causing the pattern of socio-
economic differentiationbut only permittingan existing patternto
reproduce itselfon the schemes,the technicalfix(fieldchannels and
turnout units) could accomplish nothing; although the new system
narrowsthe scope of water delivery,it stilluses fixed plots of paddy
land. It thereforedoes nothingto preventthe exogenous patternof
differentiation fromhaving its heydayin the new schemes as well as
the old.
t03M.L. Wickremasinghe,C. M. Wijayaratne,and S. Ganewatte, "The Institutional

Frameworkof Irrigationand Cropping: Major Colonization Schemes in Sri Lanka," in
Farrington,Abeyratne,and Gill (n. 1 above), p. 242.
'p. Wickramasekara,"The Mahaweli Development Programme,Agrarian Changes,
and the Peasantry,"in Abeysekera (n. 69 above), p. 114; S. S. A. L. Siriwardene,
Emerging IncomeInequalities
and FormsofHiddenTenancy in theMahaweliH Area(Colombo,
1981); Thayer Scudder and Kapila P. Wimaladharma, The Accelerated MahaweliPro-
gramme(AMP) and DryZone Development. ReportNo. 5 (Pasadena, Calif., 1985).
"5R5Wickramasekara,"The Role of Land SettlementProgrammes in Raising the
Productivityof the Poor: A Sri Lankan Case Study,"in Swapna Mukhopadhyay,ed.,
Case Studieson Poverty
Programmes in Asia (Kuala Lumpur, 1985), p. 23.

and Societyin Sri Lanka's ColonizationSchemes
Technology 395
Conclusions
Sri Lanka's experience with gravity-flowirrigation technology
seems, on the surface,to provide yetanother example of the dangers
of transferringWestern technology in pursuit of social equity in
Third World countries: Once the technologyis put into place, its
internal logic, coupled with the lack of interestof Western-trained
engineersin the social and culturaldimensionsof the system'suse and
maintenance, operates insidiously to reproduce the structure of
capitalistclass relations. As this article has demonstrated,however,
this appearance is itself an artifact,illusory and deceptive in the
extreme; it reversesthe causal arrowsand stripsthe schemes of their
true historicalcontext.
Sri Lanka's own experience with traditional irrigation systems
shows, remarkably enough, that equity is possible in gravity-flow
systems,provided that rightsare allocated to water instead of land.
But the social design of colonization-schemeirrigationtechnology
arose in a historicalcontext(namely,the Britishwar against multiple
claims on land) that obviated the very sensible and ecologically
adaptive water allocationsthatwere such a prominentfeatureof the
traditionalsystem.And fora varietyof reasons,Sri Lanka's nationalist
elite found this design, flawed though it was, of immense political
value, and so they adopted and maintained it even after its flaws
became obvious.
Sri Lanka's modern irrigationtechnology,then, does not cause
socioeconomicdifferentiation. Rather,it does littleor nothingto stop
an existing differentiation process, which intrudesfromthe schemes'
environmentand subvertstheirsocial and economic objectives.This
point is amply demonstrated by the newer Mahaweli schemes, in
whichsocioeconomicdifferentiation is prominenteven though water
is turned out to small farmer groups via expensive distributory
channels. In short,the waterdistributiontechnologyis not reallythe
problem.The problemis thatequitycannot be assured in the absence
of a social, cultural,and legal frameworkthatinsistson the equitable
distributionof water,coupled with an ecologically sensitiveadjust-
ment of landholdings as water availabilityfluctuates. But such a
design would not have had the political value of Brayne's design,
which-above all-made it possible to distributecountable plots to
countable voters.
The evidence from Sri Lanka shows why engineering,if it is to
serve its purpose in improvinghuman welfare,must embrace within
its professionalresponsibilitya concern for the social, cultural, and
legal contextof the technicalsystemsengineers create. As John Law

has argued, successful engineers achieve their objectives precisely
because theydo not shrink from the need to shape the contextsin
which their systemsand artifactswill operate.'" To ignore or over-
simplifythe social and culturaldimensionsof technologyis to increase
the risk of unpredicted consequences and failure. To be sure, it is
comforting in the face of uncertaintyto reduce complexity by
adopting a simple idea of human social relationsas heuristicand then
gettingdown to the "real" business (designingthe hardware). But the
dangers of such assumptionsare all too clear. In an importantpaper
on the Gezira irrigationscheme in Sudan, Barnett underscores the
naivete of technical transfersthat assume such heuristicallysimple
notions of social relations,only to graftthem on the complex (and
poorly understood) relations that already exist. The result,Barnett
suggests,is that the relations that were to have been a "black box,"
simple and easily ignored, become a "Pandora's box," producing
unpredictable outcomes that can overturn the benefitsof even the
most well-intentionedproject.0"'And in the context of technology
transfer,a refusal to think seriously about the social and cultural
design of a technicalsystemmay play into the hands of politicalelites,
who may insist(as did Sri Lanka's nationalistelite) on a deeply flawed
design thatsuits their politicalinterests.
Admittedly,by no means is it easy to conceptualize the social
dimensionof technologicalsystemsadequately-indeed, this lengthy
article stands as evidence of the complexityof the historical,social,
and culturalprocesses in whichtechnicalinnovationsare situated.As
MacKenzie and Wajcman argue, any attemptto predictthe influence
of a given technologyon a societyrequires nothingless than a "good
theoryof how that societyworks,"requiring (at the minimum) "an
understandingof the overall dynamics of a society."It is therefore
"one of the most difficult,ratherthan one of the easiest,questions to
Heinz
answer."'108 R. Pagels recentlyargued thatthe greatestchallenge
now facing Western science is to account for (and predict) the
behaviorof complex, dynamicsystems,of which human societiesare
but one example.'" Such systemsare farmore common in naturethan
has been admittedby Newtonian science,withits program of discov-
eringsimple,naturallaws.A significant investmentin educational and
'"John Law, "On the Social Explanation of Technical Change: The Case of the
Portuguese MaritimeExpansion;' Technology and Culture28 (1987): 227-52.
107TonyBarnett,"The Gezira Scheme: Black Box or Pandora's Box," Universityof
East Anglia School of Development Studies, Discussion Paper 45 (April 1983).
'sMacKenzie and Wajcman (n. 10 above), pp. 6-7.
"gHeinz R. Pagels, The Dreamsof Reason: The Computer and theRise of theSciencesof
Complexity(New York, 1988), p. 53.

and Societyin Sri Lanka's ColonizationSchemes 397
Technology
research resources willbe necessaryto develop the needed analytical
tools. Yetby no means is thatsufficientreason to shrinkfromthe task.
In the decades to come, we may findthatour quest to understandthe
social dimensionsof new technologiesisjust as important,and just as
deserving of research commitment,as our quest for new means of
transformingnature for human use. And in the end, our survivalas
a species may depend not only on the technologieswe create but also
on whetherwe can comprehend whatwe are makingof ourselves when
we constructthem.


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The HarshFactsofHydraulics:

Technologyand Societyin Sri Lanka's

From the close of the FirstWorld War to the present,the govern-

DR PFAFFENBERGER, an anthropologist,is associate professor in the Division of

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FIG. 1.-Sri Lanka's climaticzones

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ogy is accentuatedbythe use of high-yieldingrice varieties,fertilizers,

4For critiques of the Green Revolution generally,see JeffreyM. Paige, Agrarian

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'On technological determinism generally,see Jacques Ellul, "The Technological

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'0On the social shaping of technological systemsgenerally,see D. MacKenzie and

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20Onthe irrigationworks of classical Sri Lanka, see R. L. Brohier,AncientIrrigation

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a few colonistsachieve high incomes and high living standards

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A varietyof explanationsforsuch developmentshave been offered,

"Top-ender" and "tail-ender"refer broadly to the distance, on

20R.D. Wanigaratne,"A Peasant Settlementin the Dry Zone," in Barry M. Morrison,

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ILeft Bank Main Channel

SRight Bank Main Chann

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22Onthe role of customin mitigatingthe stratifyingeffectsof gravity-flow

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25A.Abeysinghe,"Historical Evidence of Water Management in Ancient Sri Lanka,"

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2Quoted (with evident approval) by Tilak Hettiarachchy,The Sinhala Peasant in a

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villagerssquabbled (oftenviolently)over diminishingwatersupplies.33

"3CO 54/328, enclosure "Report on the Patipola-aar," in dispatch of Ward to

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40Bell,"Sinhalese Customs" (n. 39 above), pp. 54-55.

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4SOnwitnessinga squabble over water,a Balinese temple scriberemarked,"So finally

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'4Leslie Gunawardana, "Irrigation and Hydraulic Society in Early Medieval Sri

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"1Citedin Michael Roberts,"Aspectsof Ceylon'sAgrarianEconomyin the Nineteenth

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56NamikaRaby,Kachcheri in Sri Lanka: TheCultureand PoliticsofAccessibility

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RightstoLand: The Social Construction ofColonization-Scheme Technology

6CO 54/328 (n. 33 above).

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63Moore(n. 54 above), p. 31.

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6Vijaya Samaraweera, "Land Policy and Peasant Colonization, 1914-1948," in

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67CO 54/317,July 11, 1855.

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FIG. 3.--Land allocation in a Mahaweli settlement(1979)

favored a proposal, it might be added, to allocate key agricultural

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71CO 54/886/11(n. 68 above).

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"Raymond Williams,The Country and theCity(Harmondsworth,1985), p. 100.

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a belief in the harmony,unity and self-sufficiency of the pre-

The Harsh Facts of Hydraulics: Technology and Society in SriLanka's Colonization Schem

The Harsh Facts of Hydraulics: Technology and Society in SriLanka's Colonization Schem