@article{752050,
      recid = {752050},
      author = {Gupta, Saurabh,},
      title = {Politics of water conservation delivering development in  rural Rajasthan, India / [electronic resource] :},
      pages = {1 online resource},
      abstract = {This book examines the politics of rural development with  special reference to watershed development interventions in  the desert province of Rajasthan in India. Watershed  development (and rainwater harvesting) is one of the most  significant rural development interventions in rainfed  areas of India since the early 1990s. A range of  developmental actors including the state watershed  department, international donors, NGOs and grassroots  organisations are involved in sponsoring watershed  development projects. Using multi-sited ethnography and  conversational interviews with the deliverers as well as  recipients of development, the book compares and contrasts  the watershed interventions of the state and two different  kinds of NGOs in Rajasthan. While conventional studies on  watershed development have focused on the evaluation of  'success' or 'failure' of particular projects, whether  implemented by the state or NGOs, the book moves beyond  this narrow analytical gaze to look at the roles, agendas  and interests of multiple development agencies, often  partnering together and sometimes competing with each other  as part of, what the author calls, the 'watershed  development regime'. Taking cue from watershed development  and water conservation projects over the last two decades,  the book engages with the larger question of 'how' of  delivering development. It examines the complex processes  of cooperation, competition, negotiations, contestations  and conflicts between different stakeholders, including the  agents of development and differently positioned rural  social groups in the context of Rajasthan. The book  demonstrates that the recent interventions in watershed  development and rainwater harvesting have considerably  shaped the politics of development in Rajasthan in a number  of ways: by becoming a site for the remaking of the 'state'  and its internal relations, by disturbing the local  hegemony in the countryside, by creating new relations of  patronage between diverse agents and recipients of  development, by increasing the associational capacity as  well as creating new conflicts (intra and inter village),  and by initiating competition and cooperation between the  various agents of development over control of local  resources and power.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/752050},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21392-7},
}