Common Property Resource Theory and the Kuhl Irrigation Systems of Himachal Pradesh, India

This article analyzes the differential stresses of increasing nonfarm employment on 39 gravity flow irrigation systems (kuhls) in Himachal Pradesh, India. By fragmenting common dependence on agriculture, increasing nonfarm employment has created stresses within kuhl regimes which manifest as declining participation, increased conflict, and the declining legitimacy of customary rules and authority structures. However, these effects are not evenly distributed across all kuhl regimes. To explain how and why some kuhl regimes have persisted without changing, most have transformed and endure, and a few have collapsed and are now managed by the state irrigation department, I use insights from current theories of common property resource systems to guide the development of an inductively derived explanatory framework. I demonstrate how the relative degree of differentiation of the regime members and the extent of members' reliance on kuhl water interact to influence the degree and nature of stress on kuhl regimes resulting from nonfarm employment, the nature of the regime's response to stress, and the efficacy of the responses. The framework accounts for the temporal and spatial variation of kuhl regimes in their degree of role specialization and organizational formalization, and the extent of state involvement in kuhl management.