Doctoral thesis on Community-Based Water Management in Gujarat

Socio-Cultural Implications of the Community-Based Water Management. A Case Study of Gujarat, India. Doctoral dissertation by Farhat Naz, a graduate from the Centre for Development Research (ZEF) at University of Bonn, Germany. Dr. Naz defended her PhD at University of Bonn on 20th July 2011.
This thesis takes up the analysis of socio-cultural aspects affecting actors’ participation and strategies in various water-related community groups in the formal and informal participatory arenas of managing water. The thesis examines the role of power relations in the linkages between the formal and informal institutions operating in rural India, as well as shaping the participation of the key actors in the formal participatory arenas in context of groundwater management.
The failure of the state-led development projects and the growing concerns for participation in the 1980s and 1990s gave rise to community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). This in turn led to a paradigm shift in natural resource management from centralised state control towards CBNRM, in which the local communities now play actively and have direct control over resource use and management. These community-based approaches are a departure from the statecentered government polices of natural resource management. But the mixed successes and failures of these approaches have led to a question in the Indian development policy context, namely why CBNRM projects fail to achieve their expected level of results and equity.
Read the full-text doctoral thesis.