Traditional irrigation in the dry zone of Sri Lanka

Most important of all, however, the civilisations of ancient Sri Lanka protected their forests. If we are to believe Robert Knox – the sixteenth-century freebooter who was shipwrecked on the island and subsequently spent 15 years as a captive of the King of Kandy – it was religious beliefs, rather than government ordinances, which prevented the forests from being cut down. According to Knox, the Singhalese believed that when their ancestors first invaded Sri Lanka, the hostile spirits of the island’s original inhabitants sought refuge in the jungle-clad hills of the highlands. To enter those jungles was thus considered singularly unwise.

Whatever the truth of that explanation, it is certain that the protection of the highland forests played a vital role in ensuring the sustainability of agriculture in the dry zone. Indeed, it might even be argued that adequate forest cover in the highlands was the sine qua non of a healthy irrigation system. Not only did the mountain jungles intercept and store the monsoon rains, but they also regulated the flow of water to the island’s rivers. Without them, a perennial and certain supply of water is by no means certain. The point is well made by R. H. Brohier:

“The central mountain region . . . consists of hill piled over hill, and mountain range over mountain range, on a succession of ledges of great extent, at various elevations. . . .

Ravines of various depths which form conduits for the mountain torrents lead from each one of these mountain ledges to the other. On the comparatively level tracts they form large swamps. All but two of the larger rivers of Ceylon collect their waters from these swamps in the mountain ledges. Rushing down from the mountains and following the grain of the country between the foot-hills, they meander sluggishly over the rest of their course which lies in the maritime plains. It is easy, therefore, to realise that the first principle behind the whole system of water storage and carriage which, in ancient times helped in irrigating the low-country, is centred on the natural reservoirs up in the mountains.

A thousand years ago, as much as today, these centrally situated mountain heights of the island no doubt served to intercept the monsoon currents: but, whereas in the centuries gone, these primaeval forests . . . helped to condense the vapour-laden clouds, conditions today tend to dissipate them. We may, therefore, assume, leaving little room to doubt, that in the past when large river-fed works of irrigation functioned over the plains, there were influences which induced a much more
abundant and liberal rainfall over the mountain zone.

Then, again, the wooded slopes, with foliage acting as a parasol to the ground, served to break the force of the rainfall, to retain the surface soil and to help the ground to absorb some of the moisture. In this last respect, it exercises an important influence in forming sub-soil springs which afforded the rivers a means of maintaining a perennial flow.” [18]

After the fall of the ancient kingdoms, the seat of Singhalese civilisation moved to Kandy in the uplands. It is probable that a measure of deforestation was necessary to accommodate the city and its surrounding agricultural areas. Deforestation began in earnest, however, with the arrival of the British and, in particular, with the setting up of coffee (and later tea) plantations in the mountains. Even so, at the time of independence, Sri Lanka was still 40 percent forested. Since then, whole areas of jungle have been cut down in order to earn foreign currency from the sale of timber: today, forests cover a mere 4 or 5 percent of the island.

The ecological consequences of such deforestation have proved devastating. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the virtual disappearance of the country’s jungle cover has cast serious doubts upon the viability of agriculture in many areas of the island. “Today, streams which were once perennial expose dry and stony beds”, reports Brohier.

“As a result of the short, swift descent from the mountain zone, the monsoon torrents, which are no longer restrained, sweep down the rivers carrying debris, earth and sand. This tendency to sudden flooding in the plains has gradually increased the marshes. It has changed the physiography of many a region which was described in ancient history as proverbially fertile. The effect of denudation has, in fact, been transmitted throughout the entire course of the rivers. This is indicated by the shoals and sand banks and sand-bars at the river mouths.” [19]

Brohier goes on to comment:

“It will be safe to assume that this analysis of altered conditions will come as a revelation to many who proclaim that every ancient tank and channel system is capable, if restored, of fertilising vast areas that are barren and unproductive.” [20]

Certainly, it will come as a revelation to the unfortunate bureaucrats who have been called upon to run the massive complex of dams and irrigation works at present being constructed on the Mahaweli River.

Land tenure: traditional vs. modern

Under British Colonial rule, all land whose ownership could not be firmly established was confiscated, designated “crown land” and then sold off in plots of five acres. Land thus became a marketable commodity in a country where, previously, the only items which it had been permitted to trade were salt, salted fish and clothing. (And even then the profit from such trade was limited by law to a quarter of the value of the produce sold.)

Five acres is a large tract of land for a villager in Sri Lanka: poor peasants were thus effectively excluded from buying the new plots and, inevitably, the pattern of land-tenure changed dramatically. Those changes are eloquently described by Edmund Leach in Pul Eliya, his classic 1953 study of a dry zone village. [21] Thus, he notes, land in Pul Eliya is now divided into two categories: the ‘Old Field’ (the 40 or so acres which had escaped confiscation) and the ‘New Land’, (that land, in other words, which had been sold by the colonial authorities.)

The Old field is divided into two sections: the ‘upper field’ and the ‘lower field’.. Those sections, in turn, are divided into more than one hundred strips of land which are farmed by different families. The distribution of those holdings is, as it always was, strictly egalitarian: thus, those

“who own land in the lowest and least advantageous portion of the upper fields also own land in the highest and most advantageous portion of the lower field” – the latter being the area with first access to irrigation water. [22]

By contrast, land-holdings in the New Lands are distributed according to the strict laws of the market. Here, the rich control the best land and the poor make do with the marginal land – a situation which, says Leach, “is bound to have very drastic implications for the village considered as a social entity”. [23]

Despite the pressures of the market, however, those who farm the new lands have done their utmost to reproduce the fragmented pattern of land holdings which characterises the Old Field system. For instance, when the government originally put up the land for sale, many villagers formed themselves into syndicates to buy land and then divided it up amongst their members. Large plots were thus broken down into smaller, individual holdings.

Such syndicates, however, have brought their own problems to the management of the New lands. Thus, as Leach points out,

“the most likely group of people to operate and maintain an irrigation system is a group of kinsmen who are capable of co-operating in a way that people unrelated by family bonds cannot.” [24]

No such bonds exist between the members of many of the syndicates which have bought the New Lands: consequently, co-operation between them has proved difficult to achieve. Clearly, it is a problem of which the villagers themselves are well aware: indeed, Leach notes that they have sought “to re-establish the old form of co-operation among the owners of the New Land by means of kinship alliances”. In some cases, kinsmen have themselves formed syndicates in order to buy plots in the New Land and work on common irrigation channels.

Finally, the New Lands have been dogged by problems over the allocation of water. In the Old Field, water is allocated on the basis of a time-honoured rota system which ensures that everyone receives their fair share at the right time. The system (which, in Leach’s view, is so highly ‘traditionalised’ that it is impossible to change) is supervised by the vel vigane or ‘irrigation headman’, who also overseas the maintenance of the tanks and channels. (In earlier times, it had been the vel vigane who organised the Rajakeraya.

According to Tenakoon and Senanayake, the vel vigane was originally elected by the villages to supervise their irrigation works.. Leach, however, regards the post as a creation of the British. Although the allocation of water in the New Lands is still assured by the vel vigane, the latter is no longer subject to the social constraints that operate in The Old Field – nor is the traditional method of allocating water used in the New Lands. As a result, writes Leach, the vel vigane and his friends now have “a dominating economic position in the village”. Inevitably, the allocation of water in the New lands has become both inequitable and arbitrary. [25]

That problem is compounded by the use of three irrigation channels in the New Lands, each of which is separately owned and managed. Thus, as Leach notes, “the control of the channels corresponds very closely to the general pattern of factionalism” which now divides the village.

By contrast, the Old Field has just one irrigation channel which is operated and maintained by the whole community. Indeed, it is a measure of the failure of the new lands that they suffer from chronic water shortages and are only able to grow one crop a year, whereas – under the old Field System – two crops were grown each year. In part, that failure can be explained by the increased acreage under cultivation: there simply is not enough water to irrigate the whole area twice a year. Far more fundamental, however, is the factionalism and divisiveness which plague the New Lands. In an agricultural system which relies on co-operation, such strife is surely a recipe for disaster.

The growth of the state and the breakdown of the traditional system

With the development of the market economy there also came a rapid expansion in the powers of the state. In fact, one of the first steps taken by the British colonial administration was to strip the responsibility for maintaining the tanks from the villagers and to place it in the hands of a central irrigation department. The results were catastrophic. As one official was to put it to a select committee of the House of Commons in 1849: “What was everybody’s business has became nobody’s business”. [26]

Today, the irrigation system of most dry zone villages is crude in comparison to that which existed under the ancient civilisations. Rare indeed is the village which still has its full complement of operational tanks. Although, recently, a certain amount of work has been done to de-silt the larger tanks, the government has not seen fit to include the smaller tanks in the programme.

Nor should that surprise us. To the Irrigation Department, the smaller tanks are arcane relics of the past: their use cannot possibly be justified on the basis of conventional cost-benefit analysis and, therefore, in the eyes of the Irrigation Department, they are simply redundant. How, after all, could the government sanction the maintenance (let alone the construction) of a tank purely for the benefit of wild animals? On what economic grounds could it conceivably justify the building of two storage tanks when to do so would mean doubling the cost of both construction and maintenance? And who would pay for the bulldozers and other capital-intensive equipment to de-silt the smaller tanks?

The sophistication of the traditional irrigation has thus been sacrificed in the interests of economic expediency. With it has gone a whole way of life: the tradition of mutual help has all but disappeared and many essential agricultural tasks – in particular weeding – are no longer properly carried out. (Senanayake was so shocked by the state of the country’s paddy fields in the early sixties, that he persuaded his cousin Dudley, who was then Prime Minister, to allow him to mobilise several hundred thousand school children to do the weeding for free. The scheme ran for several years.)

It would seem that history is repeating itself. Just as the irrigation system of the ancient civilisations fell apart when the communities which maintained it were disrupted, so today we have a new wave of abandonment. It remains to be seen whether Colombo will go the same way as Anuradhapura and Pollonaruwa.

References

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