https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Anchored in 19th century scientism and an ideology of the domination of nature, inspired by colonial hydraulic feats, and fuelled by technological improvements in high dam constructions and power generation and transmission, large-scale water resources development has been a defining feature of the 20th century. Whether out of a need to increase food production, raise rural incomes, or strengthen state building and the legitimacy of the state, governments – North and South, East and West – embraced the 'hydraulic mission' and entrusted it to powerful state water bureaucracies (hydrocracies). Engaged in the pursuit of iconic and symbolic projects, the massive damming of river systems, and the expansion of large-scale public irrigation these hydrocracies have long remained out of reach. While they have enormously contributed to actual welfare, including energy and food generation, flood protection and water supply to urban areas, infrastructural development has often become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, fuelling rent-seeking and symbolising state power. In many places projects have been challenged on the basis of their economic, social or environmental impacts. Water bureaucracies have been challenged internally (within the state bureaucracies or through political changes) and externally (by critiques from civil society and academia, or by reduced funding). They have endeavoured to respond to these challenges by reinventing themselves or deflecting reforms. This paper analyses these transformations, from the emergence of the hydraulic mission and associated water bureaucracies to their adjustment and responses to changing conditions.

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Hydraulic Bureaucracies and the Hydraulic Mission: Flows of Water, Flows of Power

Integrated water resources management provides a set of ideas to help us manage water more holistically. However, these ideas have been formalized over time in what has now become, in capitals, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), with specific prescriptive principles whose implementation is often supported by donor funding and international advocacy. IWRM has now become an end in itself, in some cases undermining functioning water management systems, in others setting back needed water reform agendas, and in yet others becoming a tool to mask other agendas. Critically, the current monopoly of IWRM in global water management discourse is shutting out alternative thinking on pragmatic solutions to existing water problems. This paper explains these issues and uses examples of transboundary water governance in general, groundwater management in India and rural–urban water transfer in China to show that there are (sometimes antithetical) alternatives to IWRM which are being successfully used to solve...

From IWRM back to integrated water resources management

This paper analyses the institutional transformation of the Uzbek agriculture and water resources administration after Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991. This transformation involved the creation of a joint Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources in 1997 out of two separate Ministries, and subsequently the process of transforming the region and district based administrative water management system, extended since the creation of the USSR, into an irrigation basin water management system based on the hydrological principles. The latter involved the creation of the Irrigation Basin System Management Authorities in 2003. This study suggests that the merger of the two ministries in 1997 came about as a result of a broader process of organizational change that was part of the post-Soviet state-building process. It was not determined primarily by the idea of achieving equitable water distribution as a normative principle or creating two equally important departments within one ministry, as has been suggested by Wegerich (2005). The analysis of the move towards creating the Irrigation Basin System Management Authorities in 2003 shows that the change should not be seen as a move towards the recreation of a separate Ministry of Water and Ministry of Agriculture. That is, it is not a ‘de-merger process’ as has, again, been suggested by Wegerich (2005:462). It should rather be seen as a separation of tasks within a single ministry, and a move of the MAWR as a whole to reduce hokims (regional/district governors) influence over its tasks. Overall, the study shows that Uzbekistan’s water resources management institutions and organizations are created mainly to serve state-controlled agricultural production. Decisions on water allocation and distribution have always been influenced by the agricultural departments, also when there still was a separate Water Ministry before 1997. Reform processes in the water sector have usually been determined by reforms in agriculture. The theoretical focus of the paper is the analysis of administrative and policy reform process a situation of a ‘state-centric’ politics (Grindle (1999), in contrast to a ‘society-centric’ politics. The latter has dominantly been the empirical reference as well as conceptual and instrumental framework of the Western ‘policy process’ literature. Such frameworks may not be (fully) applicable in evidently statecentric situations like Uzbekistan. The study explores where the initiative for institutional change in the agriculture and water resources domains came from, how new institutional models were generated, how political and economic actors adapt to institutional changes, and, overall how the dynamics of institutional transformation in Uzbekistan is different from that in ‘society centric’ contexts. 1 Resul Yalcin is Postdoctoral Researcher and Peter P. Mollinga is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. The field work for this paper was conducted in the context of the NeWater, an Integrated Project in the 6 EU Framework Programme Funded by the EU. Contract No: 511179 (GOCE).

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/88374/1/579201287.pdf

Institutional transformation in Uzbekistan's agricultural and water resources administration: The creation of a new bureaucracy

The contribution maps the ‘politics of water’ as a field of research. Water control is understood as politically contested resource use. Contestation is mapped along two axes: (1) different levels or domains of water politics; (2) issue-networks encompassing processes of contestation within or across levels and domains. The four domains are: the everyday politics of water control, the politics of national water policy, inter-state hydropolitics, and the global politics of water. These have different space and time scales, are populated by different configurations of main actors, have different types of issues as their subject matter, involve different modes of contestation and take place within different sets of institutional arrangements. Some of the most important questions in water policy and water politics involve the interlinkages across domains, around certain issues. Among the plethora of issuenetworks of concrete water politics policy, the chapter focuses on two main ‘sticking points’ in present-day water policy reform processes. (1) The internalization of ‘new concerns’, notably environment and human development, into the mainstream water sector organizations’ professional practice, and (2) the transformation of statecentered water resources policy processes into society-centered policy processes. The chapter provides a critique of the dominant social engineering approaches to institutional transformation, and argues that unless a self-consciously political strategic action approach to institutional transformation is taken, the deadlock in water sector reform may continue for some time.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/88406/1/578445662.pdf

Water policy – Water politics: Social engineering and strategic action in water sector reform

Social work is contextual yet increasingly internationalized. The development of Global Agenda in 2012 by the IASSW, ICSW and IFSW gave educators and practitioners an opportunity to reflect on challenges of social work education and the profession in their respective countries. The current article discusses the key factors that confront and influence social work education and practice in the Asian region. The article brings out deep-rooted perceptions amongst educators in the region. The authors endeavour to present select views of social work educators from South Asian countries and suggest possible steps to realize the four goals of Global Agenda in the context of those countries.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0020872814527633

Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development: Voices of the social work educators from Asia

This paper discusses the evolution of social work education in Nepal. The history of social work education and training in Nepal is rather nascent. Imparting social work education and training is a challenging task in Nepal due to the ongoing political instability, multicultural issues and lack of social work educators, and the lack of a professional association, in addition to the lack of government recognition for the social work profession in the country. The paper is divided into four sections. After a general introduction, Section 2 discusses the evolution of social work education in the context of the development of higher education in Nepal. The paper describes Nepal and its changing social context, the challenges for social work and how social work education is meeting these challenges. Nepal’s efforts to realize indigenous and international practices of social work education are discussed in the third section. The paper indentifies these gaps and a Nepalese model of social work is presented in Section 4. The paper is written on the basis of the author’s personal narrative of many years’ work in Nepal in order to start a discussion on indigenous and international social work perspectives along with challenges for social work education in the context of the current global climate of social, political and economic changes in order to draw lessons for Nepal and South Asia.

Social Work Education in Nepal: Major Opportunities and Abundant Challenges

This paper discusses the evolution of social work education in Nepal. The history of social work education and training in Nepal is rather nascent. Imparting social work education and training is a challenging task in Nepal due to the ongoing political instability, multi-cultural issues and lack of social work educators, and the lack of a professional association, in addition to the lack of government recognition for the social work profession in the country. The paper is divided into four sections. After a general introduction, Section 2 discusses the evolution of social work education in the context of the development of higher education in Nepal. The paper describes Nepal and its changing social context, the challenges for social work and how social work education is meeting these challenges. Nepal's efforts to realize indigenous and international practices of social work education are discussed in the third section. The paper indentifies these gaps and a Nepalese model of social work is presented in S...

South Asian governments have initiated political reforms engaging in rhetoric that resonates with the paradigms of good governance and empowerment of people. This article, applying a political soci...

Bala Raju Nikku

Papers

Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development: Voices of the social work educators from Asia

Social Work Education in Nepal: Major Opportunities and Abundant Challenges

Social Work Education in Nepal: Major Opportunities and Abundant Challenges

Empowering people: Role for political social work in South Asia:

Civil society organizations and participatory local governance in Pakistan: An exploratory study