[Reader-list] ownership business

[Patrice Riemens]

Pradip's story is fascinating and also extremely timely and relevant to 
what is going to be one of the major (some say: the major) contentious 
issue of this century: water. There is one step further (one wonder how 
far it is in the (irrigation) minister's mind) to Pradip's story: if every 
drop of water belongs to the state, it can be alienated by the state to 
corporate parties. This is exactly what is happening in many part of the 
world, both 'developed' and 'developing', but in the later, it happens 
with a vengance. In the now (in)famous case of the bolivian water 
privatization, not only were the public waterworks turned over to a US 
Multinational, but owners of wells etc were disowned also and had to pay 
to Bechtel to use their 'own' (no longer so thus) water. Does that sound a 
bell to you re: the software wars. You got it! Nice illustration of the 
iron interlocking logic of the 'new' property system being currently put 
in place by all your usual suspects (WBIMFWTOWIPO etc etc etc).

(For more on water blues, check the site of the International Forum on 
Globalization http://www.ifg.org  : it's one of their top topics. Read 
also Riccardo Petrella's writings on the subject)

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 05:07:00AM +0000, Pradip Saha wrote:
> i see a lot of postings here on ownership, "free"dom, "free" information... 
> A lot of these are in the context of virtual world. I just got to here 
> something interesting about ownership in the real world. A water harvesting 
> dam (johad), made by the villagers in Alwar in Rajasthan faces demolishion 
> by the state govt.'s irrigation department. A water harvesting structure 
> made by people has been interpreted by the dept. as an obstruction to the 
> irrigation system. According to Sections 55(3) and 58(2) of the Rajasthan 
> Irrigation and Drainage Act of 1954, this work is illegal and people can be 
> arrested without warrant. The minister has gone a few steps ahead and 
> interpreted these sections in his own way: He's gone on record: "every drop 
> of water that is received through the rains comes under the irrigation 
> department."
> 
> Maybe true, but it raises one interesting question.
> As privatisation of water is knocking at our doors, the alternative paradigm 
> of resource management that talks about people harvesting and managing their 
> water does not hold any water.
> 
> Raindrops actually belong to the state!
> 
> u can check out: http://www.cseindia.org/html/extra/dam/index.htm
> 
> pro