Jun 9, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min · 13 segments
Why do canal irrigation systems repeatedly produce head-tail inequality? Why do some farmers receive reliable water while others are systematically deprived for decades? In this episode, Veena…
Peter MollingaGuest
Veena SrinivasanHost
In this episode with Professor Pieter Mullinger, we try to do a deep dive into the politics of canal irrigation systems in India and the implications on agrarian economies.
Professor Mullinger is a deep scholar who has studied one particular irrigation system, the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal in north Karnataka, for almost 40 years.
And in the episode, he traces how this particular system, which was first built in the post-independence era in the early 1950s, has changed all the way from the 1980s to 2020s, with the paddy area actually getting more concentrated over time and farmers actually leaving agriculture altogether in the tail end.
We look at issues like changes on farm economy, we look at salinization of the entire groundwater, and we try to understand the contractor-irrigation department nexus and how it's shaped the evolution of the canal command area.
We then briefly look at canal areas across the country and discuss ways forward on how India's canal system can actually eventually be modernized, and what levers might exist to enable such a transformation.
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In this episode with Professor Pieter Mullinger, we try to do a deep dive into the politics of canal irrigation systems in India and the implications on agrarian economies.
Professor Mullinger is a deep scholar who has studied one particular irrigation system, the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal in north Karnataka, for almost 40 years.
And in the episode, he traces how this particular system, which was first built in the post-independence era in the early 1950s, has changed all the way from the 1980s to 2020s, with the paddy area actually getting more concentrated over time and farmers actually leaving agriculture altogether in the tail end.
We look at issues like changes on farm economy, we look at salinization of the entire groundwater, and we try to understand the contractor-irrigation department nexus and how it's shaped the evolution of the canal command area.
We then briefly look at canal areas across the country and discuss ways forward on how India's canal system can actually eventually be modernized, and what levers might exist to enable such a transformation.