Food and fashion : water management and collective action among irrigation farmers and textile industrialists in South India

The decentralization of responsibilities from the state to private enterprises and NGOs has become the focus of recent political debate. By analyzing two case studies from the semi-arid Coimbatore-region in South India from an institutional perspective, this thesis seeks answers to the questions: what potential is there for local communities to create their own governance structures able to deal with issues up till recently seen as the responsibility of the state; which obstacles will they encounter, and which resources can they mobilize in order to overcome such obstacles; and what may be the role of the state in initiating and supporting the formation of these local governance structures. From a focus on theoretical perspectives and the methodology of data collection used in the field, the thesis proceeds to describe the studied region emphasizing water resources and needs. Next, the first case study concerning the efforts among irrigation farmers to create local institutions aiming at improved water management in the Lower Bhavani Project is analyzed. The second case study examined focuses on the pressure on textile industrialists in Tirupur city to collectively treat their polluted effluent water. In both cases, the process of establishing new entities for collective action required overcoming three main obstacles; namely, meeting coordination costs, redefining the notion of free-riding among resource users, and meeting motivation costs. The distribution and use of economic, moral and physical power between various actors, and the interconnectedness between local and external institutions have proved crucial for the establishment of local governance structures. The thesis concludes that resource management problems can not be solved by simply decentralizing responsibilities from the state to groups of resource users but rather by the state playing an important role in the creation of local entities of collective action.