My journey of understanding water and water use has largely been through the lens of the communities on the changes that happened through the years. While I write this piece, I cherish the travels across the country and discussions with various communities we have had through the last decade for understanding water. The participatory exercises to understand the tapestry of water opened our eyes and led to inform our continued work on looking at water, especially ground water, through the lens of commons.

It has been fascinating to learn from the recollections of the community members from their past. Our inquisitive questions to understand the layers about changing water resources (shift from surface irrigation systems and wells to the introduction of tube wells to the continued greed for water leading communities to drill deeper), to changing crops over the last five decades – brought-in by the key factors like access to technology, access to electricity with providing subsidies for tube wells and influence of markets. The tube wells led to the privatisation of water, which till that time was considered a common resource.

Ironically, we realised from the discussion that the communities never have had such a collective reflection process in the last few decades. The changes for a farmer have been like the “boiling frog syndrome” (a metaphor that describes the failure to act against a problematic situation which will increase in severity until reaching catastrophic proportions). The sketch that evolved (above) from an hour of discussion was equally a revelation for the communities, the path that they treaded was something they did without realising the design – the trap that they were into. This was a revelation for us – that led us to understand why there have been so many farmer suicides – the farmers were lured into the ‘chakravyu’ for which they didnot have answer for.

Market mechanisms have wronged us. Technology and money power have taken us to pursue wrong crops in wrong locations. Green Revolution has wrongly been understood that irrigation is development, irrigated crops are the go-to crops, agriculture research focussed on such crops – enabling them to grow everywhere and anywhere.

As a tool, this is simplistic, but as we begin to put together the facts, layer after layer, it begins to ask questions to ourselves on ‘where did we go wrong’ – pushing all the stakeholders into serendipity!

This ‘state’ is not just for the farmers alone, the policy makers as well as the practitioners too have been blinded by the gradual development around all of us. We have gone too far and too ahead to be able to return back, we know we need to change course/direction – we need to question ourselves more often – we need to bring in paradigm shifts in the discourse around water and water governance.

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