In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the colonial government in Punjab put in place the world’s “largest contiguous irrigation” infrastructure. This hydraulic assemblage brought together and put to work the material and affective energies of rivers, waters, sediments, plants, peoples, places, and animals, materializing narratives of modern development and colonial/national progress. Water scarcity and climate change have put multiple pressures on the sustainability of this hydraulic infrastructure, challenging the material configurations of agrarian production and the narratives of progress through control over nature. In this talk, I will explore how water scarcity reconfigures contemporary hydro-social relations and eco-aesthetics in the canal colonies of Punjab.
