From Colonial Land Regimes to Contemporary Water Politics
Identification
- Public canonical key
- doi:10.1201/9781003599692-4
- Authors
- Debojyoti Das
- Reported year
- 2026
- Reported language
- en
- Source type
- book-chapter
- First detected
- 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
- Last metadata observation
- 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
- Last HTTP verification
- Not checked
Documentary abstract — original language
The discourse on economic waste in Bengal can be traced to the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793, which classified land as either productive or waste. The swamps, mangroves, jungles, and uncultivated tracts of the Bengal Presidency were deemed wastelands to be reclaimed for settled agriculture. Colonial officials drew on geographical and geological knowledge to separate Bengal's fertile floodplains from the water bodies that had sustained its hydro-ecology for millennia. This severing of land from water lay at the core of colonial empire-building, exemplified by the expansion of Calcutta and Bombay as Presidency towns at the expense of local ecosystems, mangroves, ponds, backwaters, swamps, and creeks. Revenue imperatives further entrenched this regime, with labour extracted through sharecroppers and tenants under Zamindari control. This chapter examines how littoral Bengal was imagined as a land-based, revenue-producing frontier, where paddy cultivation displaced a more fluid hydro-social landscape. The Sundarban delta, the world's largest bird-footed delta, exemplifies how colonial strategies of ‘settling’ through land-water separation reconfigured ecological and cultural networks. The legacy persists: state and NGO interventions focus on terrestrial forest and biodiversity management, while transboundary water dynamics remain neglected. The WWF's Delta Vision 2020 echoes this bias, overlooking how rivers and wetlands underpin deltaic resilience across borders. Contemporary zoning of the Sundarbans into core, buffer, and transition areas privileges land-based mapping over riverine systems, fuelling contestations around river rights and livelihoods. Projects such as India's proposed Interlinking of Rivers also carry colonial imprints, privileging supply-side engineering over ecological and community-centred perspectives.
Identifiers
- OPENALEX
- W7131637355
- DOI
- 10.1201/9781003599692-4
Documentary context
- Documentary family
- Book chapter
- Source-reported types
- book-chapter
- Natural entities mentioned
- River · Forest · Wetland · Ecosystem · Landscape
Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.
Book bibliographic description
Access status unknown
Sources
OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2
Documentary field provenance
Source-backed values and values with unresolved provenance are kept separately. Bibliographic provenance validates no legal claim.
- Title
- Documentary source reported
- Publication
- Documentary source reported
- Authors
- Documentary source reported
- Document type
- Documentary source reported
- Jurisdiction
- Not recorded
- Court
- Not recorded
- Issuing authority
- Not recorded
- Publisher
- Not recorded
- DOI
- Documentary source reported
- ISBN
- Not recorded
- Official identifier
- Not recorded
- Source URL
- Documentary source reported
- Source-reported status
- Not recorded
- Amendment / repeal
- Not recorded
Cite this reference
Debojyoti Das. From Colonial Land Regimes to Contemporary Water Politics. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003599692-4
JSON · CSL-JSON · BibTeX · RIS · CSV · JSON-LD ·
APA, Chicago, ISO 690: bibliographic formats using available fields. OSCOLA / Bluebook: structured data only; full legal citation compliance is not claimed without verification of required elements.
- APA
- Debojyoti Das. (2026). From Colonial Land Regimes to Contemporary Water Politics. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003599692-4
- Chicago
- Debojyoti Das. From Colonial Land Regimes to Contemporary Water Politics. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003599692-4
- ISO 690
- Debojyoti Das. From Colonial Land Regimes to Contemporary Water Politics. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003599692-4
UDTR Global Rights of Nature Legal Library. From Colonial Land Regimes to Contemporary Water Politics. Documentary record: https://www.declarationuniverselledesdroitsdelarbre.org/global-rights-of-nature-radar/reference/r-903adf73613dd4eeeb4e53d19946f6d2/ · Last HTTP verification: not performed
Field provenance and record version
Version b789bc938c8672a5 · udtr-reference-1.1.2
- Title
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
- Authors
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
- Year
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
- Identifiers
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
- Source URL
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
- Source-reported author ORCID
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
History tracks record metadata and does not certify the state of the law.
d7ee2298cb099c4d · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
bc550331574ebb79 · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
a5d9b8cf8c7acf36 · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
b789bc938c8672a5 · 2026-11-09T19:10:34.500144+00:00
Research dossiers and documentary relations
Source roles
Discovery source · https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003599692-4
Discovery source · https://openalex.org/W7131637355
An authority link alone does not verify a legal claim. Abstracts and full texts remain subject to their source terms.
Documentary status
Relevance pending
Library
This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.