| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Kuhls of Kangra: Community-Managed Irrigation in the Western Himalaya. By J. Mark Baker. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2005. Culture, Place, and Nature Series. xiii +271 pp. Includes illustrations, notes, tables, glossary, bibliography, and index. Cloth $40.00.
In the course of the last century, community-based natural resource management systems around the world have often broken down, usually because of state encroachment or privatization. In the Indian Himalaya region of Kangra, however, an elaborate system of community managed water canals called kuhls have persisted despite natural disasters, state intervention, and profound socioeconomic change. In this well-researched and historical book, Mark Baker sets out to find out why the kuhls of Kangra have bucked the trend.	1
Kangra is a valley thirty miles long and six to twelve miles wide bordering the main Himalayan range in the Himachal Pradesh area of Northwest India. It is sliced up with over 3,000 gravity-fed kuhls, ranging in length from less than a mile to over 25 miles. Most—more than 2,500—irrigate a single village, but seven hunred irrigate more than one village. In total Kangra's kuhls irrigate 30,000 hectares. Over the years the kuhl system has faced floods and earthquakes, as well as more long-term stresses, such as the growth of a nonagricultural labor market.	. . .

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