Social Designs: Tank Irrigation Technology and Agrarian Transformation in Karnataka, South India

Social Designs is based on a central argument that tank irrigation technology is shaped as a result of power relations in a particular historical, agrarian and social context. This technology as a matter of fact institutionalises a particular pattern of resource utilisation that favours only some users, and discriminates against others. This book proposes that technological designs are socially shaped, and that through the means of technological designs society orders itself. By means of shaping and reproducing technology, a certain form of social organisation or social arrangement is also reproduced.