eastern India. It explores the idea and practice of flood control and argues for a comprehensive reconsideration of the debate on the colonial environmental watershed, its hydraulic legacy and questions contemporary enthusiasm for flood control in post-independent India. The emphasis is on revealing how colonial flood control measures were implicated in attempts to consolidate capitalist relations in ownership, production, and towards commanding the deltaic rivers as a 'natural resource' for capitalist accumulation. The idea and practice of flood control was not merely a technical intervention but principally a political project, deeply implicated in the social, economic and political calculations of capitalism in general and colonialism in particular. Such an analytical perspective also provides a useful backdrop to understanding several aspects of the contemporary water crisis in postcolonial India. The book also intends to be a necessary corrective and a useful addition to the otherwise limited writings on the Indian subcontinent's hydraulic histories.

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