Duties of Water

Protective flood infrastructure - such as embankments - is increasingly coming under question in a time of rapid climate change for not protecting, but worsening flooding. Recent critical anthropological work has done much to deepen our understanding of the politics of such infrastructure. And yet such infrastructure is among the sectors that the World Bank and other development organizations are funding most rapidly in the global South. My research will focus on a crucial time period, one that has never before been studied - the 1950s-60s, when East Pakistan was still a part of Pakistan (before it became the sovereign state of Bangladesh). I will research hitherto unexamined legislative records to see how politicians from East Pakistan lobbied for more protective flood infrastructure. East Pakistan was the original site where flood embankment technology progressed the most rapidly and furthest. This research is key to understanding what is unique about our present climate-changing world given that floods are an old and routine occurrence in Pakistan (but also in other parts of South Asia). How can we narrate these histories without encouraging the conclusion that there is nothing new or urgent today given that floods are an old and regular occurrence? These are questions with real urgency as the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022 showed the world.