Egalitarian development project in a stratified society : who ends up with the land?

The research investigates changes in landholding patterns and land use on small (5-100 ha) pump-irrigated perimeters which have been in operation since 1976 and are currently undergoing rehabilitation and expansion. When project designers consider land tenure at all, they typically do so in one of two ways: either they assume it will not be affected by project implementation or they impose a tenure system consistent with the engineering, economic, and political imperatives of the project. In fact, it is frequently true that projects induce social tensions within communities which lead to changes of land tenure relationships both on the project and off. In the case considered by this papaer, the stratified Soninke society of the upper Senegal River valley accepted a government plan for the allocation of irrigated parcels based solely on family size and not on caste, even though in the traditional system only members of the noble castes were landowners. In recent years there has been evidence of conflict among social strata which may threaten the viability of the project. There have been schisms along caste lines in irrigation groups, and several village perimeters have suspended operations for a season or more. Key-informant interviews and parcel censuses were conducted in January and August 1987 with 15 of the 19 irrigation groups in the 13 Soninke villages covered by the project. Data from these visits plus agroeconomic and socio-historical information about the perimeters are used to explain differences among villages with respect to changing access to irrigable land by members of different castes. On the basis of early and incomplete data, we have found that lower-caste people hold fewer irrigated parcels than their equitable share, as do women. It is too early, however, to state conclusively whether this inequality is increasing over time. (Author abstract)