UKPSC Prelims 2024 General Studies Paper-I · Question 140 of 147

Correct — B, 1917.

Kumaon was governed as a division of British India, and its farming ran on guls — channels cut along the contour to lead stream water to terraced fields, dug and maintained by the villages that used them.

In 1917 the administration brought that water under a formal rule set, covering the use of springs and streams, the channels drawn from them, their upkeep, and the settling of disputes over them.

Carry away the sequence rather than the label: hill water was brought under a formal state rule-set in 1917, while village custom was left largely intact.

The contrast with the forest reservations is the point. Hill water offered little scope for the extensive commercial exploitation that forest resources did, so it was regulated more lightly — which places this date in late-colonial hill administration, not in the years after independence.

• (a)
  1874 — 1874 is the year of the Scheduled Districts Act, which placed Kumaon and other frontier tracts outside the ordinary regulation system and let the administration extend or withhold laws selectively.

  The connection to this stem is real: that Act is the enabling parent statute under which the Kumaon Water Rules were framed. It is wrong here only because the question asks for the year the Rules themselves were implemented, which is 1917.

• (c)
  1940 — 1940 belongs to the wartime constitutional argument: it is the year of the August Offer, Viceroy Linlithgow's proposal on dominion status, an enlarged Executive Council and a post-war constituent body, which the Congress rejected.

  Putting the water rules here also detaches them from the period they sit in — the reorganisation of Kumaon's forest and water administration and the hill grievances that followed run through the 1910s and 1920s.

• (d)
  1947 — 1947 is the year of independence and Partition, and it reads as the natural home for anything that sounds like a change in who controls a resource.

  The change here runs the other way. These rules are a colonial administration bringing the water of a hill division under its own rule-set, which places them well before 1947.

The Kumaon Water Rules of 1917 were subordinate rules, framed under the Scheduled Districts Act, 1874 — an administrative instrument fixing how the water of a hill division could be used and how disputes over it were settled.

They brought hill water under a state rule-making framework and asserted state sovereignty over its sources, while continuing to recognise the customary and community rights already in use. Decision over use passed to the state only with the Act of 1975.

• The Kumaon Water Rules were brought into force in 1917, when Kumaon was administered as a division of British India.
• Guls are the contour channels that carry water from a hill stream to terraced fields, the mainstay of irrigation in Kumaon.
• Before colonial regulation, the guls and the springs feeding them were built and managed by the village communities that used them.
• Naulas, stepped tanks built over a spring, and dharas, spouted sources, are the traditional drinking-water structures of the Kumaon hills.
• The Scheduled Districts Act, 1874 placed Kumaon outside the ordinary regulation system; the Kumaon Water Rules of 1917 were framed under it.
• The Northern India Canal and Drainage Act, 1873 is the colonial framework law for canals, drainage and water courses in northern India.
• The 1917 Rules were modified in 1930 as the Kumaon Water Rules of 1930, and the law on hill water then stood unchanged until 1975.
• Van panchayats in Kumaon were provided for by the Kumaon Panchayat Forest Rules of 1931.
• The Kumaun and Garhwal Water (Collection, Retention and Distribution) Act, 1975 is the statute that abolished customary and community rights over water in these two hill divisions.

• The Scheduled Districts Act, 1874 is the statute the Kumaon Water Rules were framed under, and 1873 is the Northern India Canal and Drainage Act; neither is the year the Rules were implemented.
• 1947 is the year of independence and Partition, while the Kumaon Water Rules are an act of colonial hill administration three decades earlier.
• Forest dates and water dates in Kumaon run in parallel; carrying the 1931 van panchayat date, or a forest-settlement date, into a water question misplaces the answer.
• The Kumaon Water Rules and the later Kumaun and Garhwal Water Act share a region and a subject but are different instruments from different periods, so matching by name alone can fix the wrong date.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Kumaon hills, the channel dug along the contour of a slope to divert water from a stream to terraced fields is called a:

  • (a)Naula
  • (b)Gul
  • (c)Dhara
  • (d)Chal
  Answerb — A gul is exactly this: a contour channel that carries stream water across a slope to terraced fields, and it is the backbone of hill irrigation in Kumaon.

  Each of the other three is a storage or outlet structure rather than a conveyance channel. A naula is a stepped tank built over a spring, a dhara is a spouted source, and a chal is a shallow pond that holds rainwater and recharges the slope.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Scheduled Districts Act, under which Kumaon was administered outside the ordinary regulation system, was passed in:

  • (a)1861
  • (b)1873
  • (c)1874
  • (d)1878
  Answerc — The Scheduled Districts Act dates from 1874.

  The other three years carry different laws: 1861 is the Indian Councils Act, 1873 is the Northern India Canal and Drainage Act, and 1878 is the Indian Forest Act that recast forest law in British India.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Van panchayats in the Kumaon region were provided for by:

  • (a)The Kumaon Water Rules, 1917
  • (b)The Kumaon Panchayat Forest Rules, 1931
  • (c)The Scheduled Districts Act, 1874
  • (d)The Northern India Canal and Drainage Act, 1873
  Answerb — Van panchayats, the village forest councils of Kumaon, were provided for by the Kumaon Panchayat Forest Rules of 1931.

  The 1917 water rules govern water, not village forest management. The Scheduled Districts Act, 1874 is an administrative statute about which laws apply to scheduled tracts, and the 1873 canal law deals with canals, drainage and water courses in northern India.