The Mahaweli Development Project and the ‘rendering technical’ of agrarian development in Sri Lanka

The Mahaweli Development Project (MDP) is the largest irrigation-based agricultural development program in Sri Lanka and one of the largest agriculture-related programs in the world. However, despite promises of success and overly optimistic prognostications as to the future performance and potential of the MDP, the project has increasingly come under criticism in the new millennium for its failure to achieve intended irrigation targets and for its overall underperformance. The object of the present study is to critically evaluate the value-oriented narrative that has been put forward by planners of the MDP to explain these failures via a thorough examination of policy documents and on-site field research. This study finds that reasons cited by planners of the MDP to account for its underperformance, including a lack of motivation, knowledge and organization among farmers and the scarcity of water, are often technical in nature and that the official narrative selectively omits certain key questions related to political-economy. Using a theoretical framework shaped by the work of Tania Li and James Ferguson, the present work examines why the planners of development projects ‘render technical’ the problems related to program implementation and the implications of this tendency.