Abstract: For over a century, state water engineers—hydrocrats—have shaped water governance through large-scale water infrastructure. In India, as elsewhere, they are trained as engineers, reinforcing a technocratic worldview that prioritizes technical solutions to water problems over socio-environmental considerations. Yet, little is understood about how hydrocrats make sense of their work and agency as experts, navigate bureaucratic pressures and respond to shifting political conditions. How does their institutional culture sustain the dominance of such paradigm of water governance? Why have past reform efforts failed to engage them effectively? Based on ethnographic fieldwork within India’s chief water bureaucracy, Central Water Commission, my research explores these questions by centering hydrocrats’ perspectives. I aim to offer a more humanized account of their role and to examine what it would take to foster meaningful institutional and policy change. This study engages broader debates on technical expertise, infrastructure, and the challenges of reforming entrenched governance systems.

Short Bio:
Prakriti Prajapati is a doctoral candidate in geography at Penn State. Her academic background spans humanities and critical social sciences with a focus on the environment. Her research combines critical, humanist, and ethnographic approaches to understanding state institutions and processes of public policy and governance. Prakriti has previously worked at the Centre for Policy Research and served as visiting faculty in ethics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.