Words and Ideas: Commitment, Continuity and Irreversibility 163in development, and applied again and again, they should prevent or reduce dam-
age from errors and, at the same time, ensure that more good things are done.
Notes
1 Mwea was so frequently visited by VIPs, researchers, school parties, women’s groups, government
officials and others that the manager told me he spent 45 per cent of his time on public relations.
This led to the recruitment of a deputy manager for whom this was his major work.
2 The recent history of Mwea has been turbulent. During the late 1990s, farmers increasingly pro-
tested against the National Irrigation Board’s corrupt management and high service charges. In
January 1999, two young men were killed by police in a demonstration. The farmers took over
the scheme to run it themselves (Kenya Human Rights Commission, 2000). This evidently failed,
and, in January 2003, negotiations between the farmers’ cooperative and the National Irrigation
Board led to the formation of a committee to oversee the scheme (Daily Nation, 27 and 29 Janu-
ary 2003).
3 This section is from Chambers (1969, pp257–262). A few details of evidence have been edited
out, together with a paragraph on Perkerra.
4 I struggled with my wish to change ‘men’ to ‘people’; but have left the male-biased word, which
was in the original. It situates the piece historically. This was before the gender-awareness revolu-
tion. That said, Jon Moris and Jane Hanger, the authors of the much-cited and influential Chap-
ter H, ‘Women and the household economy’, in the Mwea collection (Chambers and Moris,
1973, pp209–244) deserve credit for showing how markedly settlement conditions made things
worse for women, leading, for example, to a high rate of divorce.
5 Nicholas, in Volta Resettlement Symposium Papers p86, subsequently edited and republished in
Chambers, 1970.
6 Interim report of a United Nations Special Fund survey of the lower Tana Basin in Kenya, as
reported in East African Standard (Nairobi), 17 November 1965, and Daily Nation (Nairobi), 17
November 1965. Despite a long sequence of adverse appraisals, the project (named Bura) was
eventually implemented and must rank as one of the economically most disastrous settlement
projects ever.
7 The heading in the original text was ‘Concluding’.
8 The word now would be appraisals. Evaluations are ex post, appraisal ex ante, but this distinction
was not yet a convention in the late 1960s.
9 Mea culpa.
10 This section is taken from the final pages of Chapter M ‘The Perkerra Irrigation Scheme: A con-
trasting case’, in Chambers and Moris (1973, pp344–364). I would like to thank the past and
present officials of the Kenya government who have helped me with the research for this case
study. I am especially indebted to E. G. Giglioli, J. G. Stemf, S. G. Sandford and R. E. Wain-
wright for comments on an earlier version. Responsibility for what is written here is, however,
entirely mine and should not be attributed to any other person or to any organization.
11 Attempts to obtain accounts or details of how Perkerra was financed have not been successful.
There are reasons to infer that the cross-subsidization through the National Irrigation Board using
surpluses from the more viable Mwea Irrigation Settlement continued until 1998, when the
Mwea farmers rebelled; but I have been unable to substantiate this with direct, authoritative or
numerical information.
12 According to one report, which remains unconfirmed, the Perkerra staff went unpaid for six
months when the Mwea settlers rebelled and cross-subsidization of Perkerra from Mwea ended.
13 This equates to 1.5 million Kenyan shillings.