SECTION 6 Keeping a muang faai system going demands cooperation and collective management,
sometimes within a single village, sometimes across three or four different subdistricts
including many villages. The rules or common agreements arrived at during the yearly
meeting amount to a social contract. They govern how water is to be distributed, how
flow is to be controlled according to seasonal schedules, how barriers are to be
maintained and channels dredged, how conflicts over water use are to be settled, and
how the forest around the reservoir is to be preserved as a guarantee of a steady
water supply and a source of materials to repair the system.
SECTION 7 The fundamental principle of water rights under muang faai is that everyone in the
system must get enough to survive; while many patterns of distribution are possible,
none can violate this basic tenet. On the whole, the systems also rest on the
assumption that local water is common property. No one can take control of it by
force, and it must be used in accord with the communal agreements. Although there
are inequalities in land holding, no one has the right to an excessive amount of fertile
land. The way in which many muang faai systems expand tends to reinforce further the
claims of community security over those of individual entrepreneurship. In the gradual
process of opening up new land and digging connecting channels, each local household
often ends up with scattered holdings over the whole irrigation areas. Unlike modern
irrigation systems, under which the most powerful people generally end up closest to
the sources of water, this arrangement encourages everyone to take care that no part
of the system is unduly favoured or neglected.
Questions 20-23 The chart below illustrates the agricultural system of the lowland communities.
