This chapter explores logbooks by non-elite seafarers as a hybrid mode that combines the model of the ship’s official log with the practice of the ordinary terrestrial diary – a form that flourished throughout the nineteenth century. Bringing together original archival research into sea journals with critical approaches to the diary stemming from life writing studies, the analysis reframes the logbook beyond its traditional categorisation as a document of work, in order to position it as a more personal text that allowed for the maintenance of bonds of family and kinship across oceans. The chapter proposes that logbooks were linked to the terrestrial world in other ways too, emerging as a popular literary motif from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, through to fictions by Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad in the late Victorian period. Tracing their evidentiary and narrative potential, logbooks – both real and fictive – are positioned as circulating objects that travelled across social, spatial, and generic borders.

An Experiment in Governance

In the 1970s, the city of Chandigarh in the Himalayan foothills faced a pressing problem: Sukhna Lake, a large artificial reservoir and recreational spot in the city, was beginning to silt up. In trying to locate the source of the problem, conservation experts landed at Sukhomajri (‘dry/happy little village’), a small gujjar settlement some 15 kilometres from the town. It transpired that Sukhomajri was the site of a badly denuded watershed. Here, rainwater found little resistance from vegetation and was released with great force, causing damage to arable land. These floods contributed directly to the silting problem in Chandigarh, for rather than flowing into Sukhna, rainwater was inundating the fields of Sukhomajri's villagers. Preserving the lake was thus tied to soil conservation in Sukhomajri and other settlements in the area. It became apparent, however, that any project of conservation would also have to deal with the sociopolitical dynamics of rural subsistence in Sukhomajri, whose residents practised a mixture of rainfed cultivation and livestock grazing. Like many rural communities dependent upon dwindling pastures and erratic monsoons, they earned just enough to subsist upon. They were therefore unwilling to cooperate with projects such as controlled grazing or laying orchards, whose benefits could only be reaped in the long term and which directed precious resources away from day-to-day needs.

In the previous chapter we covered how satellite remote sensing can be used to classify areas under a crop, estimate their crop water demand and actual crop water consumption. This information can be used for irrigation management using satellite data. In this chapter we will cover how satellite data can be used to estimate temperature of surface water. We will cover the basic principle behind the estimation technique, understand the limitation of the technique and then build some data literacy to derive the surface temperature of water in regulated rivers ourselves.

Urban studies scholarship has marked liberalization as the turning point in the lifeworld of cities in India.1 Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore associate it with government policies that enable the free flow of capital and with cities being modified to attract international financial capital. Globally, liberalization is marked by competition between cities for investments. However, contrary to this understanding, we see a race between cities to establish the film industry in India pre-dating the liberalization in the 1990s. As shown in Chapter 3, as early as the 1940s and 1950s Bombay and Madras were competing to become the most important production centre for film. After the formation of linguistic states, with the emergence of new film production centres such as Hyderabad, there was competition between Madras and Hyderabad. The competition between cities is thus not just a post-liberalization phenomenon but is a continuum in different phases of capitalism. The difference, however, was in the nature of global capitalism at these different points. In the 1940s, Madras and Bombay were operating in the colonial world. Starting from the 1960s, Hyderabad and Madras were competing for regional capital within the nation. All these distinct capital relations produced distinct cities. In the post-liberalization phase, the film industry forms a nexus with the tourism and real estate sectors and participates in producing the city as a constant spectacle to attract international capital.