Jennifer E. Duyne, who obtained her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Zurich, began her research in 1983 into the impact of small credit programmes on informal credit systems in rural Bangladesh. After a number of postings in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Southern India, studying the social organisation of irrigated agriculture, she returned to Bangladesh in 1992, working as a social development advisor to a water resource development project, funded by the Government of the Netherlands, until 1998. Within that framework, she became responsible for a national research project on indigenous water management practices in rural Bangladesh upon which this book is based. At present, Dr. Duyne is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Zurich and at the University of Applied Sciences in Lugano (Switzerland).