from both public and private sources in Bengal proper is returned at 1 million acres, out of an estimated area of 54 million acres under cultivation. Irrigation In the Madras Presidency, and generally throughout Southern in Madras. India, facilities for irrigation assume a decisive importance in determining the character of agriculture. Crops dependent on the rainfall are distinguished as 'dry crops,' comprehending the large class of millets. Rice is grown on 'wet land,' which means land capable of being irrigated. Except on the Malabar or western coast, the local rainfall is nowhere sufficiently ample, or sufficiently steady, to secure an adequate water supply. Everywhere else, water has to be brought to the fields from rivers, from tanks, or from wells. Of the total 'Dry' and cultivated area of Madras, 17 per cent. is assessed as 'wet 'wet' land. land;' or 5 millions of acres out of a cultivated area of 32 millions. But the actual irrigated area is nearly 7 millions of acres. From time immemorial, an industrious population has made use of all the means available to store up the rainfall, and direct the river floods over their fields. The upland areas are studded with tanks, which sometimes cover square miles of ground; the rivers are crossed by innumerable anicuts or dams, by which the floods are diverted into long aqueducts. Most of these works are now the property of Government, which annually expends large sums of money in maintenance and repairs, looking for remuneration only to the augmented land revenue. The average rate of assessment is 9s. 6d. per acre on irrigated land, as compared with only 2s. 3d. per acre on unirrigated land. Works in deltas. It is therefore not only the duty, but the manifest advantage, the Madras of Government to extend the facilities for irrigation in Madras, wherever the physical aspect of the country will permit. The deltas of the Godávari, the Kistna, and the Káveri (Cauvery), have within recent years been traversed by a network of canals, and thus guaranteed against risk of famine.1 Smaller works of a similar nature have been carried out in other places; while a private company, with a Government guarantee, has undertaken the more difficult task of utilizing on a grand scale the waters of the Tungabhadra 2 amid the hills and vales of the interior. The assessed irrigated area in the Presidency, of 5 million acres, yields a land revenue of 2 millions sterling. Of this total, 1,680,178 acres, with a revenue of £739,778, are irrigated by eight great systems, for which revenue and 1 See article GODAVARI RIVER, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. iii. pp. 414-41. capital accounts are kept. The minor works consist of about 35,000 tanks and irrigation canals, and about 1140 anicuts or dams across streams. The whole area under irrigation from public and private sources in Madras is, as already stated, 7 million acres, out of a total cultivated area of 32 million acres. In Mysore, tanks, anicuts, and wells dug in the dry beds of Irrigation. in Mysore. rivers afford the means of irrigation. Since the late disastrous famine, comprehensive schemes of throwing embankments across river valleys have been undertaken by Government. The whole area under irrigation from public and private sources in Mysore is of a million acres, out of a total cultivated area of 5 million acres. In the Central Provinces, irrigation still remains a private In Central enterprise. According to the settlement returns, out of a total Provinces. cultivated area of 13,610,503 acres, 804,378 acres, or 6 per cent., are irrigated by private individuals. The only Govern ment work is a tank in the District of Nimar. for British India. In British Burma, as in Lower Bengal, embankments take In Burma. the place of canals, being classed as 'irrigation works' in the annual reports. Within the last few years, Government has spent about £318,000 under this heading, in order to save the low rice-fields along the Irawadi from destructive inundation. The following figures, applying to India as a whole, show Statistics how far the Government has lately performed its duty as a landlord in undertaking productive public works. During the ten years ending March 1878, a total sum of £10,457,702 was expended on irrigation under the budget heading of 'extraordinary,' as compared with £18,636,321 expended on State railways in the same period,—total, 29 millions. In 1879, the total had risen to about 32 millions. In the twelve months ending March 1878, irrigation yielded a gross income of £495,142, as compared with £548,528 derived from State railways; while £370,747 was charged to revenue account against irrigation, and £420,754 against State railways. The following table shows the extent of cultivation and the average area irrigated in the Provinces, for which the facts can be obtained. They must be taken as only approximate estimates. They differ slightly from data obtained from other sources; as may be seen by comparing the return for the Central Provinces with the somewhat larger one obtained from the Settlement Officers, given above in the text :— AREA OF CULTIVATION AND OF IRRIGATION IN CERTAIN PROVINCES. Distribu Sind. India. It will be seen from the above table that irrigation is most resorted to in the Provinces with the scantiest or most pre tion of irrigation over India. carious rainfall. In Sind, tillage depends almost entirely on an artificial water supply; and four-fifths of the cultivated area are Northern ascertained to be irrigated. In Northern India, the deficient India. rainfall of the Punjab and the high-lying doábs, or intermediate river plains of the North-Western Provinces, also demand a large measure of irrigation. The irrigated area, accordingly, amounts to from over one-fourth to one-third of the whole Southern cultivation. In Madras, it is under one-fourth; in Mysore, it is one-sixth; in the Central Provinces, it is one-twentieth. But the dry uplands of Bombay, the Central Provinces, and Berar, where the proportion of irrigated lands sinks to about onesixtieth, undoubtedly require a larger artificial water supply than they possess at present. The black soil of these tracts, however, is very retentive of moisture. To a certain extent it stores up and husbands the rainfall. It thus lessens the neces sity for irrigation. In Bengal, where the irrigated area is only 1.8 per cent. of the cultivated area, the abundant rainfall and the inundations of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mahánadi, and of the river systems connected with these main arteries, take the place of canals or an artificial water supply. Central Lower Natural FAMINES. In any country where the population is dense and the means of communication backward, the failure of a calamities. harvest, whether produced by drought, by flood, by blight, by locusts, or by war, causes intense distress. Whether such distress shall develop into famine is merely a matter of degree, depending upon a combination of circumstances-the comparative extent of the failure, the density of the population, the practicability of imports, the facilities for transport, the resources of private trade, and the energy of the administration. Drought, or a failure of the regular rainfall, is the Causes of great cause of famine. No individual foresight, no com- scarcity; pensating influences, can prevent those recurring periods of continuous drought with which large Provinces of India are afflicted. Even an average rainfall in any one year, if irregularly distributed, or at the wrong seasons, may affect the harvest to a moderate degree; so also may flood or blight. The total failure of one monsoon may result in a general scarcity. But famine proper, or wide-spread starvation, is caused only and of real by a succession of years of drought. The cultivators of India famine. are not dependent upon a single harvest, or upon the crops of one year. In the event of a partial failure, they can draw for their food supply either upon their own grain pits or upon the stores of the village merchants. The first sufferers, and those who also suffer most in the end, are the class who live by daily wages. But small is the number that can hold out, either in capital or credit, against a second year of insufficient rainfall ; and the third season sometimes proves adverse. All great famines in India have been caused by drought, and usually by drought repeated over two or three years. In It becomes necessary to inquire into the means of husband- Water ing the water supply. That supply can be derived only from supply. three sources (1) Local rainfall; (2) natural inundation; and (3) artificial irrigation from rivers, canals, tanks, or wells. Any of these sources may exist separately or together. only a few parts of India can the rainfall be entirely trusted, as both sufficient in its amount and regular in its distribution. These favoured tracts include the whole strip of coast beneath the Western Ghats, from Bombay to Cape Comorin; the greater part of the Provinces of Assam and Burma; together with the deltaic districts at the head of the Bay of Bengal. In these Favoured Provinces the annual rainfall rarely, if ever, falls below 60 to Provinces. 100 inches; artificial irrigation and famine are alike unknown. of India. The rest of the Indian peninsula may be described as The irrigaliable, more or less, to drought. In Orissa, the scene of one tion area of the most severe famines of recent times, the average rainfall exceeds 60 inches a year; in Sind, which has been exceptionally free from amine under British rule, the average drops to less than 10 inches. The local rainfall, therefore, is not the only element to be considered. Broadly speaking, artificial irrigation has protected, or is now in course of protecting, area of India. 1 Irrigation certain fortunate regions, such as the eastward deltas of the Madras rivers and the upper valley of the Ganges. The rest, and by far the greater portion, of the country is still exposed to famine. Meteorological science may teach us to foresee what is coming. But it may be doubted whether administrative efforts can do more than alleviate the calamity when once famine has declared itself. Lower Bengal and Oudh are watered by natural inundation as much as by the local rainfall; Sind derives its supplies mainly from canals filled by the floods of the Indus; the Punjab and the North-Western Provinces are dependent largely upon wells; the Deccan, with the entire south, is the land of tanks and reservoirs. But in all these cases, when the rainfall has failed over a series of years, the artificial supply must likewise fail after no long interval, so that irrigation becomes a snare rather than a benefit. Waterworks on a scale adequate to guarantee the whole of India from drought not only exceed the possibilities of finance; they are also beyond the reach of engineering skill. Summary The first great famine of which we have any trustworthy of Indian record is that which devastated the lower valley of the Ganges famines, 1770-1854. in 1769-70. One-third of the population is credibly reported to have perished. The previous season had been bad; and, as not uncommonly happens, the break-up of the drought was accompanied by disastrous floods. Beyond the importation into Calcutta and Murshidábád of a few thousand hundredweights of rice from the Districts of Bákarganj and Chittagong, it does not appear that any public measures for relief were taken or proposed. The next great famine was that which afflicted the Karnatic from 1780 to 1783, and has been immortalized by the genius of Burke. It arose primarily from the ravages of Haidar Ali's army. A public subscription was organized by the Madras Government, from which sprang the Monegar Choultry,' or permanent institution for the relief of the native poor. In 1783-84 Hindustán Proper suffered from a prolonged drought, which stopped short at the frontier of British territory. Warren Hastings, then Governor-General, advocated the construction of enormous granaries, to be opened only in times of necessity. One of these granaries or golás, stands to the present day in the city of Patná, but it was never used until the scarcity of 1874. In 1790-92, Madras 1 See post, pp. 514, 515. 2 A full account of the famine of 1769-70 is given in my Annals of Rural Bengal, pp. 19-55 (5th ed.). The official record of this and the subsequent famines will be found in the Report of the Indian Famine Commission, presented to Parliament 1880, part paras. 62-84. |