IRRIGATION IN MINOR PROVINCES. 537 tion extension project, and the Buckingham Canal. There are also a number of minor irrigation and protective works, for which neither capital nor revenue accounts are kept. The area irrigated by productive public works in Madras in 1882-83 was 1,757,579 acres; and that by all other Government irrigation works, 2,615,590 acres; making a total of 4,373,169 acres. Finance, The acquisition of the Karnúl Canal during 1882 materially Madras raised the outlay invested in productive public works, and Irrigation greatly reduced the returns yielded in former years by this 1883. class of works in Madras. The total capital outlay, direct and indirect, incurred on productive public works up to the end of 1882-83, amounted to £3,990,552. The gross revenue, including share of enhanced land revenue, amounted to £360,062; the maintenance charges, direct and indirect, was £107,197, leaving a net revenue of £252,865, equal to 6'34 per cent. on the total capital outlay up to the end of the year. If, however, the outlay on the Sangam anicut works (which had not commenced to earn revenue in 1882-83), and the purchase money for the Karnúl canal, be excluded from the account, the net returns would be 12 per cent. on the capital outlay, against 13 per cent. obtained during the previous year. With regard to irrigation and navigation canals not classified as productive, the capital outlay, direct and indirect, incurred up to the end of 1882-83, amounted to £988,907. The gross revenue during 1882-83, including share of land revenue debitable to these works, was £31,319; the expenditure was £27,520, leaving a net revenue of £3799, equal to 0 38 per cent. on the total capital outlay. In Mysore, tanks, anicuts, and wells dug in the dry beds of Irrigation rivers afford the means of irrigation. Since the late disastrous in Mysore. famine of 1876-78, 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 4 to 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 Government work is a tank in the District of Nimár. In 1882-83, the area irrigated by private individuals was returned at 770,583 acres, and by Government works, 238 acres from the Nimár tank, out of a total of 14,165,212 acres of cultivated area. In British Burma, as in Lower Bengal, embankments take the In Burma. Statistics for British India, 1868 to 1883. place of canals; and are classed as 'irrigation works' in the reports. Within the last few years, Government has spent £318,000 in Burma under this heading, to save the low ricefields along the Irawadi from destructive inundation. The foregoing paragraphs have given the Provincial statistics of irrigation, so far as available. The differences in the local systems, and the variety of sources from which the outlay on irrigation works is derived, render a single generalized statement for all India misleading. Apart from private irrigation works, and certain classes of Government works, the capital expended by the Government on irrigation is returned at 19 millions sterling during the sixteen years ending 1882-83. Including 1 million sterling expended on the Madras Irrigation Company's works (taken over by Government), the total outlay would amount to nearly 21 millions sterling during the same period. This statement, although it altogether fails to disclose the whole expenditure on Indian irrigation, suffices to show the magnitude of the operations involved. The following table shows the extent of cultivation and the average area irrigated in the Provinces for which the facts can be obtained. They were specially collected by the Indian Famine Commission, and published in its Report of 1880. But they must be taken as only approximate estimates. They differ from data obtained from other sources; as may be seen by comparing the figures in the table with the later ones given in the foregoing Provincial paragraphs. ORDINARY AREA OF CULTIVATION AND OF IRRIGATION IN CERTAIN IRRIGATION: FAMINES. 539 India. It will be seen from the preceding table that irrigation is most Distriburesorted to in the Provinces with the scantiest or most pre- tion of carious rainfall. In Sind, tillage depends almost entirely on an over India. irrigation artificial water-supply; and four-fifths of the cultivated area are Sind. ascertained to be irrigated. In Northern India, the deficient Northern India. rainfall of the Punjab and the high-lying doábs, or intermediate river plains of the North-Western Provinces, also demands a large measure of irrigation. The irrigated area, accordingly, amounts to from over one-fourth to one-third of the whole cultivation. In Madras, it is under one-fourth; in Mysore, it is Southern one-sixth; in the Central Provinces, it is one-twentieth. But the dry uplands of Bombay, the Central Provinces, and Berar, Central 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 necessity for irrigation. In Bengal, where the irrigated area is only Lower 1.8 per cent. of the cultivated area, the abundant rainfall and Bengal. 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. India. FAMINES. In any country where the population is dense Famines. and the means of communication backward, the failure of a harvest, whether produced by drought, by flood, by blight, by Natural locusts, or by war, causes intense distress. Whether such calamities. 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 great Causes of cause of famine. No individual foresight, no compensating scarcity; 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 and of real famine. famine proper, or widespread starvation, is usually caused by a succession of seasons of drought. The cultivators of India are seldom dependent upon a single harvest, or upon the crops of one year. In the event of a partial failure, they can draw for their Watersupply. 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 even the third season sometimes proves adverse. The great famines in India have been caused by drought, and usually by drought continued over two or three years. It becomes necessary to inquire into the means of husbanding the water-supply. That supply can be derived only from 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. In 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 Favoured deltaic districts at the head of the Bay of Bengal. In these Provinces. Provinces the annual rainfall rarely, if ever, falls below 60 to 100 inches; artificial irrigation and famine are there alike unknown. tion area of India. The irriga The rest of the Indian peninsula may be described as liable, more or less, to drought. In Orissa, the scene of the most intense famine of recent times, the average rainfall exceeds 60 inches a year; in Sind, which has been exceptionally free from famine 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, 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 possibly 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 Provinces, when the rainfall has failed over a series of 1 See the chapter on Indian Meteorology at the end of this volume. INDIAN FAMINES, 1770-1866. 541 years, the canal supply must likewise fail after no long interval. 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. famines, The first great famine of which we have any trustworthy Summary record is that which devastated the lower valley of the Ganges of Indian in 1769-70. One-third of the population of Bengal is credibly 1770-1878. reported to have perished. The previous season had been bad; and, as not uncommonly happens, the break-up of the 1769-70. 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.1 The next great famine was that which afflicted the Karnátik Famines of from 1780 to 1783, and has been immortalized by the genius 1780-83; of Burke. It arose primarily from the ravages of Haidar Alí's army. A public subscription was organized by the Madras Government, from which sprang the 'Monegar Choultry,' a permanent Madras 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 was again the scene of a two- 1790-92; years' famine, which is memorable as being the first occasion on which the starving people were employed by Government on relief works. Famines again occurred in Southern India in 1802-04, 1807, 1812, 1824, 1833, 1854, and 1866. A terrible dearth in 1838 caused great mortality in the North- 1838. Western Provinces. In of 1861 But so little was done by the State in these calamities, that Famines few administrative lessons can be learned from them. 1860-61, however, a serious attempt was made to alleviate an exceptional distress in the North-Western Provinces. About half a million persons are estimated to have been relieved, at an expenditure by Government of about three-quarters of a A full account of the famine of 1769-70 is given in Hunter's Annals of Rural Bengal, pp. 19-55 (5th ed.). The official record of this and the subséquent famines will be found in the Report of the Indian Famine Commission, presented to Parliament 1880, part i. paras. 62-84. |