INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

JIITIGA TIVE MEASURES. 211
therefore driven to general measures-measures
which will provide a certainty in ordinary
years, and mitigate disasters when they do
occur. If we can derive any benefit at all
from the knowledge of famines returning in
some such cycles as just indicated, it would
. be that we should prepare a reserve fund to
meet the very extraordinary calamities which
may be looked for about these times.
It is rather an Utopian idea, in my opinion,
to suppose that irrigation will ever be able to
complement a failure of the rainfall. Apart. in
the first instance, from the impracticability of
covering the whole of the country with a network
of cauals sufficient for this purpose, the
natural composition of rain and of irrigation
water is in some respects, aud especially in
some districts, essentially different, and the
results produced are very dissimilar. I by
110 means wish it to be understood that this
i~ any argument against the extension of
irrigation schemes. I wish it to be clearly
understood that I metely say that irrigation
can supplement, but cannot make up for, a
total failure of the rainfall. "The rains" in
o