INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

216 PREVENTIVE .AND
half a million of people from death in the famine
of 1866, will doubtless take much longer
before they will realise even this rate of interest.
• . . But the anxiety of Lord Mayo's
Government for legal power to enforce a com·
pulsory rate was an emphatic expression of the
belief ~at, without such a rate, a long period
of slow growth of revenue from irrigation
works could not be avoided. We wish that
this should be freely understood. For if the
l'esult of our expenditure should be judged of
by the immediate returns, the effect might bu
to deprive the country of extensions of irrigation
essential to the prevention of famines and
to the progress of prosperity." That compulsory
irrigation-or its equivalent, a compulsory
water-rate - has been found necessary as a
sound proposal by the Indian Government, is
as pointed a commentary as can well be imagined
on the fabulous benefits to be derived by
the people themselves, and on the returns t,)
the Government which their outlay was to pro·
.duce. There are, of course, vast indirect fl'
turns which are the result of such irrigatio:;
schemes, and which do not appear on the SUl-