INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

MITIGATIVE MEASURES. 217
face; but the direct returns, &c., on which the
ar~ents for the immense extension of irrigation
schemes are based by public writers, do
not exist. Or, as the (Times' lately put it, a
private individual or a company does not lay
out money for a problematical indirect return,
but for a tangible direct profit.
No one knowing India, and comparing the
extent of country traversed by the Ganges
Canal on one side of the Doab, and by the
Eastern J umna Canal on the other side, would
ever dream, from non-statistical know ledge, of
proposing that a new canal of equal proportions
to those already existing should be constructed
in the same neighbourhood. But what would be
the effect of such? Some thirty per cent more
of the cultivated area of the Doab would be
brought under the influence of irrigation; and
this would still leave about twenty per cent
unprotected! If, then, the richly irrigated
North-Western Province still requires such an
enormous further development of irrigation
schemes, what can be said of other parts of
India? and where are the ftmds to come
from to supply this apparent sine qua non 1