84 GRANT Otf LOANS AND ADVANCES TO AGRICULTURISTS. 



The amounts at present allotted to these provinces for takavi alone 

 average 19 \ lakhs in ordinary years. What we virtually recommend, 

 therefore, is that Government should treble the existing takavi grants, 

 and make an allotment of 17 lakhs for free grants-in-aid of works 

 of private improvement, under some definite head of expenditure, 

 say, ' minor works, agricultural.' 



211. We have very little on which to base this forecast, except 

 conjecture and the opinions of well qualified officers. The exact allot- 

 ments will have to be settled with Local Governments and Administra- 

 tions. But even this expenditure will effect very little. Thus, 

 calculating the expenditure required to protect an acre of land by 

 means of the various private works at Us. 100 in Madras and 

 Bombay, and Rs. 50 elsewhere, we find that 75 lakhs would give 

 protection to about one hundred thousand acres per annum. In 

 twenty years, therefore, the protected area would have been 

 increased by two million acres. A considerable portion of this, 

 however, would not be in the areas liable to severe famine. It 

 will probably be sanguine if we calculate that one and-a-half 

 million acres within these areas can be protected in twenty years 

 by means of takavi and grants-in-aid. Excluding Burma, the 

 total area of cultivation exposed to famine may be put roughly at 

 one hundard and fifty million acres. Thus, by means of takavi 

 and grants-in-aid alone, protection can be given to not more than 1 

 per cent, of that area. This proportion is so small that, if reliance 

 had to be placed on Government aid only, it might seem hardly 

 worth while to lend it But the value of takavi advances and grants- 

 in-aid is by no means limited to the actual amount of work effected 

 by their means ; they give, in addition a real stimulus to unaided 

 private effort. Having regard to the rate of progress attained in 

 the various provinces in the past without any assistance, or with 

 the aid of comparatively little stimulus of the kind, we shall not 

 perhaps be over-sanguine if we hope that the area under irriga- 

 tion from private works may be doubled in fifty years. But even 

 if this result be obtained, then deducting one-fourth of the increase as 

 occurring in the -areas not exposed to famine, the increase of protection 

 in the famine-exposed tracts will not exceed 1 3 per cent of their 

 area, and it becomes evident that, notwithstanding every possible 



extension of private works, considerable areas must remain without 







protection by their means. 



