IRRIGATION IN INDIA AND 

 AMERICA. 



BY E. H. PARGITER, OF THE IRRIGATION BRANCH, PUBLIC WORKS 

 DEPARTMENT, PANJAB, INDIA. 



The writer of this article, after passing through the three years' 

 course of theoretical study and practical training at the Royal Indian 

 Engineering College at Cooper's Hill, England, (being one of the stu- 

 dents who entered this college when it was first started in 1871), went 

 out to India in 1874 as an assistant engineer in the Irrigation Branch 

 of the Public Works Department in the Panjab Province. He has 

 spent his whole service since then in that Province on the design, con- 

 struction and management of many of the Irrigation Canals, large and 

 small, in different parts of that Province. 



It will, perhaps, be as well to explain here briefly the system of 

 the Indian Public Works department. All buildings and works 

 required solely for troops and military purposes, belong to a separate 

 Military Works Department, which is worked and engineered chiefly 

 by officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers. All buildings and works 

 required for civil or general purposes, are in the charge of the Public 

 Works Department, which is now worked and engineered chiefly by 

 civil engineers, together with some Royal Engineers, and other mili- 

 tary men trained as engineers, who have chosen to take up service in 

 this department, while they can be spared from military duty. 



The Department is divided into three separate branches, quite 

 independent of each other, viz. : the Railway branch, the Irrigation 

 branch, and the Roads and Buildings branch. There is but one rail- 

 way branch for the whole of India, under one Director, quite irrespec- 

 tive of the different Provinces, so that a railway engineer may be 

 transferred from one part of India to any other part at any time; and 

 railways are constructed and worked in sections that are in no way 

 fixed by the boundaries of Provinces. But there is a distinct Irriga- 

 tion branch, and a distinct Roads and Buildings branch in each Prov- 

 ince, each under its own chief engineer, who is secretary to the Local 

 Provincial Government for his branch. 



Transfers from one branch to another are not frequent or usual, 

 so that the majority of the engineers who enter the Department 

 remain each in the branch in which he commenced his service, and 

 they should become in time more or less experts and specialists in 

 their particular lines of professional work. This separation of the 

 -branches has been found necessary for efficiency, for both in railway 



