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in the district containing a predatory population, which derives 

 its subsistence more from other tracts than from its own soil, 

 Y*^ill be protected to a considerable extent from droughts which 

 now occur almost every second year. The Kushikulya irri- 

 gation project will add another 100,000 acres of permanently- 

 irrigated land to the food-producing area of the country. 

 The tank restoration scheme which is under execution, and 

 which has almost removed the chronic complaint about the 

 neglect of irrigation works will improve the yield of lands 

 now under cultivation. The large numbers of wells for 

 irrigation, which have been excavated with advances granted 

 by Government under the Land Improvement Loans Acts on 

 very favorable terms, have also been the means of protecting 

 arid tracts from partial droughts. The East Coast Railway 

 will bring the very fertile and sparse-populated country of 

 Jeypore within reach of the crowded parts of the Presidency 

 to the advantage of both and be the means of lisfhtenine: the 

 pressure of population on the latter. It is sometimes asked, 

 how can railways prevent famines? The answer is simple. 

 Railways, by distributing the produce of tracts where the 

 harvest has been abundant in tracts where it has been scanty, 

 give value to produce which would have been wasted or been 

 allowed to rot for want of an outlet and thus mitigate the 

 effects of scarcity ; and they bring fertile regions shut off 

 from the rest of the country by want of communications 

 within easy reach of congested tracts. Tlie idea of bring- 

 ing labourers from Poena to work on the Bellary-Kistna 

 Railway and from the Punjab to work on the East Coast 

 Railway would, for instance, have been scouted as absurd by 

 even the wildest visionary in the pre-railway period. Above 

 all, railways by equalizing prices and by preventing sudden 

 and violent alternations in the condition of the masses, who 

 are at one time gorged with plentiful means of subsistence 

 and soon after suffer the direst distress — a state of things 

 most fatal to self-reliance — have rendered the creation of the 

 habits of forethought and prudence possible. Life has been 

 made somewhat harder than before to the poorest landless 

 classes in times of plenty when the pressure is not severe, 

 while, to the cultivating and landowning classes who form 

 the bulk of the population, the means are made available of 

 accumulating savings; and, in times of scarcity, when the 

 pressure on the landless classes might be expected to be 

 severe, the burden is lightened. Doubtless, when parts of the 

 country, which have hitherto been isolated from other tracts, 

 are suddenly placed in communication with the Tatter, the 

 result often is a feeling that they are denuded, of food sup- 



