84 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW 



would not have produced crops to the value of more 

 than ten crores. The minimum new wealth created in a 

 single year, was thus forty-five crores of rupees. The 

 value of the year's crops amount to two and one-half 

 times the total capital outlay on the whole canal system 

 concerned. These productive canals earned in direct 

 receipts a net return of 7.4 per cent, of which, after de- 

 fraying interest charges, the net return was 4.96 per 

 cent. The direct canal charges for water averaged Rs. 

 5.3 per acre of crop matured out of a gross value of Rs. 

 64 per acre of the crop grown." Quoted from The 

 Pioneer Mail of June 18, 1920. 



In the same year over nine million acres were irri- 

 gated and over twenty thousand miles of canals were 

 operated in the Punjab alone and over fourteen million 

 acres were irrigated by flow in the whole of India. It is 

 safe to say that the government has charged to the culti- 

 vator a much lower water rate than a private concern 

 would have done. It is hard to over-estimate the value 

 of an irrigation system to a people. It gives a sense of 

 security and certainty that nothing else does. 



During the war the irrigation department went on 

 and was very largely increased. It is estimated that 

 two hundred and twelve million dollars have been in- 

 vested by the government in irrigation in British India 

 and it has still larger projects in hand. Not only is 

 there promise of more water for irrigation but an 

 abundance of water for hydro-electrical power. No- 

 table examples are already in operation. The mills, 

 factories, the street car lines of Bombay are run largely 

 by water-power that falls down the Western Ghauts 

 from thirteen to seventeen hundred feet in a sheer fall. 



