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Bhadoi a.n& Aman crops, falls short of 50 per cent., it may 

 be assumed that there will be famine, though people may not 

 begin to come to test or relief works till February. Relief 

 works should be started in each thana where the estimated 

 crop is 25 per cent, or less. All works organised for relief 

 of famine should be arranged for from October to January, 

 the actual opening of test-works, however, being delayed as 

 long as possible. The programme of works should include 

 only such as are calculated to increase the produce of land 

 directly or indirectly. It is a sorry sight to see thousands of 

 men and women employed in raising a road 4 or 5 feet high, 

 when their energy might have been devoted to irrigating 

 lands on canal and river sides, and raising a food-crop, or 

 when they might be employed more usefully in excavating 

 canals, irrigation channels, tanks and even wells. The roads 

 made by famine people are usually so badly made, that the 

 next rainy season makes the fact quite patent that making 

 of kutcha roads is not a suitable work for these people. 

 Growing a crop by irrigation at the driest season of the 

 year, from February to May, would be a splendid object- 

 lesson to raiyatS) which may have a permanent effect in their 

 learning how to avoid famines for all times to come. Relief 

 works ought to aim at giving such object-lessons to the 

 cultivators. Earth-work in a tank or a well is as easily 

 measured as on a road, and in the large expanse of a paddy 

 field it would be easy getting 5,000 labourers employed under 

 one supervising staff, if 1000 wells are excavated in it at 

 regular distances. Each well would cost about Rs, 25, 

 inclusive of the cost of well-rings, and the work would not 

 take more than a week accomplishing. Each party of five 

 can be then employed in irrigating with leather buckets, 

 worked by bamboo levers, an acre or two of land, T Vth to |th 

 of an acre being irrigated every day according as the soil 

 is light or heavy, cultivating the land, and raising a crop 

 from it, in three months, of maize, or millet, or aus paddy, 



