APPENDIX XV. 



i- The organi- 

 zation of relief 

 system- 

 fa) The revision 

 of relief program- 

 mes- 



! (b) Any other 

 arrangement re- 

 quiring notice. 



Extract from the final Famine Report of Etawah district by 



J. C. Nelson, Esq., I.O.S. 



The village works programme was taken in hand in September, 

 1918, as soon as it was oertain that there would be famine in the 

 dry tracts of the district. Most of the works entered in the pro- 

 gramme were considered useless from every point of view except 

 that merely of finding work for idle hands, and tbere was no pro- 

 ject at all for the Bidhuna tahsil where the Arind tract cannot be 

 neglected when any such agricultural situation arises. In the 

 previous spring I had requested sanction to the acceptance as a 

 famine work of the Ravine Reclamation system, and that sanction 

 had been accorded. My request for the deputation at the time of 

 an overseer to prepare projects in Bidhuiia was not, however, 

 acceded. The Divisional Forest Officer accordingly prepared, in 

 consultation with me, a programme for ravine reclamation works 

 in the Jumna-Chambal portion of the Etawah, Bharthana, and 

 Auraiya tahsils. A few projects of the village works programme 

 were also worked out and other works were improvised. The 

 system that had to be adopted was defined for us by the absence 

 of any outside professional assistance, even medical. I accordingly 

 decided at oiice that we would have no big works or residential 

 camps, and that the people must be kept at their homes. This 

 entailed the finding of suitable works at comparatively short dis- 

 tances one from each other, so that the " catchment area," so to 

 speak of the work*fc, would cover the whole scarcity tract, without 

 leaving blanks and without undue overlapping. Ravine reclama- 

 tion works were carried out wherever the Forest department 

 (whose staff was also limited) would manage it, with due consider- 

 ation also to the utility of the works, and the rest of the area was 

 then dealt with by selecting worhs of genuine local utility at suit- 

 able spots and arranging for a succession of works also, when 

 necessary. 



With a failure of monsoon, a fodder famine in the Trans- 

 Jumna tract is always to be expected and its treatment is nearly 

 as important as that of the food famine. The experience we 

 have bought in a hard school this year shows that it is not enough 

 to bring by rail, but assistance must be given in the transport of 

 this hay to the remoter villages. T propose to leave on the famine 

 file a short memo, on the detailed steps that we have learnt to be 

 necessary. In general the system I adopted was to establish 



