OBSERVATIONS ON IRRIGATION WORKS IN INDIA. 15 1 



Incidentally. I may refer to the rainfall which for India as a 

 whole — excluding Burma and the Himalayas — is taken, in a 

 late official publication, as 42 inches for the year, on an averacre, 

 and to be liable to fluctuation, also on an average, to the 

 extent of about 7 inches only. The variation in separate 

 tracts is very great, and unfortunately, the lower the rainfall 

 the greater its liability to serious deficiency. As an example 

 of the variation in different parts of India, I may refer to 

 Cheera Poonja in the Khusi Hills, where the normal annual 

 fall exceeds 450 inches, and Bikaneer, where it is under 

 5 inches. There is a large part of India where the rainfall 

 exceeds 70 inches, and where the chance of failure of crops, 

 owing to deficiency of rainfall, is small. Allowing for this 

 tract in which the rainfall is always sufficient, and for the area 

 m which the crops are secured by irrigation, there is the 

 Irrigation Commission, to whose report I am greatly indebted 

 for some of the information contained in this paper, comprising 

 a tract of nearly a million square miles, no part of which is at 

 present secure from drought followed by serious deficiencies in 

 the crops and consequent famine. It is to protect this part of 

 India that irrigation works are required. My own experience 

 has been, that the Government of India have never been 

 unwilling to find the money required to construct irrigation 

 works, from which a return of 4 per cent, on the expenditure 

 might reasonably be expected. In many cases, the return on 

 the capital expended has been greatly in excess of this rate — 

 in fact, as I have already mentioned, the works constructed 

 with the expectation that they would pay at least 4 per cent, 

 per annum, now taken together, return upwards of 6 per cent., 

 but several of the projects have, as remunerative works, failed 

 altogether. The irrigation works in Bengal and Bombay 

 (exclusive of Sind), on which 4 J millions sterling have 

 been expended, return something less than 1 per cent, on their 

 capital cost. The Kurnoul Canal in Madras, which cost 

 Ih millions sterling, pays about ^ per cent, on that sum. 



The profitableness or otherwise of irrigation works depends, 

 naturally, largely on the average rainfall ; in the Punjaub, 

 where the fall is low, averaging 10 to 23 inches annually, the 

 return is lO-J per cent, on the capital expended, and the works 

 last constructed — known as the Chenab Canal project — give a 

 return of 18 J per cent. On the other hand the Madras works, 

 which serve a country where the average annual rainfall varies 

 from 30 to 40 inches, gave a return of 9^ per cent., the works 

 last constructed, amongst which is the Kurnoul project, to 



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