Life or Death in India

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LIFE OR DEATH IN INDIA

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Appendix

HOW TO MAKE IRRIGATION HEALTHY.

The cause of irrigation has received a frightful significance from this Bengal famine, irrigation being literally a matter of life and death. Not whether we will have irrigation or not; but how to make it healthy, and how to pay for it, are our questions. Wherever water for irrigation and navigation exists, famine is effectually met.

The paramount necessity of combining drainage with irrigation was never forced upon the attention in Southern India, as it has of late years been in Bengal and the North-West Provinces.

In the great irrigated districts of the Godavery and Kistna in the northern part of Madras, and of the north-west provinces and Punjab, drainage is now being taken in hand on a great scale, as outbreaks of fever have shown the results of its neglect.

In Tanjore, south of Madras, where there are above 1,000,000 acres of irrigated rice, without a weed to be seen, the drainage is said to be of the rudest description, yet the health of the people good. The population is more than 700 per square mile in the Delta. But the climate is a dry one; not moist like that of Bengal.

In this part of India the thermometer never falls so low in the cold months as it does farther north; and there appears to be some relation between the range of temperature at that time of the year and the prevalence of fever.

The Hooghly drainage investigation was taken up by the able Col. Haig, then chief engineer of the Irrigation Department, under the orders of the Lieut.-Governor, Sir G. Campbell, though there are no irrigation works there, in hopes of contributing towards the clearing up of the fever question, which has of late years assumed such enormous importance, or rather its enormous importance has only now come to be known. The fever seems partly owing to entire want of drainage, partly to foul drinking-water in the dry season.

Much more information than what Col. Haig managed, with all his super-eminent ability and energy, to collect in the course of a six months' enquiry, is said to be needed; and there is at least one point, the relative levels of sub-soil water, about which we as yet know far too little.

Col. Haig's 'Note' embodies certain facts in regard to the rainfall, surface levels, and drainage discharges of the district; but, as he states, he has no pretension to having exhausted the subject.

It is not, however, more enquiry that is most needed. Enquiry and investigation are the curse of India, as of any country where we do not act up to the light we have: where evils are investigated and re-investigated fifty times over, simply as an excuse for doing nothing.

Everybody has known for half a century that, if the water of Bengal were regulated, the superabundance carried off during the monsoon, and plenty of water, fresh from the rivers, carried through every village in the dry season for irrigation, drinking, and carriage, the whole condition of the people would be immeasurably improved. All that is wanted is that the works should be executed; but this is the one thing that will not be done.

We shall have the country levelled and surveyed, the works planned and approved, report upon report called for, and commission upon commission appointed: anything that can be done as a reason for doing nothing.

1. One question is whether an area of ground, covered to such a depth with water as not to give off malaria from decomposition of dead organic matter, is necessarily unwholesome. This would be very much the condition of an ordinary tank, or of a lake in which the surface of the water is retained permanently at a fixed, or nearly fixed, level.

In the dry climate of Southern India such masses of water are said to be perfectly healthy; but in the warm, moist climate of Bengal the growth of aquatic plants is so prodigious that unless tanks are periodically cleared of the weeds and mosses, which form in time a dense mat of vegetation on the surface, the water, it is said, becomes unfit to drink, and gives out deleterious gases.

But, in point of fact, such cases are extremely rare. As a rule the surface of every tank or collection of water falls several feet during the dry months, and exposes a margin of damp soil more or less saturated with organic matter, which is, of course, unhealthy.

Lower Bengal is one mass of tanks, mostly very small, in which every kind of pollution collects all through the dry season; and from these in many places the people drink. All are natural hollows or formed by excavation—not, as in South and Central India, by damming up the outlets of valleys and hollows. But very few are dug out to such a depth as to leave, during the hot months, a sufficient depth of water to prevent decomposition, and fewer still are properly cleansed and protected from defilement by organic impurities.

Even in Bengal it is the poverty, not the will, of the people that consents to drink bad water. Whenever they have the means, they are glad to fence and line their tanks and wells with masonry. A sure sign of a thriving landowner is: masonry tanks and wells on his property. The rich often bring their water from immense distances, in sealed jars, on men's heads; and there is no such popular application of taxation as in improved water-supply.

2. Observations of the level of sub-soil water are doubtless most important. It is stated, however, that in tracts in Lower Bengal where the fever has been most deadly the water-level in the dry months is at an unobjectionable depth below the surface, say sixteen feet. But it does not follow from this that, during and immediately after the rains, the sub-soil may not give out fatal malaria.

If the water rises too high during the rainy season, the difficulty in a rice-growing district is how to lower it.

The moment you cut a drain the ryots complain of it as injuring their crops by drawing off the water in which they always keep the rice standing to a depth of three to six inches, if they can get enough.

This is, of course, the consequence of partial work. What is wanted is a general regulation of the water, so that everywhere water shall be kept at the level required: some inches over the surface for rice: some feet under the surface, where irrigation is not needed.

3. The ryots always, and justly, prefer running to stagnant water. Irrigation with stagnant water is injurious to health and also to vegetation. Irrigation should be accompanied by improving the natural drainages of the country, so as to keep the water moving, however slowly.

But the difficulty is said to be, how to supply moving water, and make the works pay at the same time, for the whole surface of the country. Everywhere, however, water can be supplied for irrigation at a cost enormously below its value—the average cost of water in works on a large scale being about £2 per acre of rice.

Irrigation works are planned generally to supply one cubic foot per second to every 133 acres, which is the same as one cubic yard per acre per hour, or ⅕ inch in depth on the surface per day. Two-thirds of a cubic yard per hour for 100 days are given for wheat or other 'dry grain,' and two cubic yards per hour for 120 days for rice, including rain—i.e. ⅛ inch per day for dry grains and ⅜ for rice.

To this extent, even if every cultivable acre in the country were irrigated, we can change the water; but, as only a certain proportion of the area commanded by the canals is irrigated, and of this all is not receiving water at the same time, we do, in fact, supply a greater depth, and in that degree renew the water lying on the surface.

In the rice districts in Madras the whole area is irrigated: in the wheat country out of the tropics in the dry-season cultivation a portion only of the area is irrigated.

There is no doubt that the more water that is passed through the rice-fields in a running stream, the better the yield, both because stagnant water is more or less injurious, and because more water means more silt, which renews and fertilises the soil, and leaves, together with matter in chemical combination, behind it food for the plant.

It is certain that if the ground were thoroughly and sufficiently intersected by deep drains, and water enough supplied to meet the increased consumption which this would involve, rice cultivation might be a healthy employment. There is rarely fever in a village surrounded by rice swamp as long as the water is moving—'living,' as the natives say; the fever time begins when the water falls and stagnates.

Expense is the sole thing that stands in the way of all these improvements. As it is, our irrigation works in N. India are said barely to pay the interest on the outlay. Is this because we persist in debiting the works with the cost of all our blunders? Do we make a canal on a bad plan—twice as costly (say) as need be, and only half as useful—excluding navigation and cheap transit; and then, because it only pays 5 per cent., do we say, 'irrigation won't pay'? If we kept our turnpike road or bridge accounts in the same way, without reckoning consequences, should we not find that road-making and bridge-building was of all things the most fruitless application of public money, and that it was better finance to build houses and let them as gin-shops?

The management of the works may be so wrong that, as in Orissa, the people refuse to use the water; and this is the case in only one out of the seven vast works which the Government have executed. The actual results are these; the cost of irrigation on these great works has been from £1 to £3. 10s. per acre, including the navigation; and the actual increased value of crop is from £1. 10s. to £2. 10s. in grain only, besides straw.

Is it not only because we are in such a hurry for results that the people seem slow to take water? Irrigation, unless it come from great rivers in flood season, when it renews the soil, requires manure; and manure costs money; and the people have to get a little money or credit before they can use their greatest boon.

Of the value of the canals for transit, the following may give some idea: Up the valley of the Ganges at least a million tons a year are carried at present prices, a small quantity by the rail at 1½d., besides half as much more paid out of taxes, and the main portion at about ½d. by the rivers; by the canals this would cost about 1/20d., or £200 a mile for a million tons, against £6,000 by rail, or £2,000 by river; a perfect steam-boat canal, 40 yards broad, on that line costing about £3,000 a mile.

The irrigation works in the north-west yield an enormous profit in all, about £1. 10s. in grain only, on an expenditure of £2. 5s. per acre, or 60 per cent., besides the straw and navigation (on the Ganges Canal).

And the area of irrigation is still extending. About 7 per cent. net of this now comes into the treasury. In the Jumna Canals, in the same part of the country, the returns into the treasury are 25 per cent., and in all the Madras districts double and treble that. The question of returns to Government, though a point of importance, is of much smaller consequence than that of total benefits to the community. Besides its being a question of life or death, of health or disease, of civilisation, comfort, and cleanliness, or dirt and barbarism and misery, the average total benefits are at least 100 per cent. The Godavery district used to export £60,000 a year; it now exports, by sea only, £800,000 or £900,000 a year, besides the whole population being well fed and well clothed and housed; so that their home consumption is probably doubled. The 560,000 acres irrigated, then, now yield about £1,100,000 a year more in grain, besides straw and navigation, by an expenditure of about £600,000.

The results of the irrigation and navigation works in the Godavery Delta have been so conspicuous that I cannot but give the following short account: In 1843, when the first sketch of them was made by Sir Arthur Cotton, he and Lady Cotton took up their abode in tents and rough sheds on the bank of the river, or rather on the side of the river-bed; for only a narrow thread of water was flowing down the middle of that bed, and on each side of that thread was a mile and a half, at least, of hot, deep sand. The want and filth and need of every kind around were a continual, pressing sorrow. The weary faces of the women, toiling through the dry river-bed with their waterpots, creeping out of their huts after the exhausting heat of the day to bring the family supply of water between one and two miles, their naked feet sinking at every step in burning sand, were most distressing; and the thought how insufficient the supply after all the labour, painful to look back upon even now.

Sir Arthur and Lady Cotton remained in that district some years, till the works were fairly set on foot.

In 1861, they visited the Godavery Delta again, and describe the happiness of that visit. Instead of dry sand, the river-bed was covered full with abundant water; instead of parched, perishing attempts at cultivation, there were rich crops of many kinds, and trees which seemed to have sprung up as by magic; instead of filthy, waterless villages, there were channels, well filled, flowing everywhere; and instead of the weary, over-worked women, almost all looked well fed, well washed, and comfortable. One great obstacle to religious civilisation thus removed, the time and strength of mind and body need no longer be solely taken up with the daily drudgery which before absorbed every power. But, in this as in other cases, the occurrence of Fever has warned us to look to our drainages.

4. No one, now-a-days, would think of proposing irrigation without drainage.

There is no danger in the one provided the other goes with it.

The engineer's problem is to apportion the one to the other, so as to increase production without injuring health.

5. Whether the physical degeneration of the people in and over Bengal is due solely or chiefly to malaria, or to malaria and rack-renting combined, is just the point which a commission might be appointed to investigate. But the drainage and irrigation works should be executed first. About these there is no doubt. This is as well known as St. Paul's. And the investigation may be carried on afterwards.

Under the permanent settlement the share of the produce of the soil left to the cultivator is often too little for health. A process of slow starvation may thus go on, which so enfeebles the great mass of the people, that when any epidemic sets in they are swept off wholesale. Land is let and sublet to a degree unknown anywhere else. The Zemindar will let his land to a Patnidar, the Patnidar to a Durpatnidar, the Durpatnidar again to a Seypatnidar, and he again may farm it out to an Izaridar.

Under such a system what portion of the produce do we suppose falls to the share of the ryot who tills the soil?

Then, population has increased to a degree that has raised the fear lest it may have outstripped the productive powers of the soil.

After at least half a million souls had (in the estimate of the present collector) been swept off by the fever in the Hooghly district, the population was still at the rate of 1,000 to the square mile.

But the productive powers of the soil under irrigation are enormous. One crop of rice without any manure at all will produce sufficient to feed a population of 2,000 per square mile.

The poor people are glad to go long distances for work and food, if they know where they are to be found. They go readily as coolies to the West Indies and Mauritius. But if Bengal were properly furnished with roads and canals of irrigation, navigation, and drainage, might not a population half as large again as the present be maintained in health and comfort? Are not the vast tracts of jungle—fertile land, but without population—quite as striking a feature in Bengal as the dense masses of rural population in the cleared parts?

6. If a complete system of drainage were carried out, periodical inspection by specially appointed officers would be essential to prevent the destruction of the smaller channels and consequent outbursts of fever. It is astonishing how evils are unseen by eyes accustomed to them.

7. Every village should have its pure water supply. The present state of the supply in Bengal is shocking beyond description. The water drunk by a large portion of India is utterly unfit for men's use, and is often brought from miles distant. Much might be done by the people themselves, under proper supervision, in the way of clearing out and deepening existing tanks. But this should be combined with a fresh water-supply from the great rivers by means of the subsidiary irrigation channels.

Wherever we have irrigation the people have this, and appreciate it highly.

But, if we are to have all these things, there must be, we are told, some tax of the nature of a water-rate (as in towns), to be levied on the whole community.

It is impossible to regulate the drainage and water supply of vast tracts, like those in Bengal, except at an expense which cannot be met, it is said, by the mere receipts from irrigation, which (with navigation tolls in the canals) have hitherto been our sole source of profit. There is no question about returns, however, if the water is used; and, if it is not, it can only be from mismanagement, as in Orissa. Col. Haig remarks upon the 'far stronger feeling of confidence and security which prevails under a Ryotwari settlement' (speaking of the Godavery) 'than under a Zemindari.' When a Cuttack ryot is asked why he does not use the water, which he acknowledges is so profitable, he says, 'What is the use of it, when half the profit goes to the Zemindar and half to the money-lender?' While the water has been generally refused this year, a considerable extent has been irrigated surreptitiously; and when one of the engineers was reporting about it, a Native Revenue official told him he had had his predecessor turned out, and he would have him turned out too if he reported it. Such is the confusion in these districts. Such the relation between the State and the 'creatures of its own creation,' the Zemindars. Such the difference between the Ryotwari and Zemindari tenures.

8. It is here, however, that the Government hesitate, or rather that they have drawn back.

Lord Mayo's Government was in favour of a compulsory rate in all irrigated districts.

Lord Northbrook and Sir G. Campbell are against it.

But, without it, it is said that irrigation and drainage (if the works are to be constructed by Government) can never be carried out on a scale commensurate with the wants of the country.

Is there much diversity of opinion, however, where the water is actually given? But then no compulsion is needed. Are not the people only too glad to get and pay for the water, as fast as they can prepare their fields and get manure? But are we not always in a hurry? and, after shutting our eyes for years to the truth as to the value of irrigation, always trying to force the poor cultivators to take the water the very instant we ourselves are converted to a sense of its value, and charging them for all the blunders we have made in supplying it?

Nay: do we not even go further and make laws enabling Government to charge for the water, even if it is not supplied: if we only intended or promised to supply it?

Was not Lord Mayo's proposed law of this character?

Had he lived, he would have modified it, so as to charge for water only where actually given. But really no law is needed. If we only make the works, bring the water, and sell it at reasonable rates, the people are only too glad to buy it for their fields.

Was not Lord Mayo misled, for the time, by a policy—better at drawing up symmetrical laws which looked well on paper, than in carrying the people with it to do what was needed?

The Duke of Argyll's final decision against such a rate is said to have stopped two or three immense irrigation schemes (one for five millions of acres in Oudh) in the very part of the country which is either now threatened with famine; or, not threatened—the famine is upon us.

But was it so much the 'Duke of Argyll's final decision,' as the mistakes of Lord Mayo's unfinished policy which stopped the irrigation schemes?

Did not Lord Mayo fall, for the time, into the hands of the Fisherman's wife, who never would make the best of what the Enchanted Fish gave her, but always wanted something better? She, after somewhat violently opposing Canalisation for years, went far beyond its demands, and would do nothing till an Act was passed to enable her to tax every Ryot in India for water, as soon as she had good intentions of irrigating his fields. And when she was told she must tax only after she had given the water, she sulked, and would not amend her Act.

So with Loans: there was no end of writing and planning, but it never got beyond paper.

They never borrowed the money, because they were always following some new butterfly of Finance.

And so they never had it to spend.

Nothing can be more just than a partial compulsory water-rate in the irrigated tracts, because, whether the people irrigate or not, they have the enormous benefits of navigation, drainage, drinking-water, forage, &c. Under the Orissa Works, at £3. 10s. per irrigable acre in cost of works, 2¾ rupees an acre would pay 8 per cent., leaving the transit free, and the increase of produce 15 rupees an acre at least.

The water-rate paid in Godavery on about 500,000 acres, at 4 rupees, is £200,000; but the increase of Revenue has been above £300,000.

If no water-rate at all were levied, it would be impossible to prevent the works paying, from the increased revenue due to the increased wealth of the people. As a native gentleman wisely said, the Government of a rich population can never be poor.

But at this moment, including all mistakes in projection from want of experience, and the temporary failure from refusal of water in Orissa, all the new works would show a direct net return of some 20 per cent. into the treasury, and at least 100 per cent. in all.

If the Canal is completed up the valley of the Ganges it will carry two million tons a year at 1/10d. per mile, and at all speeds, from that of the Railway downwards, against 200,000 tons carried by the Railway at 1½d. a mile, though supported by half a million a year paid out of the treasury as interest of its debt.

But Railways are wanted as well as Canals. And as matters now stand, must they not be made before Canals? Must we not do what comes to our hand to promote communication, without limiting ourselves to what is abstractedly best? It has been truly said that, while 'we want waggons to carry hay, we provide phaetons.' But, if we want to get across country, do we not take what the country affords—jaunting car or broken-down gig? People here will give their money and labour to make Railways and not to make Canals. Shall India wait till they get wiser, or let internal improvement, which depends so much on easy intercommunication, stand still till she has made them wiser?

If all the Canals which the great artist has devised, and which he could give men to execute, were made, the works would then convert the world.

Meantime, we should get all the Railroads and common roads made which we could find money or men for; certain that, if not the best and cheapest, they are the next best, next cheapest appliances we can give the country.

Is it not the fact: that we want both Railway and Canal?

And must not the Canal, which will supersede Rail , be very different from any Canal we have yet seen?

But we may believe in its coming—that is, a Canal workable by steam as well as by animal power;—and able to carry at 10 miles an hour.

That we shall see this in India before it appears in Europe is likely.

But will anything save example convert the world?

Meantime, even if we give India only Railways, the people will neither starve nor stagnate.

9. There is no great new irrigation work in India that is not paying ample direct net profits, excepting that of Orissa; and that not at all on account of any real failure in the project, but only from the non-use of the water, which will of course be got over before long, and there is not the least probability of its occurring anywhere else.

Indeed, the so-called failure of the Orissa works is mainly due to the tardy and incomplete execution of the original scheme. Government no sooner saw that the works must be a financial success than they bought them—and then starved them—waiting for more plans, estimates, and paper, before the money to complete them was given. We saw the 'Haywaggon,' in fact, and were charmed with it, and bought it as it stood, half-finished; and have since been doubting whether we can afford to complete the wheels, and whether the tyres should be broad or narrow.

10. The question will now be forced on public attention. It is no longer a question. The famine looms large and terrible upon us, as an awful fact.

It must not, however, be supposed that little is being done in the way of irrigation.

In Bengal alone we have been spending, for some years past, half a million annually; and that is only one province.

There is said to be a practical limit to the rate at which such extensive works can be carried on—viz. available labour supply. If this is pressed upon unduly, wages rise (Oh, would they should!), and with them the price of all materials of construction. In Southern Behar and Orissa we are said to have quite reached this limit, for there has been a considerable increase in rates since the works were begun. But is not one of the most important effects of these works that they help to release the labouring population from their bondage to the high castes and wealthy, and in all ways improve their condition and raise wages? Every district could easily provide labourers for an expenditure of £100,000 a year, requiring about 20,000 people; and £30,000,000 could easily be spent in three or four years.

There is said to have been much, too, in our recent experience of irrigation in Bengal—chiefly the unwillingness of the people to take our canal water, except when driven to it by the failure of the rains—to cause the Government to pause before beginning new schemes, without some such guarantee for the repayment of the interest on the outlay as a compulsory rate would afford. The works are all carried out with loan funds, and the interest must be met from some source. But, as above said, our expenditure has been, and continues to be, £500,000 per annum.

As far as has been seen in India, however, 'the unwillingness of the people to take canal water' really means 'our own bad management' in some way or another.

One can hardly conceive now but that, even had famine been averted, the great drought would not have given a vigorous impulse to this most important class of land improvements.

But famine has come.

In Lower Bengal the field for drainage is boundless.

There, however, the one question which stops the way is whether Government will make the Zemindars, who are the possessors of the soil, pay for the works or not. Here there is great hesitation. Are the Zemindars so selfish and worthless a class as to exercise their considerable influence over the Government in this way? And would they resist, as is said, with all their might?

The drainage, however, of about eighty square miles of swamps on the banks of the Hooghly is now being carried out at the expense of the landowners, under a special Act; and Government would probably have awaited the result of this experiment before extending the Act to greater schemes.

But if the famine interrupts everything it must also urge forward everything.

May it not also force the authorities to look in the face the terrible evils of the whole Zemindarry system? Is not the case something similar to that of the old Bengal army; and, if it is still ignored, may not a similar terrible convulsion ensue?

The subject is so vast that it is impossible to do more than just touch upon the principal points here.