(41) The course for veterinary assistant surgeons should extend over two or three years. Special prominence should be given in the course to the anatomy, physiology, and diseases of cattle (paragraph 256).

(42) The course of study for veterinary surgeons, which should extend over a period of five years from matriculation and should end in a degree, should be settled by conference between the university and veterinary authorities (paragraph 257).

(43) The establishment of an all-India veterinary college is not recommended nor is the expansion of Muktesar as an educational centre (paragraph 258).

(44) At the outset, one of the existing veterinary colleges should be selected for the training of veterinary surgeons but the training should include or be supplemented by a short period of work at Muktesar (paragraph 258).

(45) The course should be open only to candidates nominated by the Government of India, provincial governments or Indian States (paragraph 258).

(46) The additional expenditure involved in adapting the selected college to undertake higher veterinary education should be met by the Government of India (paragraph 258).

(47) Officers recruited for veterinary education and research should be members of the new superior provincial veterinary services. Where necessary, local governments should be prepared to grant special pay as an addition to the pay on the ordinary time scale. The special pay should be personal to the individual officer and should be based on his qualifications and experience (paragraph 259).

(48) The provincial veterinary college should be the natural centre for research work in the provinces. All senior officers employed in the colleges should be expected and encouraged to undertake investigations in their own special spheres (paragraph 261).

(49) Muktesar is well suited for the prosecution of research into animal disease and a second Imperial Institute of Veterinary Research is not required. In view of its isolation, Government should, however, take all reasonable measures to increase the amenities of life at Muktesar (paragraph 262).

(50) The scientific staff at Muktesar should always be maintained at full strength and the appointments at present vacant should be filled as soon as suitably qualified candidates are available (paragraph 262).

(51) When an appointment at Muktesar, including that of the Director, falls vacant, the officer recruited to fill it should be given a scale of pay commensurate with his special qualifications and experience (paragraph 262).

(52) The Director of the Muktesar Institute should be selected on the ground of scientific qualifications (paragraph 262).

(53) An officer with administrative experience should be attached to the staff of the Muktesar Institute to relieve the Director of administrative work (paragraph 262).

(54) Scientific institutions such as Muktesar should be provided with a thoroughly competent staff for secretarial work and estate management (paragraph 262).

(55) The expenditure on research work at Muktesar should be separated as fully as possible from that on manufacturing operations. Provinces and States should share in any profits from the manufacture of sera and vaccines in proportion to their purchases (paragraph 263).

(56) The revival of the appointment of Inspector General, Civil Veterinary Department, or the creation of a post of Veterinary Adviser to the Government of India is not recommended (paragraph 264).

(57) A small Standing Committee of the Council of Agricultural Research to deal with veterinary matters should be constituted. The chairman of the Committee should be the whole-time member representing animal husbandry on the Council of Agricultural Research (paragraph 264).

(58) This Standing Committee should have the power of co-opting members and of constituting special committees for particular subjects (paragraph 264).

(59) The administrative control of the Muktesar Institute should pass to the Director of the Institute (paragraph 264).

MO Y 286-21a

CHAPTER X

IRRIGATION

266. Irrigation plays so large a part in agriculture in India that no investigation into rural conditions in this country

INTRODUCTORY. would be complete which failed to examine its present position and future possibilities from the agricultural point of view. The problems which the irrigation engineer is called upon to solve necessarily differ widely in different parts of India, but it may be said that, in general, these problems fall into three main classes.

In the first class, the problem is how best to utilise the waters of rivers without recourse to the construction of storage works. In some cases, this is possible without raising the natural level of the river. In others, it entails the construction of weirs. The problem is in general solved by conducting the water drawn off from the rivers along contour levels sufficiently high above the general level of the fields to be irrigated to permit the water to flow on to them by gravity. The irrigation canals of the Punjab supply notable examples of overcoming the difficulties of crossing secondary lines of drainage, and of so aligning the main courses and subsidiary channels that the maximum area of the country is benefited.

The second main division consists of the problems arising out of the management of the deltas of rivers in such a way as to combine the protection of cultivation from wandering rivers with the regular supply of water necessary to the full development of cultivation in these fertile areas. The chief examples of the successful solution of these problems are to be found in the management of the deltas of the Godavari, the Kistna and the Cauvery in the Madras Presidency. We shall have occasion to notice, later on in this chapter, the need for examining what can be done in the case of the far more difficult problems presented by the Ganges delta in Bengal.

The third class of works are those in which the surplus water, whether the result of monsoon rains or melting snows, is stored by means of dams across the line of flow and released gradually as required for the purposes of cultivation. Some notable works of this character have already been constructed and, when the great projects now in progress for utilising the waters of the rivers are completed, it will be, in the main, only from works of this class that any large extension of irrigation may be anticipated.

The reasons which have led to the construction of irrigation works vary as greatly as do the types of those works. In some cases, for example, in Sind and over large areas of the Punjab, where the rainfall is normally insufficient to ripen the crop, no cultivation is possible until schemes of irrigation carry the essential water to the land. In other cases,

as in parts of the Deccan, the rainfall, though normally sufficient to ripen the crop, is yet so precarious that without irrigation there can be no assurance to the cultivator that his crops will mature. Yet again there are cases where irrigation is needed more as a precaution against famine than as a requirement of the normal year. The canals in the United Provinces, Bihar and Orissa and the Central Provinces provide examples of this type.

The last general examination of the position in regard to irrigation in India was carried out by the Indian Irrigation Commission which was appointed in 1901. The Report of that Commission which appeared in 1903 was so comprehensive and its recommendations so exhaustive that no further enquiry of a similar character has been considered necessary. The great development of irrigation which has since taken place has been, in the main, on the lines laid down by the Commission.

267. In Chapter I, we have mentioned the obstacles to agricultural development consequent on the unequal distribution STATISTICAL. of the rainfall of India over the country, its frequently irregular distribution throughout the season and its liability to failure or serious deficiency. Except in the submontane tracts of the Himalayas, East Bengal, Assam, Lower Burma and the narrow strip between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, the absolute security of the harvest throughout India depends on the existence of some form of irrigation. From time immemorial, therefore, the cultivators have sought to supplement and conserve the rainfall by the construction of wells and storage reservoirs, and by bunding streams. In some parts of India, considerable capacity for organisation was developed for this purpose as the phad system of irrigation which still exists in the Nasik and Khandesh districts of the Bombay Presidency and the innumerable tanks in the Madras Presidency, many of which are undoubtedly of great antiquity, bear witness. There are some notable instances of large irrigation works carried out in ancient days in India. The oldest and most famous of these is the Grand Anicut across the Cauvery in Madras which dates back some 1600 years and, even before the improvements effected in the nineteenth century, irrigated over 600,000 acres. In the north, two canals were constructed from the Jumna; that now represented by the Western Jumna Canal is attributed to Firoz Shah in the fourteenth century and was renovated by Akbar in 1568 and remodelled by Ali Mardan Khan in 1628, while work on the second, which developed into the existing Eastern Jumna Canal, was started by Shah Jehan in the seventeenth century. The original Upper Bari Doab Canal was built by early rulers and brought water to Lahore and to the sacred tank of Amritsar. Some of the inundation canals taking off from the Indus are also of ancient date. These examples suggested the construction of those large perennial irrigation works which have been such a notable feature of British administration.

The Table below shows the development of irrigation in British India since the year 1908-09, the first year in which figures for irrigation

were recorded in the " Agricultural Statistics of India" in a fairly

complete form :—

The area irrigated in 1920-21 was the largest which has yet been recorded. The fall in subsequent years was due to the fact that timely rains, and especially timely winter rains, considerably reduce the demand for water everywhere, more especially in the United Provinces and the Central Provinces.

The part which irrigation plays in the rural economy of the different provinces varies greatly from province to province as will be seen from the Table given below which brings out clearly its importance in Sind, the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Madras, the United Provinces and Bihar and Orissa. The figures are averages of the five years 1921-22 to 1925-26 :