THE VALUE OF IRRIGATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10062, 7 June 1910, Page 4

THE VALUE OF IRRIGATION.

Among the material boons conferred on Inrtia by British administration, one of the most remarkable is the development of the irrigation system of agriculture, and in that branch of work the Punjab colonies stand pre-eminent. The progress has been so great that even the official report speaks of it as "amazing." The drawback from which the colonists have suffered in past years, the inability of the railway to move their produce, is no longer a source of complaint, and "the great prosperity of these tracts is evidenced by the prices which business men are ready to pay for I market Biles on new railway lines in I the coionT. In the auction sales at Jaranwala, the price realised amounted to over £3,000 per acre, though the land sold was waste, uncnmmanded by the canal, and not „ forming part of any existing town. Material success is not wholly, or even chiefly, accountable for this state of affairs; the desire for improvement has been fostered by education and a system of rewards, with the result that there is little emulation of the insanitary conditions of the villages of the old districts. In their up-to-date villages, and in their use of machinery—stimulated by the dearth of labour —the colonists now show the way to the rest of the Pan jab. Of new projects, the most important will be in Sind, where the aggregate cost of the works is likely s to amount to over £11,000,000. The Madras Government have also two large productive works in contemplation, the Cauvery, costing about £2,500,000, and the Kistna, about £4,500,000. The United Provinces Government has the Sarda project, anticipated to cost £4,000,000; and the Punjab has by no njeana done with its irrigation schemes yet