consider that an improvement in social and economic conditions will be likely to result from interspersing a suitable proportion of these amongst the population. We are also of opinion that provision should be made for a few large grants of land of some 2,000 to 4,000 acres on terminable leases to individuals or groups of individuals. The actual cultivation would, no doubt, be carried on by tenants, but these would have skilled guidance and the grant as a whole would derive all the benefit that follows from a single control. In this way, as the Indian Cotton Committee pointed out, the agricultural development of the tract would be greatly facilitated. Further, the large scale production, which these grants would mean, would assist the surrounding small holders in marketing their produce, and should go far to solve the difficult problem of securing a proper price for it. In this connection, we are impressed by the many advantages attaching to the planting of extensive and homogeneous areas with a single variety of cotton well suited to local conditions. Where this can be achieved, the risk of deterioration by cross-fertilisation between the improved variety and inferior cottons is removed. Furthermore, the fact that local ginneries handle no cotton other than the approved variety insures to the cultivators a supply of pure seed at the lowest possible cost. Again, marketing arrangements are greatly facilitated by the existence in the tract of a large volume of one variety of high class cotton. Purchasers soon discover that cotton from such a tract can be relied upon both for purity and quality. The reputation of the district for cotton is established and soon becomes widely known, and, if marketing arrangements are satisfactory, the cultivator is thus assured of the maximum premium for the high quality of his produce. The information at our disposal goes to show that, in the Indian State of Rajpipla, where regulations have been enforced over a period of four years compelling the cultivator to grow cotton of an approved variety, highly encouraging results have already been obtained. Again, Government in the Sudan have taken power to enforce the creation and maintenance of areas in which one variety of cotton only is grown. Here also results have, we are told, entirely justified the wisdom of this provision. With these facts in mind, we would suggest to the Government of Bombay that they should very carefully examine the possibilities of attaching to occupancy rights in Crown lands to be newly colonised as part of the Sukkur Barrage scheme, the obligation to sow only such cotton as may be provided or approved by the Department of Agriculture. The cotton of the entire tract could then be kept pure by the application of the Cotton Transport Act. We are well aware that such a suggestion involves a departure from existing practice, but we are of opinion that the benefits in terms of financial advantage to the cultivator and to the community are likely to be so considerable as fully to justify a bold experiment in the direction indicated. The third problem to be considered is that of securing adequate fuel supplies to the irrigated area. It is clear from the Punjab experience that no private person is likely to undertake the formation of plantations in irrigated areas owing to the length of time which must elapse before they yield a return in any way comparable with that from ordinary cultivation. The evidence we took in the Punjab showed that such plantations do not come into full bearing for fifteen years, after which they may yield a net profit of as much as Rs. 25, or, allowing for the water rate paid per acre, Rs. 28. It is estimated that the interim revenue received from the plantation during the first fifteen years should meet, and, perhaps, slightly exceed, the cost (including interest on capital outlay) of its formation and maintenance. It is possible that Government would obtain a larger return from land placed under plantations than would be received if the land were disposed of in the ordinary way. For the reasons given in our chapter on Forests, the establishment of such plantations is most desirable if they can be shown to be profitable. We recommend that the financial considerations involved should be carefully examined and that, if the result is satisfactory, the Forest and Irrigation departments should, in consultation, decide what percentage of the area at the disposal of Government can suitably be allotted to the establishment of such plantations and how far the provision of a wider belt of land along the canal banks than it is customary to devote to the growth of trees would meet the case. The two departments should then work out a definite scheme for the formation of plantations, either along canal banks or in isolated blocks elsewhere. THE POSITION BENGAL. IN 292. The problem in Bengal differs from that in most other parts of India in that it arises from the presence of too much rather than of too little water. Even in the west of the province, which has a comparatively short rainy season and, therefore, offers considerable scope for the extension of irrigation, the liability of low lying lands to inundation by river flood is a serious obstacle to the extension of cultivation of such a profitable crop as sugarcane. The intimate relation between the drainage system of the province and the prevalence of malaria and water-borne diseases and the bearing this has on the well-being of the population are fully realised. The improvement of the drainage system has accordingly long been regarded as the most potent weapon which can be forged in the fight against disease. It is essential to the transport of jute and other agricultural produce in a province which depends so largely on its waterways as a means of communication that they should be kept open to navigation, but, in their upper reaches, the rapid extension of the water hyacinth makes this a task of ever increasing difficulty and they are throughout liable to silting and deterioration owing to changes in the general drainage system. The Irrigation Department, which has thus to fulfil a multiplicity of functions which do not fall to the lot of similar departments elsewhere, only became a separate department in 1921, when it was formed out of the Public Works Department. It is a small department which consists, in its superior ranks, of the Chief Engineer and Secretary to Government and four superintending engineers. The relative importance of the activities of this department in regard to irrigation, navigation and embankments and drainage can be gauged from the following figures taken from its report for 1925-26 :— Thus the Irrigation Department in Bengal has to deal more with the improvement of navigation and sanitary conditions and the control of flood water than with irrigation proper. As we have mentioned, there are areas in Bengal, especially in the west of the province, which are suited for an extension of canal irrigation and of minor works of all kinds. We would refer in passing to the excellent work which is being done in the Bankura and, to a lesser extent, in the Birbhum districts by co-operative irrigation societies. We are glad to note the assistance which is given by the Irrigation Department to these societies. It is not, however, the problems connected with irrigation proper that have caused us concern so much as those which arise in regard to drainage and the preservation of existing river channels from deterioration. These problems are singularly complex and difficult. No single department can be expected adequately to deal with all the water problems of Bengal and the first step which should be taken towards their solution is the complete separation of the irrigation branch from the navigation and embankments and drainage branches and the formation of two entirely separate departments. No general survey of the irrigation possibilities of Bengal has yet been made. The first duty of the new Irrigation Department would, therefore, be to formulate a general scheme for irrigation development based on a survey in such detail as would ensure ordered progress. This is a point of special importance in tracts which, in the nature of things, do not lend themselves to large projects and where facilities for the construction of a number of small schemes exist in the same drainage area. We would next draw attention to the critical importance of the work which awaits the new department which would deal with navigation, embankments and drainage and which might be re-named the Waterways and Navigation Department. The problems of the Gangetic delta and the Damodar river are typical of those associated throughout the world with rivers whose courses lie through broad alluvial plains and at whose mouths extensive deltas have developed. Such rivers, in their natural state and when uncontrolled by the hand of man, tend in seasons of flood to overflow their banks and to spill their water over large areas of alluvial land. By the action of the swollen current upon the soft soil of which their banks and beds are composed, they tend also to change their course, sometimes by many miles from season to season. Thus, both the raising of the land level and the creation of new deltaic land take place more or less evenly over the whole lateral area of the tract. It is these two processes in combined action that have built up the alluvial deposits of the subcontinent and also the deltaic lands lying at the mouths of the great rivers. They are continuous in their operation and to-day, as in past centuries, it is by them that the rock masses of the Himalayas are compelled to pay constant tribute alike to the rich plains of the interior and the extending mud banks of the Sunderbunds. Favourable agricultural conditions and convenience of communication and transport, combined often with considerations of military advantage, lead man to build his habitations and to prosecute his commercial activities on the banks of great rivers. In order to protect himself and his property against risk of floods, he heightens the river banks by building embankments, bunds or, as they are known in America, levees; and so contrives, even during periods of flood, to confine the stream within its normal channels. But the waters of the river continue to carry their burden of silt and, at seasons when the stream is slack, large quantities of this are deposited in the bed of the river. The force of the current tends in flood season to scour, and so to lower, the river bed. But in the flat reaches of a river where the stream is broad and the current slow, the tendency often is for deposit to outweigh denudation and thus, over a series of years, to raise the bed of the river and with it the flood level. This, in turn brings about the necessity for the construction of still higher embankments, until finally a stage is reached at which the surface of the river, flowing high above the level of the adjacent lands, has ceased altogether to relieve the riparian tracts of their superfluous water: the river can no longer drain the lands through which it flows. Where no bunds prevent the river from overflowing its banks, the floods of each succeeding season bring a further deposit of fertile silt to wide areas of territory; while, at the same time, the flood waters cleanse and purify the surface of the land, sweeping away decaying vegetable and animal matter and purging the streams, ditches and ponds of insects and impurities, many of them harmful to man and beast. Inevitably the bunding of such rivers must, to some extent, incline both to arrest this natural regeneration of fertility and to give rise to a deterioration in the health of the population in the riverain tracts. There can be little doubt that certain districts have tended, as a consequence of the interference by man with the forces of Nature, to decline in natural fertility and to become the breeding ground of malaria and other diseases. This process is occasionally, and sometimes seriously, aggravated by the construction of railway and road embankments across the lines of natural drainage. This group of problems is by no means confined to north and northeastern India. It has presented itself with tragic emphasis in the United States by the devastating floods of 1927 in the Mississippi Valley. It is known to exist in many other parts of the world. The problems that await solution in Bengal, if, indeed, all the problems presented can be completely solved, are thus complex in the extreme. The order in which they should be attacked, the nature of the measures to be adopted, and the amount which can properly be spent on them, having regard to other urgent calls on the public purse, will all require most careful investigation and the provincial legislature will rightly require an authoritative opinion on these questions as a preliminary to granting its approval to any scheme which may be put before it. We accordingly recommend to the earnest consideration of the Bengal Government the desirability of appointing a committee of experts which should include among its members at least one who is familiar with the management of the deltas of large rivers in other countries, such as, for example, that of the Mississippi and we would suggest that one of the specific directions to such a committee should be to consider and report upon the advisability of setting up a Provincial Waterways Board. 293. The irrigation problems of the North-West Frontier Province must be considered not in respect of the magnitude IRRIGATION THE IN of the irrigation systems of that small province NORTH-WEST but in relation to their importance to the well-being FRONTIER PROVINCE. Of of the agricultural community. The province possesses three government canal systems which, between them, irrigate 370,000 acres or sixteen per cent of the total cropped area, a percentage which is only exceeded in Sind, the Punjab and Madras. More important in the aggregate, however, are the district and private canals which, between them, irrigate another 400,000 acres. By far the greater part of this is under the district canals which, with the exception of the Paharpur Canal in the Dera Ismail Khan district which was constructed by the Punjab irrigation engineers, were constructed by the people themselves with or without the help of Government and are in the charge of the deputy commissioner of the district. They were constructed without competent, or, indeed, any, technical supervision and it is not surprising, therefore, that they are badly aligned, scantily provided with drainage crossings, ill regulated and altogether badly equipped. We were informed that the canals in the Dera Ismail Khan district, which at the time of our inquiry had no engineering staff in charge of them, are in a specially unsatisfactory condition, which arises, in the main, from the fact that there is no direct outlet to the Indus for the waters of the many torrents which come down from the surrounding hills in violent spate during the monsoon months and which, in consequence, wipe out bunds, breach canals and turn valuable lands into a network of ravines. The result is that considerable areas are going out of cultivation and many villages are being forsaken. We would suggest that the possibility of transferring the most important district canals, if not all of them, to the charge of the Irrigation Department should be examined. We were informed that such a transfer was effected in the case of the Kabul River Canal in 1903-04 and that the area under irrigation on that canal increased by forty-five per cent in seven years from that date. If, for reasons of the existence of which we are not aware, there are objections to the transfer of the canals to the |