country? The Godavery works alone, in their present unfinished state, pay the interest of £5,000,000.
Is there anything to prevent the Government ordering at once the irrigation of from 250,000 to 500,000 acres in every district in India, including a complete network of steamboat canals of 20,000 or 30,000 miles, embracing all India, and to be completed in five years, with an absolute certainty of two or three times the present interest of money in direct returns? The Sone works are calculated to irrigate about 2,000,000 acres, paying £500,000 water-rate alone, or 12 per cent. on £4,000,000.
The water-rate paid in Godavery is 4rs. per acre of rice; on the Ganges Canal 2½rs. an acre of wheat. Some of the old irrigation in Madras used to pay 20rs. an acre; some now pay, it is said, 12rs., and much pays 8rs.
Two millions a year are now actually paid for goods transit between Calcutta and the confluence of the Ganges and Brahmapootra, a distance of 130 miles, £15,000 a mile per annum; while £3,000 a mile would make a perfect steamboat canal, carrying at ¼r. a ton for the whole distance, or £50,000 for the present 2,000,000 tons, producing a saving on the present traffic of 500 per cent.; this is besides about 1,000,000 tons that would be carried along the first 100 miles of the canal for the Upper Ganges. And at this charge the present traffic would be soon doubled.
On this little line of 130 miles, a saving would be effected of at least £3,000,000 a year, including the new traffic.
