IRRIGATION IN INDIA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 September 1924, Page 3

IRRIGATION IN INDIA.

A AVONDERFUL SYSTEM. AIILLION AND A HALF ACRES. One of the new wonders of the world is the great Sutlej Valley irrigation, scheme now in course of being carried out in the north-west of India (writes Sir At. de AA r ebb in the Daily Alail). That scheme is designed to irrigate an area, extending south-west of Ferozepore on the north side of the Rivers Sutlej as far south as the confluence of that river with the Chen ah River, about 250 miles, and on the south side of the Sutlej, Panjnad and Indus rivers as far as the borders of Sind, a distance of quite 350 miles. Four great barrages or weirs are contemplated, each to feed canals to irrigate about 1,500,000 acres of land. Of these, three—at Gandasingwala, near Fero/.epore, Sal'manke, 60 miles lower clown, the Islam, 40 miles below Salmanke—will be thrown across the Sutlej, while the fourth, the Paujnad weir, will be erected across the Panjnad (“five rivers”) as the Chenab is called after the Sutlej has joined it on its wav to the Indus.

The cost of the whole scherne will be about £10,500,000, and the gross value of the crops grown annually—cotton, oil seeds, wheat and other food grains—will probably amount to £25,000,000. „ The construction of the great Sutlej \ alley weirs, with their thousands of miles of main and distributary canals withdrawing huge volumes of Sutlej and Panjnad water, will of necessity affect the River Indus in Sind —delaying- the rise of the river in spring and hastening the fall of the river in autumn, and so shortening the irrigation season. This would mean ruin to Sind. And so the beginning of the Sakkur barrage project—the largest irrigation scheme in the world—which had been under investigation for many years, became an urgent necessity. This project was sanctioned last year, and work is now being pushed forward as rapidly as possible. Six great canals (two as large as the Thames) will take off the Indus immediately above the Lloyd barrage, three ®n the east bank, and three on the west bank. These main canals will lead their tribute from the Indus by way of nearly 7000 miles of water wavs, * large and small, over 8,000,000 acres of Central Smd. On 6,000,000 acres of this area (moie than the whole of the cultivated laud of Egypt) will eventually be grown more than 3,300,00() tons of valuable crops—cotton, wheat, idee, millets and sugar cane.