TEN THOUSAND MILES OF RAILWAY FOR MADRAS.
THE prevention of famines in Southern India, though immensely difficult, is not so difficult as it looks,—that is to say, it is possible, and possible without sacrificing every object of government to that of keeping the people alive. We do not believe, it is true, that Joseph's plan in Egypt, which the Times appears to favour, would succeed. That early Jewish Premier knew the famine was coming, and could pro- vide for a definite need, at an expense which, if the famine had not come, would have rendered the Treasury bankrupt, but as it was, made the State owner of all surplus wealth. Housing a two years' supply of grain in the villages of Madras would be enormously expensive, and the regular sale of it in good years—which would be indispensable—would anni- hilate the last vestiges of private trade. Nor do we be- lieve that the "ultimate remedy," the irrigation of the whole country till Madras is as Lombardy, can as yet, while the country is so poor and so little civilised, be safely at- tempted. The expense would be too great for the resources of the State. Madras engineers and English jobbers are always eager for the experiment, and both of them, though from very different motives, promise unheard-of profits ; but neither of them can show a new Indian canal (a canal, that is, not assisted by old native works) which produces a clear seven per cent, in cash dividend for its owners. The Madras Irrigation Company, which just now is availing itself of the famine to reopen its old case, confesses even in the form of its plaints that it is not sure of large dividends, for if it were, it could find the remaining money needed without a guarantee, or would be ready to transfer its guarantee from the State to capitalists who would lend the money still wanted to complete the work on debenture. The India Office would consent to that reason- able and honourable arrangement without a word of remon- strance. But we do believe that the native form of irrigation, the formation of vast tanks, lakes, and reservoirs of water, the method which made Tanjore a garden, could be pur- sued to a much greater extent without inordinate expense ; that the villagers could be taught to sink deep wells, if the State would only find the brick-work ; and that artesian wells, on the plan adopted by General Daumas in Algeria, could be sunk without any very ruinous outlay. The districts to be covered are very great, but an artesian well could be sunk in every hundred (talook) without ruining the State, and would reduce the losses from a famine-year at least one-half, by rendering it possible to keep the animals alive. The storage of water could be effected, if the India Office sincerely wished it, much more cheaply than the storage of grain, and without involving grants of money to a population not yet fitted, if they ever will be fitted, to endure a Poor Law. All these plans might wisely be tried, and tried by the State, through the Cooper's Hill Engineers, without delay, and without pledges which the State may find it inconvenient to keep ; but the true remedy; lies elsewhere, not in the increase of production to an amount for which there is as yet no market, but in a vast and sudden increase in the means of distribution. India throughout its extent, but especially in the South, has just arrived at the stage where roads are indispensable, yet roads of the old kind cannot be made without preposterous and indeed unendurable losses. If we could order the whole population to labour for half its time on State roads without pay, we might in ten years cover the Presidency with firm roads, which would yield no revenue, but which would gradu- ally develop traffic, and would make communication in a year of famine comparatively easy. This is what Roman preefects would have done, and what a Russian Government of India would do ; but the plan is opposed to every English notion of right and wrong, and would involve in execution almost as much misery to the millions as the famine does. We can only supply roads of a kind which will pay for themselves, and those roads must be in India, as in the Western States of America, Railways, railways built as lightly, as cheaply, and with as steep gradients as scientific knowledge will allow. There is not the slightest reason why they should be built to allow of high speeds. Ten miles an hour, the speed of an English gig, is sufficient to bring grain from the North-West to Travancore in four days, that is, quite as quickly as there is any necessity for bringing it, and quite ten times as quickly as it can now be carried. There is not the slightest need for a wide gauge, or for grand tunnels, or for stations better than sheds, or for rails of great weight, or for brick bridges, or for any attention to aesthetics in the construction of the roads, All that is wanted is rough, safe, slow railways, to be built upon Government land, to be fitted with the thinnest and cheapest rails that will bear the traffic at all, and to be con- sidered first and last not " engineering triumphs," or " evid- ences of civilisation," or " outcomes of the Western brain," but the convenient make-shifts of overpressed Poor Law Guardians. Such railways can be constructed, if contractors can be kept off them, for less than £5,000 a mile, and if se constructed will indubitably either prevent famine, by allowing free traffic in grain, or enable the State in an exceptionally bad year, easily to relieve it. India is for the purposes of grain-production a planet, with so many climates, so many kinds of grain, and so• many varying conditions of soil that a general famine is not to be expected. There probably never has been a year, cer- tainly there never has been one under British rule, when the vast continent, as largo, be it remembered, as all Europe west of the Vistula, did not produce grain enough to feed its people, and all that is needed to make hunger impossible are means of distribution and money to buy the food. About the money there is no serious difficulty. The people will accumulate gradually under their new tenure, imperfect as it is, and as they accu- mulate, Government can step forward, as the Government of France does, as universal muhajun, and lend them in diffi- cult years the money they require to keep alive. Their jewels, their lands when once secured them, and their future crops are security enough, quite as good security, Government being absolute, as the Government of France obtains through its Monts de Piet4. The single necessity is the distributing railway, and as experience in Madras has proved, ten thousand miles of light railway could be built for fifty millions sterling,—that is, for two millions a year in interest at four per cent. Supposing one-half this in- terest to be lost for over, the expanse of Poor Relief for Southern India—a million a year—would not be unen- durable, while the immense probabilities are that not one shilling would be sacrificed. There is ne competing sea. There are no competing rivers. There are no roads, com- peting or other. All the traffic of twenty millions of people must pass over the iron roads, and if the roads are but cheap and the tariffs low that traffic must pay. It is beginning to pay well even on roads built, at enormous expense for so poor a country, to carry at twenty miles an hour traffic which could just as advantageously have been carried at ten. The circumstances never were so advantageous. India is borrowing at four per cent. Parliament, appalled as it will yet be by this present famine, which will exceed in real magnitude any calamity of our time, will be just in the mood for a large plan.. The Public Works Department, just organised up to its full strength, is about to lie idle at enormous cost. There are masses of labour to be had for bare food. And finally, all men are willing that a great scheme, a scheme which at least will secure that South India shall never again be cut off from food-supplies, shall be fairly tried, tried with Government and the people alike eager that it should succeed. Of the gain to commerce we say nothing, but it must be immense, for twenty millions of industrious, orderly, and submissive people would be enabled to communicate with each other as freely as if they were all inhabitants of the same city. Of the political gain we say little, for Madras, even as it is, is the easiest Presidency to govern,. but the work of civilising the country would be rendered a hundred times more easy. We content ourselves with main- taining that the Government could at a risk quite within the power of the Treasury to endure—a risk, too, of the most shadowy kind place Southern India altogether beyond the worst risks of famine, bring its officers, and its supplies, and its power generally within a hundred miles of the most remote village in the country, and make the future task, the universal provision of water by wells, tanks, and aqueducts, comparatively cheap• and easy. That with such a system of feeders in existence the existing railways would at once become sources of a large revenue is a minor point, as is also the consideration that the military difficulty of South India, the cost and cumbrousness of transport, would be at an end. The single argument it is needful to press is that for the safety of the population nothing is required but sufficient means of transporting food without reliance on animal labour, and that sufficient means can be provided, probably with advantage to the Treasury, but certainly without exhausting it.
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