3-065-962 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Famine in India: the village well, 1874. 'It is computed that, during the last forty years, above ten millions of people in India have died from the want of water - not by thirst, but hunger and disease or weakness caused by the want of food, to the production of which irrigation is needful...Sir Bartle Frere...[remarks] that "in no other way can money be so advantageously expended, with a view to future production and cheap supply, as in great works of irrigation and internal navigation." This he considers "the greatest safeguard of India against famine in time to come"...Colonel Tyrrell explains how the configuration of the country, its levels, mountain ranges, and watersheds, and the climate, winds, and seasonable rainfall in the higher parts, supply abundance of water, if it were properly intercepted and stored up by the works he prescribes...It is a melancholy confession that the British Government of India has allowed 30,000 [water] tanks, each useful in its district, to fall out of repair. The Village Well, a sketch of which is presented in our Engraving, is designed rather for personal and household use than for agricultural purposes. But water in India is the life of the land, as well as of the people'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.