1 Annexation — and After. 219
2 Punjab triple canal scheme, now nearing its completion,
3 will be the means of fertilizing another 2,000,000
4 acres of waste land. Many crores of rupees are being
5 spent on this gigantic undertaking ; and there could
6 be no better testimony to the present prosperity of
7 the province than the fact that the promoters of the
8 scheme anticipate a profit of 7 J per cent, on the
9 capital outlay.
10 Canals and railroads have revolutionized the con-
11 ditions of life in the Punjab. By converting vast
12 arid wastes into teeming plains, and by enabling
13 the cultivator to place his produce on the world's
14 markets, they have increased enormously the ma-
15 terial wealth of the people ; at the same time
16 prices have been equalized, caste and tribal prejudices
17 have to a large extent been obliterated, and the
18 danger of serious food famines has been reduced to
19 a minimum. As a recent writer has well said,
20 not only do such great works as these increase
21 prosperity : they create it. " Two of the Punjab
22 canals have literally converted desolate, uninhabited
23 places into thriving countries. Along the banks of
24 the Chenab Canal (a portion of the triple project)
25 now stretch fields and villages inhabited by a million
26 people, where twelve years ago a few nomads
27 wandered over a desert of parched earth and camel-
28 thorn. The State irrigation works of India are of
29 their kind the greatest and most beneficent triumphs
30 of engineering that the world has seen." 1
31 The judicial system set up by the Board was an
32 entirely new creation. Like the revenue system it
33 1 Studies of Indian Life, by Sir Bampfylde Fuller, p. 195.