Watering India

A couple of weeks ago, the NYRB included a piece by one Christopher de Bellaigue, written about three books about the water of India, in particular about the River Ganges. With NYRB having prompted notice of India about a year ago at reference 1, and with notice of a book about the Partition about a year ago at reference 2. With my own dim memory of a visit to (H.M.S.) Ganges getting on for ten years ago now, not seeming to have made it to any of the posts arising from our visit to Ipswich, in search of my birthplace, in late September, 2010. I remember Ganges, long closed, being a rather shabby looking place from what used to be the main gate, with the famous mast present but oddly diminished.

Ordnance Survey and gmaps between them run the place down to Shotley Gate, across the water from both Harwich and Felixstowe. With the main gate showing up in Street View at the bottom of Caledonian Road, off the bend in the B.1456. A view which I remember, so I am reasonably sure that we did run the place down in 2010. Also the place called Holbrook School, a place with a naval flavour, attended by both the naval uncle and various acquaintances. Possibly prompted in part by a chap at TB telling us about his glory days as the Ganges Button Boy. No mention of him in the blog either, with nearly all the buttons being the computer sort. But there was reference 4.

However, I digress from watering India. In amongst a lot of stuff in the Bellaigue piece about the doings of Hindu gods and goddesses in and around the Ganges, there were some facts and figures which impressed me.

Water has always been important on the subcontinent, which meant that the British took a keen interest in the weather during their time there. In the comings, goings and occasional failure of the monsoons.

Notwithstanding, between two and three million people died in a famine in Bengal in 1942, triggered by the conjunction of the Japanese invading the rice fields of Burma and a cyclone, but greatly aggravated by Churchill ruling that any food going had to go to the army. A story that I would like to get to the bottom of.

The British started the subcontinental taste for large waterworks, for the fight against the vagaries of the rain, a fight  now expressed as hundred of dams in the foothills of the Himalayas, with the Ganges Canal system connecting two arms of the Ganges, the idea being to facilitate irrigation of the region, the Doab, between the two arms. The two arms rising in the Himalayas and curving round to run south east, more or less in the centre of the map above. A Canal System first built in the middle of the nineteenth century and still going strong now.

Which took me to the Times Atlas, which includes a fine two page spread of the physical geography of the northern half of the subcontinent and which served to remind me how the Indus basin to the west and the rather larger Ganges basin to the east were the two agriculturally rich parts of India worth conquering by the Mughals. The first of which is now Pakistan and the second of which is mainly India, but with the deltas going to what is now Bangladesh. And as Bellaigue puts it, the partition of India cut across the hydrological facts on the ground, very much as the partition of Berlin (to which I shall return shortly) cut across the railway facts on the ground. Leading to all kinds of problems.

Something else to get to the bottom of would be the water agreements between India and Bangladesh on the use of the water which starts in the first but ends in the second, bottom right on the map above. Do such agreements exist? Are they fair and sensible? Do India and Bangladesh do better with their rivers than the US and Mexico do with the Colorado?

Bellaigue also tells us that the groundwater of India is being sucked dry by thousands of tube wells (often paid for by well intentioned charities), and that the country is probably heading for a water crisis - while the powers that be - in particular the rather unsavoury President Modi and his rampant Hindus - chase other hares.

PS 1: Bing was not very good at finding physical geography maps of the Indian subcontinent. But I thought that included above would be better than snapping the relevant pages in the Times Atlas. Fine volume from 1968 though it is.

PS 2: later: there is plenty of material on the 1943 Bengal Famine out there. Starting with the Wikipedia article, I fairly soon found my way to a copy of the Government of India's Woodhead Report of 1945, picking up various other articles on the way. Further notice in due course.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-better-number.html. With the book about India being the last of those mentioned here.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/01/partition.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/09/. The relevant posts start on September 27th.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=Lithuanian+Evangelical+Lutheran+Church.