Mor Irrigation Project

The popular belief that Bengal being a land of rivers and streams and well recipient of rainfall requires no Irrigation, is no longer holding good. It has been found from experience that, though the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, the two mightiest, snow-fed perennial rivers of India, with their innumerable branches and tributaries flow through this province, though the rainfall, seasonal rivers like the Subarnarekha. Damodar, Ajoy, Mayurakshi, etc., with their magnificient discharges, very rich in manural properties, traverse through this province and though the average normal rainfall of 73.5 inches of the province should guarantee all sorts of crops which the local soils permit, it is not in rare occasions that we hear of failure of crops either in one or in another parts of the province due to either drought and deficiency of water or excessive rainfall or floods. The soil of Bengal is gradually loosing its productive efficiency due to the laws of diminishing return, while the Bengal rivers which are so rich in manural properties are not being utilised in fall to replenish the soil properties Agriculture of the province therefore is suffering for want of proper utilisation of the natural resources. Likewise, the industrial development of the province is badly suffering for want of cheap motive power. Coal resources of Bengal which is already exhausting is concentrated at Raneegunge area only and the cost of carriage to remote parts of the province has always been a discouraging factor to the industrialists. The possibilities of other sources of power such as water, wind etc. yet remains to be explored. The steep gorges of the rivers Damodar, Mayurakshi, Teesta, Dharla, Karnafully and the like appear to offer promising results for hydro-electric power. It therefore appears that while nature has showered her bounties in the province, the people have failed to profit adequately by them. The contrast between the bounties of nature and the poverty of man is very striking in Bengal and hence it is rightly said, that Bengalees are poor people in a rich country.