Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1951-03-11

who came in from PakiStan put
only two-thirds of that land into
cultivation, and even on that the
average of production declined
Due to Irrational religious preju-
dices" against taking any kind Of
life, natives in certain districts
have violently resisted govern
mental agents seeking to arrest
the advance of swarms of locusts,
Thirty persons were arrested for
destroying insecticide depots. Near
Deesa a causeway of shrubs was
thrown across a stream to aid
locusts in getting to the fertile
fields on the other shore.
Crop Estimate
Only a few of these newspaper
items were submitted to the
spokesman for the Indian En-
bassy. Among them was the black
marketing issue, which the spokes-
man regarded as not sufficiently
well established to warrant COM
ment. On the major questions
adequacy of the food control ma
chinery and the decline in acreage
that spokesman replied with a
decided negative. If a provincial
agency does not toe the line, its
grain will be withheld by the CEN
trail Office until it performs salts
factorily. On the question of
acreage it fatty contradicts the
Indian press. 1t says that in 1949,
or the first year after India was
entirely on its own. the total of
newly reclaimed land for that
year alone was 712 million acres.
(This is more land than Russia
claims to have reclaimed in the
last SO years, and almost as much
as the United States has reclaimed
in any 10-year period.) During
the year in which this spectacular
advance is said to have been made
the Embassy says that million
OF the new acres went to food
crops and only 112 to cash crops.
1t was in this same year, accord
ing to the Embassy, that the pro-
duction of food grains declined by
million tons. This decline has
accelerated.
The Embassy puts the 1851
grain crop at SO million tons, or
barely three-fourths of the mini
mum required to properly sustain
the present population. At the
same time it goes against the
widely expressed opinion of the
Indian press that self-sufficiency
in food is not near at hand. The
Embassy says: 1.-THE governments
policy continues to be the attain
ment of -sufficiency in food
grains by March 81, 1882" Last
December the government cut the
grain ration from IL to 8 ounces
per day per adult. It says the
minimum for a healthy population
is 16 ounces.
Additional information on In
dia's food crisis comes from
Michael Straus, United States
commissioner of reclamation,
just back from India. He travelled
5000 miles within India, inspect
ing irrigated areas and projects
and talking with some 100 Indian
trainees of the United States Rec
lamation Service. He points out
that over a period Of many years
about 400 Indians have been
given training in our irrigation
system, chiefly in field headquar-
tiers in Denver. These men were
competent engineers before being
sent on here by their government,
at its expense, to study our
methods.
Millions of Acres Lost
Mr.. Straus believes that India
is one of the richest of lands in
water potentials, far ahead of our
own West. He is completely opti-
mistic as to her food problem,
provided she gets enough money
fast enough to quickly utilize her
water resources. How much money
would be needed and where it
would be found, he did not care
to guess. He was there to check
plans and found them excellent.
Indeed some of them came out
Of American heads. He cited the
case of one American engineer
who reduced the cost of a dam by
SO million by applying a new
technique for saving concrete. The
Indians gladly adopted the idea.
This, of course. was on paper.
While there Mr.. Straus watched
the $4,000 workers on the great
Bakra Canal. Most of them are
women, and they get 20 cents a
day. He calculated that one of
our best concrete moving ma
chimes could move as much con-
crete from the mixer to the forms
in one day as 1,784 of these wom-
en- could carry in buckets on
their heads in the same period.
In the narrower working space
of a similar American project
there would not be foot space for
that many people. even If they
were otherwise disable. But he
felt that there might be some
thing to the Indian governments
plan of using them, because it
would have to get them work
some way anyhow. And besides
the machinery was not there. In
the hasty drawing of the line be-
tween Pakistan and India, at the
time of the break, few dams,
he says, were left on one side of
the line and their dependent
acres (now dry on the other.
Mr.. Straus estimated the net
loss of irrigated land in India
for the last five years as mil
lion acres a year. He felt that