Question

Write short notes on:

1. Colonel Pennycuick
2. Famine in British India

Answer 1

1. Colonel Pennycuick: Colonel Pennycuick was an Army Engineer and Civil Servant who also served as a member of the Madras Legislative Council. He decided to divert the west-flowing Periyar river draining into the Arabian Sea to the east so that it could irrigate lakhs of acres of dry land dependent on the Vaigai river. Though Pennycuick and other British engineers went ahead with the construction, braving nature’s fury and the dangers of poisonous insects and wild animals, the consumption was disrupted by relentless rain. Since he could not get adequate funds from the British government, Pennycuick went to England and sold his family property to mobilise money to fund the project, which was completed in 1895. The Mullai Periyar Dam continues to irrigate agricultural lands in Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Sivaganga, and Ramanathapuram districts.
2. Famine in British India: The Bengal famine of 1770, took a heavy toll of about 10 million people or nearly one-third of the population in Bengal. This is how British rule commenced in India. Similarly, the British rule ended with a terrible Bengal famine of 1943 that claimed the lives of nearly three million. Amartya Sen, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1998, who as a young boy saw people dying on the streets of Kolkata wrote a path-breaking study of it.