Under Communism, Tajikistan was a lattice work of irrigation canals, aqueducts and pumping stations that supported collectivized cotton production and other agriculture, but what the war did not destroy has fallen into disrepair.
The son of an army officer who oversaw arms factories in India, and the grandson of a man who worked on irrigation projects in Egypt and India, Dr. Hanbury Brown was delighted to find himself at the center of such intrigue.
Once the Communists came to power in 1949 they mobilized millions of soldiers & peasants to work on irrigation & flood-control projects.
The next ruler, Deva Raya I, emerged successful against the Gajapatis of Odisha and undertook important works of fortification and irrigation.
Production of electricity was combined with the building of irrigation works and water-supply systems for industries and cities.
Furthermore, defective design and maintenance of irrigation works promote the spread of malarial mosquitoes, which certainly afflicted the prehistoric hydraulic communities of the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley.
Until about 1880 the Indus and the other Punjab rivers carried some navigation, but the advent of the railways and expansion of irrigation works have eliminated all but small craft that ply the lower Indus in Sindh.
A square kilometre of irrigation works put out of action by mines costs as much as $1m annually in lost crops, while the benefits of every 50km of cleared roads come to over $250,000 a year.Preventing people stepping on the deadly devices, and helping those who have, is also crucial.
The idealistic Política Hidráulica discourse, linked with 'regenerationism', glorified small-farmer irrigation and promoted hydraulic works and the expansion of irrigation as a socio-economic and cultural-political solution for Spain's bankrupt and 'degenerated' condition in the mid-19th Century.
