ABSTRACT
Irrigation has always been central to life and society in the plains of South Asia. According to Alfred Deakin, a three-time Australian prime minister and an irrigation enthusiast of early 20th century who toured India in 1890, the region had 12 million hectares (ha) of irrigated land compared with three million ha in the United States, two million ha in Egypt, 1.5 million ha in Italy and a few hundred thousand ha each in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), France, Spain, and Victoria (Australia) ( The Age 1891). Although Egypt and Sri Lanka are better known as hydraulic civilizations, a century ago British India was the world's irrigation champion.
