(a) 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 constmction 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.
(b) 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 mle commenced in India. Similarly the British mle ended with a terrible Bengal famine of 1943 that claimed the lives of nearly three millions. 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.
