From http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/2002/10/14/stories/2002101400650900.htm:
"n 1878, Arthur Cotton had to appear before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on India Affairs consisting of 18 members (not one of them an engineer) to justify and vindicate his stand that irrigation expansion any day deserves a better investment than railways: "... the railways cannot carry either the quantities, or at the price, that is essential in India, ... or nothing can be more certain than that in the present case the future of India's millions depends greatly upon whether money is still expended upon Railways, to cost £9,000 a mile and carry 30,000 tons at one penny, or upon canals to cost from £2,000 to £8,000 and carry two or three million tons at one twentieth of a penny, and whether districts are to be put into the state of Tanjore, Kistna and Godavari, or left in the state of the rest of the Carnatic last year and of Orissa, Bihar and Central India a few years ago... " "
See the rest of the article for a plan of Sonti Ramamurthi which has not been followed up.
