The new hybrid varieties have accelerated agricultural progress in the Tungabhadra region within recent years. culating rapidly. Crossing over to his field, the man stoops over a drainage ditch, scoops up a handful of water, then theatrically spits it out again. "See," he exclaims, "there's so much salt that I can't even drink it." This farmer is being helped by extension workers of the Mysore Department of Agriculture to rid his field of soil salinity, and though several measures have been taken the land is not yet ready for sowing. But the man is impatient; he cannot wait. Unlike Meerappa, he is ready and eager to take on more work. Thosewho know the Tungabhadra region well know that Meerappa's attitude is bred of centuries of insecurity, of political and geographic factors that conspired to rob a man of the fruits of his labour. Since the fourth century, the Tungabhadra has from time to time marked the boundary between warring kingdoms of the South. During the sixteenth century, when the might of the Vijayanagar Empire was challenged by the Bahamani kingdoms of the Deccan, the region became one vast battleground, its people at the mercy of marauding armies. It is said that the Tungabhadra basin was fought over so bitterly be-
cause of its rich and fertile lands. The Vijayanagar kings had built a series of canals-direct diversions from the river-which can be seen near the old capital of Hampi, and many of which are in use till this day. After decades of war, misrule and tyranny the Tungabhadra basin became a desolate wasteland. Even today there are vast areas where the land stretches flat as far as the eye can see, broken here and there by strangelyshaped rock formations. People in these barren wastes seemed destined to have their work destroyed either by plunder or by the rains, which failed with sickening regularity. . Because of this Tungabhadra was conceived primarily as a protective project; though it also has a l72,OOOkw power generating unit, its chief purpose is irrigation. Taking off from the dam are three main canals-two on the right side and one on the leftwhich feed a 4,OOO-mile network of distributaries. So that the benefits of the Tungabhadra Project could be spread over as wide an area as possible, eighty per cent of the command area was set aside for light irrigation, with smaller areas earmarked for what is known as "perennial" and "wet" irrigation. During the early years of the project, rapid development took place on these areas of heavy irrigation where paddy and sugar-cane could be grown. These are traditional crops, known and understood by the people, and for
paddy especially the Tungabhadra farmer has a sort of mystical attachment that cannot be explained merely in terms of its high monetary returns. For the Tungabhadra farmer paddy is king-the measure of a man's prestige, of the respect he commands from his neighbours, of the kind of son-in-law he can get for his daughter. In the light irrigation areas, progress was woefully slow and the chief reason was that farmers could not get returns comparable to rice and sugar-cane. It is here that the new hybrid crops and the high agricultural price they command have made a vital difference. They are a major cause of the spectacular development in the Tungabhadra region within the last three or four years. The fact that a farmer can earn as much, if not more, money growing hybrid or high-yielding varieties of crops has been the decisive factor in changing the agricultural pattern of generations. As Jayakumar Anagol, Deputy Commissioner of RaichUJ:, says: "Prices are the most effective extension agent." Despite high prices, weaning the farmers away from the old crops has not been achieved overnight. It has been a slow, difficult task, and much still remains to be done. But successful examples of the change-over can be seen everywhere. In the village of Banapur, on one of the hundreds of demonstration plots laid out by government agricul-
tural specialists, a farmer stands beside a field of hybrid jowar, a few days away from harvesting. It is a fine crop, as even a layman can tell, its leaves a rich, succulent green, its ears heavy with their weight of grain. "Aren't you convinced now," says the agricultural officer, "of the value of hybrid jowar? Aren't you pleased with this crop you've raised?" The farmer is slow in answering and his reply is still tinged with the suspicion of the past. "How do I know?" he says, "How do I know how good this crop is until I have harvested it?" After persistent questioning he finally concedes that last year he had a yield of twelve quintals an acre and that this crop is nearer eighteen quintals; that if he grew paddy he would earn between Rs. 600 and Rs. 800, whereas this crop will fetch nearly Rs. 1,000. Most important, he concedes that the work involved in raising hybrid jowar-it is susceptible to pests, needs careful interculturing and irrigating-is well worth his while. Today thousands of acres in the Tungabhadra region are sown with hybrid maize, bajra and jowar, and with high-yielding varieties like Mexican wheat, Taichung Native I and IR8 paddy. And along with these crops has come a whole new concept of agriculture which embraces proper land levelling and contouring, efficient utilization of water, soil testing, and the use of pesticides and fertilizer. Evidence of the Tungabhadra farmer's
receptivity to these measures is the fact that in Raichur's Manvi taluka alone, the farmers buy Rs. 500,000 worth of pesticides in a year. If today Tungabhadra stands on the threshold of a bright new era, it is due to the massive efforts of the Mysore Government, aided also by the Central Government. In a sense, it is due most of all to the people of the region who have shown themselves capable of shaking off their crushing inheritance oflethargy and pessimism. Too numerous to be detailed here, the steps taken by the Mysore Government include: vast schemes for reclamation, levelling and deep ploughing -in Raichur, a Rs. 7-crore project has been launched to advance farmers loans for these purposes; to combat the labour shortage, loans for the purchase of bullocks or tractors and a plan to resettle Indians repatriated from Ceylon on some 5,000 acres; an army of extension workers to take modern agricultural technology to the farmer; a road development programme; subsidised sale of plant protection chemicals; two seed processing units; and a soil testing laboratory. Helping in the Tungabhadra Project is the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S.A.LD.). During the early stages of project development, a U.S.A.LD. expert helped with land levelling efforts. At the present U.S.A.LD. is assisting with a Pilot Project for Soil and Water Management to help utilize the irrigation
potential of the area and bring about more efficient management of soil and water. U.S.A.LD. specialists are also assisting in'. demonstrating proper techniq ues and in training a corps of technicians to carry the lessons learned in the pilot area over the entire project. Since April of this year U.S.A.LD. has been associated with the Ford Foundation, the Government of Mysore, and the Central Government in developing Bellary and Raichur under the Intensive Agricultural District Programme (IADP). This IADP District will have its own distinctive features as it will concentrate on all-round development of theTungabhadraProject command area as well as on increasing agricultural output. The Peace Corps is also working in the Tungabhadra region, primarily in the field of agricultural production. Volunteers are helping introduce farmers to new hybrid crops, organizing fertilizer demonstrations, or teaching them how to use pesticides. Once part of the famine belt of the South, Tungabhadra shows promise of developing into a food-surplus area in the near future. As one project officer said, "Even in 1966-67 people were saying that it was Bellary and Raichur that saved Bangalore from famine." Unlike in past years the gigantic dam at Tungabhadra stands today not as a symbol of vast but unused potential, but as as'hioing citadel of hope. END
Birds appear frequently in the boxes created by Joseph Cornell, above left, winner of the Gold Medal for sculpture at the First India Triennale this .year. Above is a tribute to romantic ballet and a famous ballerina. It is a box within a box. The inner one contains a swan, cut out of a 19th-century print and placed in front of an old engraving in which
the tree branches have been cut out and hung like stage flats. This box, faced with blue glass and framed in velvet, has been mounted on the mirrored rear wall of the outer box, which measures only 9t inches high, four inches deep and is lined with feathers. In the nineteen-inch-high box at right, a parrot is perched before an angled mirror. The tiny stamp possibly denotes travel, the flight of a real butterfly or the voyage of a letter.
stored in boxes
The two pictures on this page are details of the box opposite. In the centre niche (above, seen from one side), Cornell has glued a print of a Renaissance portrait. The ceiling over the boy is papered with numerals from a game, while the pillars have been papered with architectural plans. The black lines painted on the glass, which
cross the boy's face like the lines on a gunsight, relate in form to the architectural line drawings, and possibly allude to Renaissance perspective. On the side walls, numbers are painted on a map of Florence, Italy, and rise in ascending order like the scores on a pinball machine. In the corner detail at right, a tilted mirror, reflecting a wooden cube, shows the boy's face peering back at the viewer.
This is the full view of Medici Slot Machine, which Cornell did in 1942.He has always been fascinated by vending machines, and around that time he discovered a particularly striking chewing gum machine in a New York subway station. In this version of a slot machine, a boy appears where the viewer would ordinarily find his own face reflected. He is flanked on either
side by children's toys and cubes faced with prints of Renaissance paintings stacked like gum or candy (detail at right). The presence of real toys and jacks makes the Renaissance child seem less remote. In its richness and complexity, the neat order of its objects, the box might commemorate a lost and longed-for past of rational order where everything had a place.