The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.136

v1.c15.136

We return to Rohri on the Indus. The North-Western Railway now runs to the east of the river and soon enters the Punjab. Not very long ago all this land was a desert. To-day, as the result of a great investment of British capital, irrigation works have changed the whole aspect of the country. The plain of the Indus has become one of the chief wheat fields of the British Empire, for wheat is the principal crop in the Punjab, in parts of Sind, and—outside the basin of the Indus itself—in the districts of the United Provinces which lie about Agra. The wheat production of India on an average of years is five times as great as that of the United Kingdom, and about half as great as that of the United States. In the three years 1910–12 the export of wheat from India to the United Kingdom exceeded that from the United States to the United Kingdom.