Arthur Cotton - An Insight

An Insight

Sir Cotton was hated by his administrative superiors—thanks to his loving attitudes towards the people of India. At one point impeachment proceedings were initiated by his superiors for his dismissal

Going through the famine and cyclone-ravaged districts of Godavari, Cotton was distressed by the sight of famished people of the Godavari districts. It was then that he put in process his ambitious plans to harness the waters of the mighty Godavari for the betterment of the humanity.

John Henry Morris in Godavari writes about the work of Sir Cotton thus:

The Godavari anicut is, perhaps, the noblest feat of engineering skill which has yet been accomplished in British India. It is a gigantic barrier thrown across the river from island to island, in order to arrest the unprofitable progress of its waters to the sea, and to spread them over the surface of the country on either side, thus irrigating copiously land which has hitherto been dependent on tanks or on the fitful supply of water from the river. Large tracts of land, which had hitherto been left arid and desolate and waste, were thus reached and fertilized by innumerable streams and channels.

In 1878, Cotton had to appear before a House of Commons Committee to justify his proposal to build an anicut across the Godavari. A further hearing in the House of Commons followed by his letter to the then Secretary of State for India shows about his ambitiousness to build the anicut across the Godavari. His final sentence in that letter reads like this: My Lord, one day's flow in the Godavari river during high floods is equal to one whole years' flow in the Thames River of London. Cotton was almost despaired by the British Government's procrastination in taking along this project.

That Government of India's plans to interlink rivers was long envisioned by Cotton is a fact.

While at Rajahmundry, Arthur Cotton used to attend the Church of the Godavari Delta Mission.