Other imports of minor importance are wearing apparel, twist and yarns (of a value of nearly three lakhs, or £20,000), drugs and medicines (half a lakh of rupees), turmeric, gunny bags, leather, liquors, petroleum, provisions, seeds (half a lakh), manufactured silk, spices (three-quarters of a lakh), stationery, tobacco (three lakhs), and raw wool.
The total weight of imports during the last three years respectively has been--
3,35,889 maunds = 11,996 tons 3,99,892 maunds = 14,281 tons 4,53,202 maunds = 16,185 tons
Rs. 53,88,315 = £359,221 Rs. 57,99,785 = £386,652 Rs. 66,08,422 = £440,561
In such a country as Kashmir, with a great river flowing through it, and with numerous mountain torrents and subsidiary streams running into that river, there is obviously an immense amount of water-power at hand. The difficulty is to make it available for practical purposes. But this difficulty is now being overcome by converting the water-power into electric power, which can then be transmitted to considerable distances and applied in a variety of ways. The idea of thus converting this vast amount of water-power in Kashmir into electric power had of recent years, since the development of electrical appliances, naturally occurred to many; but it did not take definite shape till the Maharaja engaged the services of Major Alain de Lotbinière, R.E., to carry out a scheme of harnessing the waters of the Jhelum River which that officer had formulated, and which has just been completed.
Major de Lotbinière, a Canadian by birth, and endowed with a full measure of the energy, resource and hopefulness of his countrymen, had already executed a very successful scheme by which the water-power in the Cauvery Falls in Madras had been converted into electric energy, and transmitted to a distance of a hundred miles, to supply the Kolar gold-fields in Mysore with motive power, at a cost 50 per cent lower than that which they were paying for steam-power. He had also inspected many electrical projects on the Continent and in Canada and America. He therefore came to the work in Kashmir in September 1904 fully primed with the knowledge of all the latest developments of electrical science, and at once conceived the idea of harnessing, not any of the minor rivers of Kashmir, but the river Jhelum itself, and selected a spot a few miles above Rampur where he might entrap some of the water, lead it along the mountain-side at practically a uniform level, till he could drop it through pipes on to turbines--very much in the same manner as a mill-stream is led along and then dropped on to a water-wheel--and so by setting in motion various machines generate electrical energy.