Anu has a very interesting post on a well in England, which was commissioned by an Indian king.

In 1850, the son of an English country squire while chatting with the Maharaja of Benaras told him the story of a small boy in the village of Stoke Row who was beaten by his mother for drinking up the last of the water in the house during a time of draught. The Maharaja was so moved that he commissioned the digging of a huge well in the village. Water from the well was to be free for the villagers like it is in Indian villages.

She wonders how the Maharaja treated his own subjects, and whether this was just a good deed or an act of sucking up to the English.