The history of building the Umaid Bhawan Palace is linked to a curse by a saint who had said that a period of drought would follow the good rule of the Rathore Dynasty. Thus, after the end of the about 50-year reign of Pratap Singh, Jodhpur faced severe drought and famine in the 1920s for a period of three consecutive years. The farmers of the area, faced with this hardship, sought the help of the then Maharaja, Umaid Singh, who was the 37th Rathore ruler of Marwar at Jodhpur, to provide them with some employment so that they could survive the harsh conditions. The Maharaja, in order to help the farmers, decided to build a lavish palace. He commissioned Henry Vaughan Lanchester as the architect to prepare the plans for the palace; Lanchester was a contemporary of Edwin Lutyens, who had planned the buildings of the New Delhi government complex. Lanchester patterned the Umaid Palace on the lines of the New Delhi building complex by adopting the theme of domes and columns. The palace was designed as a blend of western technology and Indian architectural features.