The year 2013 marks the 70th anniversary of the Bengal Famine which resulted in the death of an estimated 1.5 to 3 million children, women and men during 1942-43.
Famines were frequent in colonial India and some estimates indicate that 30 to 40 million died out of starvation in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Bengal during the later half of the 19th century. This led to the formulation of elaborate Famine Codes by the then colonial government, indicating the relief measures that should be put in place when crops fail.
The Socialist Standard during the Second World War drew attention to the famine in India. It highlighted the fact of available food being hoarded while people starved. "The loss of the Burma rice crop, excessive inflation, and general economic dislocation (all factors arising out of the war), and natural shortages in certain districts, all tended to encourage the farmers and merchants to hold on to their stocks in order to get still higher prices and greater profits when they did at last decide to sell." and that there were large stocks of food in reserve. The cause of the Bengal Famine was not so much an appalling lack of food but the high prices and lack of employment to acquire the wherewithal to pay for it. The famine was not solely a natural disaster but more a social one. Wages had not kept pace with wartime inflation, and some towns where workers were unemployed because of the dislocation caused by the war. People without money were unable to buy food and the British imperial authorities took little action (apart from moving food to Calcutta because they feared mass civil unrest). One of the worst famines of modern times therefore took place when the amount of food per head in Bengal was actually 7% higher than in 1941 and food stocks were at record levels.
The Socialist Party analysis was to be confirmed later by the research of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and others.
Famines were frequent in colonial India and some estimates indicate that 30 to 40 million died out of starvation in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Bengal during the later half of the 19th century. This led to the formulation of elaborate Famine Codes by the then colonial government, indicating the relief measures that should be put in place when crops fail.
The Socialist Standard during the Second World War drew attention to the famine in India. It highlighted the fact of available food being hoarded while people starved. "The loss of the Burma rice crop, excessive inflation, and general economic dislocation (all factors arising out of the war), and natural shortages in certain districts, all tended to encourage the farmers and merchants to hold on to their stocks in order to get still higher prices and greater profits when they did at last decide to sell." and that there were large stocks of food in reserve. The cause of the Bengal Famine was not so much an appalling lack of food but the high prices and lack of employment to acquire the wherewithal to pay for it. The famine was not solely a natural disaster but more a social one. Wages had not kept pace with wartime inflation, and some towns where workers were unemployed because of the dislocation caused by the war. People without money were unable to buy food and the British imperial authorities took little action (apart from moving food to Calcutta because they feared mass civil unrest). One of the worst famines of modern times therefore took place when the amount of food per head in Bengal was actually 7% higher than in 1941 and food stocks were at record levels.
The Socialist Party analysis was to be confirmed later by the research of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and others.
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