Famine Flashcards
(28 cards)
HISTORIOGRAPHYDefinition of Famine
Famines caused by there being no feed to eat, i.e. Caused by failure of the crop due to drought, monsoon failure, climate reasons. (Food Availability theories, FAD)- Several colonial writers including Mark Tauger
Famines caused by lack of purchasing power as a result of some people being able to afford food to eat and some not (Food Entitlement, Approach, FEA) Amartya Sen
HISTORIOGRAPHY - MICHELLE MACALPIN
Macalpin argues that recent Indian history can be compared with European history where with the developments of markets and trade, Western Europe saw an evolution from ‘true famine’ to ‘famines caused by lack of purchasing power’ a transition in other words from problems of scarcity to those of unequal distribution in a situation of plenty. The same transition in India, she notes, was completed by India in the late nineteenth century.
HISTORIOGRAPHY- A third view:Famine and environmental history
Famine research has gained ground in both Asia and Africa in recent times and it is well known that British India experienced a series of subsistence crises particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century. However, analyses of these famines by historians have rarely included a study of environmental changes
The Moral economy of famine - davis
Here Famine can be seen as a process not an event. The gradual erosion of access to land and resources makes people vulnerable to famine.
As people fail to make ends meet using time honoured ways they fall victim to starvation
Mike Davis, Victorian Holocausts
Mike Davis notes that the history of British rule in India could be condensed into a single fact that there was no increase in India’s per capita income between 1757 and 1947.
His thesis looks at long term taxation policies, colonial exploitation to look at the moral economy of famine. It is also a multi-causal approach as it looks at El nino famines
Amartya Sen’s entitlement theory and the 1943 Famine
Refers to a persons’ entitlement to commodity bundles using the totality of rights that he or she faces.
For Sen a person starves in the context of a famine because he or she is entitled to starve
Famine as a result of entitlement not as a result of there being not enough to eat. (FEA)
Amartya Sen’s definition
Starvation is a characteristic of some people not having enough to eat. It is not a characteristic of there being not enough to eat. While the latter can be the cause of the former, it is but one of the many possible causes. Whether or how starvation relates to food supply is a matter for factual investigation.
Famine as Multi-Causal
State created: Famines caused by British taxation policy
The moral economy argument: Famine as a process not as an event
Climate:Famine as a result of a natural disaster or climatic event
The Bengal Famine of 1943
The immediate cause of the famine was the reduction in the crops caused by the failure of the rice crop and a cyclone.
India a food importer for the last 10 years especially from Burma
· Hoarding of traders and rising prices – price famine
· The governments free trade policy did not help – Adam Smith free hand criticised the british from interfering with the martket
· BOAT DENIAL POLICY BY CHURCHILL – check this To prevent Burmese from invading india
· CLIMATE FACTOR CAUSING SEVER FLOODING IN THOUSANDS OF VILLAGES AND CATTLE DEATHS.
· WAS THERE A FOOD AVAILABILITY DECLINE
· Paul Greenhough states seizure of boats stoped grain traveling to villages. Fear of JAPANESE SCORCHED EARTH
· Sen believed no food deline it was peoples purchasing power
· Tauger states a miscalculation, food shortage exacerbated by purchasing power or rural and urban poor. Poor were most affect
· Administrative errors – seizing of crops for the british war effort. British officers eating rice pudding while nbengal people dieing
· Churchills attitude was negliget – no attempt to help.
Climate factors
Major cyclones destroys crops causing severe flooding in thousands of villages and cattle deaths
In Midnapur district environmental damage was paramount causing wide spread distress
Was there Food availability decline?
Serious administrative failures - HISTORIOGRAPHY SEN AND GREENHOUGH
Paul Greenhough notes the seizure of boats on the rivers so that grain could not travel to villages easily. This was a result of the fear induced by what they felt would be Japanese scorched earth policy.
Sen believed that there was no real food availability decline and that despite this there was still food available and it was only people purchasing power that was affected as a result of rising prices.
HISTORIOGRAPHY Sen’s statistics questioned by Tauger
- These are seen to be a bit erring on the side of miscalculation.
- There was indeed a food shortage which was exacerbated by the purchasing power of the rural and urban poor. Sen’s entitlement theory therefore holds.
- The poor were the groups that were the most affected.
Tauger’s critique OF SEN
Sen’s work because his conclusion of sufficiency in Bengal has been seriously challenged. Historian Mark Tauger has shown that Sen based his crop estimates on projections, and that crop diseases spread by wet weather appear to have drastically reduced the actual harvest. There are a number of different estimates of the crop shortage, all of which are substantial.
Furthermore, in his paper Sen misquoted the government’s estimate of the rice shortfall as a mere 140,000 tons (instead of the 1.4 million tons stated in the document he cites)—which led him to mistakenly claim that the authorities could not have predicted famine.
Administrative errors
Wavell’s description of Churchill’s attitude toward India as “negligent, hostile and contemptuous” was reciprocated by the Indian population but they had no way of expressing these views.
Key seizing of crops for the British war effort
Famine victims: Index of destitution
Agricultural labourers
Small cultivators
Farm workers
Problems and strengths of Sen’s argument
Fails to take into account long term destitution that takes place over a long period and the moral economy of famine argument
Sees the market as providing a solution to problems and tends to see famine more as an event rather than a process
Is statistically flawed according to Tauger
However many of his ideas are still very important for understanding famines in a context of plenty as a failure of purchasing power.
IMPORTANT CONCLUSIONS FAMINE
Famines are multi causal
Climatic factors and natural disasters play their part
Studies of specific famines reveal interesting links between mortality and status, mortality and disease for example
El nino famines
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World is a book by Mike Davis about the connection between political economy and global climate patterns, particularly El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). By comparing ENSO episodes in different time periods and across countries, Davis explores the impact of colonialism and the introduction of capitalism, and the relation with famine in particular. Davis argues that “Millions died, not outside the ‘modern world system’, but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. They died in the golden age of Liberal Capitalism; indeed, many were murdered … by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill.”[1]
Famines in British India 18,19,20 c
Famine had been a recurrent feature of life in the Indian sub-continental countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and reached its numerically deadliest peak in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Historical and legendary evidence names some 90 famines in 2,500 years of history.[1] There are 14 recorded famines in India between the 11th and 17th centuries. Famines in India resulted in more than 60 million deaths over the course of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
The Great Famine of 1876–78 (also the Southern India famine of 1876–78 or the Madras famine of 1877)
was a famine in India that began in 1876 and affected south and southwestern India (Madras, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Bombay) for a period of two years. In its second year famine also spread north to some regions of the Central Provinces and the North-Western Provinces, and to a small area in the Punjab.[1] The famine ultimately covered an area of 670,000 square kilometres (257,000 sq mi) and caused distress to a population totaling 58,500,000.[1] The death toll from this famine is estimated to be in the range of 5.5 million people.
historiography - Tirthankar Roy
suggests that the famines were due to environmental factors and inherent in India’s ecology.[fn 6][fn 7] Roy argues that massive investments in agriculture were required to break India’s stagnation, however these were not forthcoming owing to scarcity of water, poor quality of soil and livestock and a poorly developed input market which guaranteed that investments in agriculture were extremely risky.[34] After 1947, India focused on institutional reforms to agriculture however even this failed to break the pattern of stagnation. It wasn’t until the 1970s when there was massive public investment in agriculture that India became free of famine,[35] although Roy is of the opinion that improvements in the market efficiency did contribute to the alleviation of weather-induced famines after 1900, an exception to which is the Bengal famine of 1943.[36][full citation needed]
historiography famine
Between one and three million died of hunger in 1943.
The wartime leader said Britain could not spare the ships to transport emergency supplies as the streets of Calcutta filled with emaciated villagers from the surrounding countryside, but author Madhusree Mukerjee has unearthed new documents which challenge his claim.
In her book, Churchill’s Secret War, she cites ministry records and personal papers which reveal ships carrying cereals from Australia were bypassed India on their way to the Mediterranean where supplies were already abundant.
“It wasn’t a question of Churchill being inept: sending relief to Bengal was raised repeatedly and he and his close associates thwarted every effort,” the author said.
british forcing indians to grow crops…
After taking over from the Mughal rulers, the British had issued widespread orders for cash crops to be cultivated. These were intended to be exported. Thus farmers who were used to growing paddy and vegetables were now being forced to cultivate indigo, poppy and other such items that yielded a high market value for them but could be of no relief to a population starved of food. There was no backup of edible crops in case of a famine. The natural causes that had contributed to the draught were commonplace. It was the single minded motive for profit that wrought about the devastating consequences. No relief measure was provided for those affected. Rather, as mentioned above, taxation was increased to make up for any shortfall in revenue. What is more ironic is that the East India Company generated a profited higher in 1771 than they did in 1768.
enso famine
The failure of monsoons in turn is due to a periodic natural phenomenon known as ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation).ENSO occurs every five to seven years and causes extreme weather such as floods, droughts and other weather disturbances in many regions of the world.Putting it simply, ENSO is like a natural seesaw which causes the failure of monsoons over India while causing unnatural rainfall over the coast of South America.
So, is the process of famine in India as simple as sequential steps below?
ENSO causes monsoon failure —> Drought —–> Crops fail—–>Famine——> Millions dead?
Are famines then a natural follow on from the droughts caused by ENSO?
Are famines then a natural follow on from the droughts caused by ENSO?
Not at all, for the last two steps where there is a food scarcity leading to a famine and consequent deaths are completely avoidable. Even a severe drought can be stopped from developing into a killer famine by Government policies such as: banning export of food grains, rushing adequate food supplies to the famine affected parts and ensuring equitable distribution, reducing the burden of taxation on people and in general making sure that there are enough reserves to tide through the crises. Famines always give advance notice as they are following on from droughts. With correct policy and timely government intervention it can be ensured that there are no famine related deaths nor the immense human suffering that precedes a famine.
Post Independence though we have had quite severe droughts, some of them even leading to famine (in Bihar in 1966-67), there have been no famine related deaths!!
Timely intervention by the Government of India was the main reason why droughts did not lead to millions of Indians dead. It is to the great credit of the governments of Independent India that they did not let Indians perish due to starvation.
This is precisely why I have referred to famines in British India as “British Made” (or Man made) .Millions of lives could have been saved if the British had really been bothered about doing the right thing. Nowadays of course they hypocritically moan about the number of people “starving” in India and gleefully make crap movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” which make them feel good about themselves.
