| Bengal Famine Of 1943 |
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POSSIBLE CAUSES The , leading in 1943 to the onset of a massive famine Wartime pressures, the lack of a 'famine code' in Bengal, unlike most other provinces of British India, together with the corruption of the Bengal Provincial Government of the time and the laziness and incompetence of many of the ICS in the province, meant that the measures for famine relief which were normally implemented in peacetime were never employed. As the situation spiralled out of control, Lord Mountbatten , the British commander in Southeast Asia, and Lord Wavell , the Viceroy Of India at the time, both endeavoured to draw attention to and provide food aid to citizens in the famine-stricken regions, but their efforts were hampered by the hostility of the War Cabinet and Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India, in the face of the Quit India movement and wartime demands. The Bengal Government failed to prevent rice exports, and made little attempt to import surpluses from elsewhere in India, or to buy up stocks from speculators to redistribute to the starving. American author Mike Davis and Indian author Amartya Sen specifically linked the 1943 famine and its predecessors in the region to British policies in the state of Bengal. Sen was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for his studies of the Bengal and other famines in Asia and Africa . FAMINES AND DEMOCRACIES Citing the Bengal Famine and other examples from the world, Amartya Sen argues that famines do not occur in ''functioning'' democracies. Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow provides a discussion of this argument The Bengal Famine may be placed in the context of previous famines in British India. During the British rule in India there were approximately 25 major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in South India, Bihar in the north, and Bengal in the east in the latter half of the 19th century, killing between 30 and 40 million Indians (Bhatia 1985). Though malnutrition and hunger remain widespread in India, there have been no famines since the end of the British rule in 1947 and the establishment of a democratic government. The increase in food to the population is also reflected in the fact that in the 50 years of British rule (1891 to 1941) the population grew by 35% (from 287 million to 389 million) whereas in the 50 years of democratic rule from 1951 to 2001 the population grew by 183% (from 363 million to 1,023 million) [http://www.statoids.com/uin.html . The fact that there have been no famines even with a population that has almost tripled makes it an even more impressive achievement for the democratic government. "FOOD AVAILABILITY DECLINE" OR "MAN MADE" Severe food shortages were worsened by the Second World War , with the British administration of India exporting foods to Allied soldiers. The shortage of rice forced rice Price s up, and wartime Inflation compounded the problem. The civil administration did not intervene to control the price of rice, and so the price of rice exceeded the means of ordinary people. People migrated to the cities to find food and employment; finding neither, they starved. The lack of rice due to fall in production being the cause of the famine has by now been questioned by Amartya Sen . He quotes official records for rice production in Bengal in the years leading up to 1943 as reported in the table to the right. The 1943 yield, while low, was not in itself outwith the normal spectrum of recorded variation, and other factors beyond simple crop failure may thus be invoked as a causal mechanism. DEBATE ABOUT DISEASED RICE AND TOTAL RICE YIELD IN 1942 AND 1943 It has been argued that the famine was primarily due to an epidemic of brown spot disease '' Helminthosporium Oryzae '', affecting the crop. This argument, based on data collected by S. Y. Padmanabhan, has been developed by the historian Mark Tauger. In the Rice growing season of 1942 , weather conditions were exactly right to encourage an epidemic of the rice disease brown spot following a cyclone and flooding. The outbreak of the disease caused a variation in the 1942 crop ranging from a 236.6% gain to a 90% crop loss in Bankura and Chinsurah according to Padmanabhan. Tauger argues that Sen's analysis based economic entitlement overlooks the role of food shortage. Tauger argues that that the yield in 1942 was low (based on Padmanabhan's data) causing a serious food shortage in Bengal and was the most important cause of the famine. Others dispute this argument, primarily based on the fact that Padmanabhan's data is yield per acre for different varieties, and from this data it is impossible to estimate total production without knowing the total acreage of the different varieties. THE FAMINE IN BENGALI CULTURE Artists, novelists and film-makers have tried to capture the enormity of the famine in their works. The renowned Bengali painter Zainul Abedin was one of the early documentarians of the famine, with his sketches of the dead and dying. The novelist Bibhuti Bhusan Bandyopadhhay penned his novel ''Ashani Sanket'' with the famine serving as both backdrop and protagonist. The novel was adapted in 1973 by Satyajit Ray into an award-winning film, also titled Ashani Sanket . Mrinal Sen also made a film about the famine, titled ''Akaler Shondhaney'' (''In Search of Famine''). REFERENCES
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