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The famines were a product both of uneven rainfall and British economic and administrative policies, which since 1857 had led to the seizure and conversion of local farmland to foreign-owned plantations, restrictions on internal trade, heavy taxation of Indian citizens to support unsuccessful British expeditions in Afghanistan (see Second Anglo-Afghan War ), inflationary measures that increased the price of food, and substantial exports of staple crops from India to Britain. Some British citizens such as William Digby agitated for policy reforms and famine relief, but Lord Lytton, the governing British viceroy in India, opposed such changes in the belief that they would stimulate shirking by Indian workers. The first Bengal Famine Of 1770 is estimated to have taken nearly one-third of the population. The famines continued until independence in 1948 , with the Bengal Famine Of 1943 -44—among the most devastating—killing 3-4 million Indians during World War II . In 1966 , there was a 'near miss' in Bihar , when the USA allocated 900,000 tons of grain to fight the famine. It is the closest independent India came to a famine and is insightful into the workings of a democratic government that will even beg and borrow to avert diasters such as these. The Famine Commission of 1880 observed that each province in British India, including Burma , had a surplus of foodgrains, and the annual surplus was 5.16 million tons (Bhatia, 1970). At that time, annual export of rice and other grains from India was approximately one million tons. CHRONOLOGY
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