Famines in India

Famines in India
Name	Famines in India
Date	Various (11th–20th centuries)
Location	South Asia
Type	Humanitarian crisis
Outcome	Mortality, migration, policy changes

Famines in India Famines in India have recurred from medieval to modern periods, affecting the Indian subcontinent, the Deccan Plateau, and Bengal with catastrophic mortality and migration, shaping policies in the Mughal, British Raj, and post-Independence eras. Major crises such as the Bengal Famine of 1770, the Orissa famine of 1866, and the Bengal Famine of 1943 intersect with the histories of the Mughal Empire, the East India Company, and the Government of India while influencing figures like Robert Clive, Lord Curzon, and Winston Churchill and institutions such as the Indian Civil Service and the Reserve Bank of India.

Overview and Definitions

Famines are historically defined in Indian contexts by contemporaneous observers and later scholars such as Amartya Sen, R. C. Dutt, and William Digby, and by administrative measures under the British Raj, the Government of India Act, and later Indian state administrations; definitions often invoke mortality, malnutrition, migration, and market failure, as seen in analyses by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme when applied to South Asian episodes like the Deccan famines and the Great Bengal Famine. Scholarly debates link famine definition frameworks from the Bengal Presidency archives, the Madras Presidency records, and the Bombay Presidency gazetteers to concepts advanced in works by D. R. P. Chatterjee, Madhusree Mukerjee, and Mike Davis, and to comparative studies involving the Irish Potato Famine, the Great Leap Forward, and the Soviet famines documented in archival material from the British Library, the India Office Records, and the National Archives of India.

Historical Timeline and Major Famines

The chronology spans medieval famines recorded in the Ain-i-Akbari and accounts of Malik Kafur, through Mughal-era crises during the reigns of Akbar and Aurangzeb, to colonial-era famines such as the Bengal Famine of 1769–70, the Doji Bara Famine, the Chalisa Famine, the Agra famine, the Deccan famines of 1630–32 and 1786–93, the Orissa famine of 1866, the Great Famine of 1876–78, the Bihar famine of 1966–67, and the Bengal Famine of 1943. Each episode involves actors and records from the East India Company, the British Parliament debates, the Viceroy's office, and contemporary chroniclers like William Bentinck, Lord Lytton, Lord Curzon, and contemporaneous reportage in The Times and The Illustrated London News as well as Indian vernacular presses such as Amrita Bazar Patrika and The Hindu.

Causes and Contributing Factors

Famine causation in India is attributed to droughts linked to monsoon failure and El Niño events recorded by meteorologists and the India Meteorological Department, crop failures in millet and rice systems documented in agrarian surveys and works by E. W. Hunter, market failures examined by Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton, wartime requisitioning during the Napoleonic Wars and World War II, colonial export policies of the East India Company and later Imperial trade regimes, land revenue demands under the Permanent Settlement and Ryotwari systems, and infrastructural lacunae involving railways, ports such as Calcutta and Bombay, and rural irrigation projects overseen by the Public Works Department and the Indian Irrigation Commission.

Impact on Society and Economy

Famines precipitated mass mortality recorded in census returns, forced migration toward urban centers like Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Rangoon, and social transformations affecting caste and peasant relations studied by historians such as Ranajit Guha and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. Economic implications involved collapse in agrarian wages, distress sales of land documented in zamindari records and the Revenue Department, and disruptions to trade networks connecting the Presidency towns, princely states such as Hyderabad and Mysore, and international markets including the British grain trade and the Atlantic economy. Relief works, philanthropy from institutions like the Indian Red Cross, missionary societies, and princely rulers such as the Nizam of Hyderabad appear in administrative correspondence and gazettes.

Government Policies and Relief Measures

Responses evolved from early philanthropic relief by missionary societies and municipal boards to formalized interventions under the Famine Commission of 1880, the Famine Codes promulgated in various Presidencies, and later policies by the Central Relief Commissioner, the Planning Commission, and the Food Corporation of India. Debates over laissez-faire policies practiced by the East India Company and laissez-passer attitudes in British cabinet discussions, contrasted with interventionist measures in the Soviet Union and New Deal-era public works, influenced the adoption of employment-based relief, grain procurement and distribution systems, public works overseen by the Raja of Kolhapur, and post-Independence food security instruments including the Public Distribution System, the National Sample Survey Office programs, and the National Food Security Act.

Demographic and Health Consequences

Demographic impacts include excess mortality visible in decadal Indian censuses, altered sex ratios, stunted cohort effects analyzed by demographers and epidemiologists, and long-term health sequelae studied in WHO reports and in research by epidemiologists at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Indian Council of Medical Research. Famines exacerbated susceptibility to infectious diseases documented by bacteriologists and public health administrators during outbreaks of cholera and smallpox, and influenced lineage survival in agrarian communities chronicled in district gazetteers and anthropological studies by Verrier Elwin and E. A. Gait.

Memory, Historiography, and Cultural Response

The memory of famines is preserved in archival collections at the India Office Records, the National Archives of India, and oral histories collected by scholars such as Romila Thapar and Ranajit Guha, and reflected in literature by Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, and Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay as well as films by Satyajit Ray and documentaries produced by All India Radio and Doordarshan. Historiographical controversies involve competing interpretations by Amartya Sen, Madhusree Mukerjee, Mike Davis, and C. A. Bayly, intersecting with postcolonial critiques in journals and debates in the British Parliament, and commemorative practices including memorials in Kolkata, Odisha, and Maharashtra and exhibitions at institutions such as the Victoria Memorial and the National Museum.

Category:History of India