Famine - Causes and Effects

It is difficult to control and impossible to eradicate famine as it is mostly caused by natural reasons, however the effects of famine can be prevented by certain measures. These include:

• Encouraging surplus agricultural production beyond the requirements of the rural population.

• A well-developed transportation system between urban and rural areas. Connectivity of urban and rural areas play an important role in the prevention of famine.

• Ensuring proper health care, clean drinking water, and sanitation facilities for the prevention and spread of diseases.

A famine is a period of severe food scarcity brought on by a variety of circumstances such as war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic calamity, or government policy. Regional hunger, starvation, epidemics, and increased mortality are generally accompanied or followed by this occurrence. Every inhabited continent on the planet has experienced starvation at some point in its history. Southeast and South Asia, as well as Eastern and Central Europe, were often classified in the 19th and 20^th centuries as having suffered the greatest number of deaths from starvation. Since the 2000s, the number of people dying from famine has steadily decreased. Since 2010, Africa has been the world's most afflicted continent.

The World Food Programme warned on November 8, 2021, that 45 million people in 43 nations were on the verge of famine. Afghanistan had surpassed Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, and even Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe, with the country's demands outstripping those of the other worst-affected countries.

Severe famines became more common in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Millions died in 24 major famines between 1850 and 1899, more than in any other 50-year span. These famines in British India were severe enough to have a significant impact on the country's long-term population growth, particularly between 1871 and 1921. The first, the Bengal famine of 1770, is thought to have killed over a third of the region's population—roughly 10 million people.

East India Company revenues from Bengal fell to £174,300 in 1770–71 as a result of the famine. As a result, the East India Company's stock price plummeted. The corporation was compelled to take out a £1 million loan from the Bank of England in order to cover the annual military expenditure, which ranged from £60,000 to £1 million. Later attempts were made to prove that the famine had had no effect on net revenue, but this was only feasible because the collection had been "violently held up to its old standard." Between 1765 and 1858, the 1901 Famine Commission discovered twelve famines and four "serious scarcities."

Uneven rainfall and British economic and administrative policies also contributed to the famines. Rack-renting, levies for war, free trade policies, the rise of export agriculture, and the neglect of agricultural investment are among the policies linked. Opium, rice, wheat, indigo, jute, and cotton exports from India were crucial to the British empire's economy, providing vital foreign cash, particularly from China, and stabilizing low grain prices in the British market. Export crops, according to Mike Davis, displaced millions of acres that could have been used for domestic subsistence, making Indians more vulnerable to food emergencies. Others argue that exports were not a major cause of the famine, claiming that commerce did have a minor stabilizing effect on India's food consumption.

One such famine was the Odisha famine of 1866–1867, which later expanded across the Madras Presidency to Hyderabad and Mysore. The famine of 1866 was a devastating episode in Odisha's history, with about a third of the population dying. The famine left 1,553 orphans, whose guardians were to receive 3 rupees each month until their children reached the age of 17 for boys and 16 for girls. The western Ganges area, Rajasthan, central India (1868–1870), Bengal and eastern India (1873–1874), Deccan (1876–78), and the Ganges region, Madras, Hyderabad, Mysore, and Bombay (1876–1878) all experienced similar famines.  The Great Famine of 1876–1878 prompted a huge movement of agricultural laborers and artisans from southern India to British tropical possessions, where they labored as indentured laborers on plantations.

The Bengal Famine of 1770 was the first big famine to occur under British control. In a ten-month period, about a quarter to a third of Bengal's population died of starvation. Even though the famine was not caused by the British colonial authority, the East India Company's tax increases coincided with and aggravated it. "Successive British governments were anxious not to add to the burden of taxation" after the famine. In 1866, the rains failed once more in Bengal and Odisha. Laissez-faire policies were implemented, and the famine in Bengal was partially alleviated.

The non-interference of the government in the grain market, even during famines, shows how Adam Smith's theories affected the British famine policy in India. Another major issue in defining famine policy was keeping famine aid as low as possible, with the least amount of expenditure to the colonial exchequer. Another possible influence on British policy on famine in India, according to Brian Murton, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii, was the English Poor Laws of 1834, with the difference that the English were willing to "maintain" the poor in England in normal times, whereas Indians would only receive subsistence when entire populations were threatened. There are parallels between the Irish famine of 1846–49 and the later Indian famines of the late nineteenth century. You can access the Vedantu app and website for free study materials.