Famines, epidemics, and public health in the British Raj

Among the common features of famines, epidemics, and public health in the British Raj during the 19th century were:

• There was no aggregate food shortage in India, although there were localized crop failures in the affected areas. Crop failures were essential for the occurrence of the famine.^[1]
• The starvation deaths occurred among certain economic classes; landless laborers, artisans and petty traders, which constituted anywhere between 35% and 50% of the rural population.^[2] India's agrarian economy during this time was still a non-monetised exchange economy.^[3] Agricultural laborers were either paid in kind (foodgrains) or partly in kind and partly in cash; similarly, artisans and service-workers were regulated by the Jajmani system, a reciprocal social and economic arrangement between different castes in a village, in which payments were made in the form of a fixed share in the harvest.^[3] Consequently, for a large proportion of the rural population, food supply depended on their "employment entitlements," or the demand among the primary (landed) food producers for their services and this demand was the first to be affected in times of food shortage.^[4] A crop failure could create a famine, not because it led to an aggregate shortage of food but because it deprived a significant proportion of the population of the means to acquire food.^[2]
• In some cases, foodgrains were still being exported from the famine affected region during the time leading up to (and sometimes after) famine began.^[2]
• Foodgrain prices during the famine years in the affected areas were higher, but not spectacularly higher, than during normal years.^[2]

The evidence from 19th-century data suggests that local crop failures led to famines not because they created aggregate food shortages but because they drastically reduced the demand for the services of certain segments of the population, consequently deprived them of the means to acquire food. According to (Ghose 1982, p. 380), famines were not natural phenomena but rather a result of the breakdown, in the wake of local crop failures, of social and economic networks in these regions. The Famine Commission of 1880, appointed by the Government of British India, described the situation with clarity and poignancy:"

"The first effect of a drought is to diminish greatly, and at last to stop, all field labour, and to throw out of employment the great mass of people who live on the wages of labour. A similar effect is produced next upon the artisans, the small shop-keepers, and traders, first in villages and country towns, and later on in the larger towns also, by depriving them of their profits, which are mainly dependent on dealings with the least wealthy classes; and, lastly, all classes become less able to give charitable help to public beggars, and to support their dependents. Such of the agricultural classes as possess a proprietary interest in the land, or a valuable right of occupancy in it, do not require as a rule to be protected against starvation in time of famine unless the calamity is unusually severe and prolonged, as they generally are provided with stocks of food or money, or have credit with money-lenders. But those who, owning only a small plot of land, eke out by its profits their wages as labourers, and rack-rented tenants-at-will living almost from hand-to-mouth, are only a little way removed from the class of field-labourers; they possess no credit, and on them pressure soon begins."^[5]

See also

• Timeline of major famines in India during British rule
• Famine in India#British rule

Notes

1. Ghose 1982, p. 378
2. Ghose 1982, p. 379
3. Ghose 1982, p. 377
4. Ghose 1982, p. 370
5. Famine Commission 1880, p. 49

References

Famines

• Ambirajan, S. (1976), "Malthusian Population Theory and Indian Famine Policy in the Nineteenth Century", Population Studies 30 (1): 5–14, doi:10.2307/2173660
• Arnold, David; Moore, R. I. (1991), Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (New Perspectives on the Past), Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 164, ISBN 0-631-15119-2
• Bhatia, B. M. (1991), Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India With Special Reference to Food Problem, 1860–1990, Stosius Inc/Advent Books Division. Pp. 383, ISBN 81-220-0211-0
• Dutt, Romesh Chunder (2005) [1900], Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in India, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd (reprinted by Adamant Media Corporation), ISBN 1-4021-5115-2
• Dyson, Tim (1991), "On the Demography of South Asian Famines: Part I", Population Studies 45 (1): 5–25, doi:10.1080/0032472031000145056
• Dyson, Tim (1991), "On the Demography of South Asian Famines: Part II", Population Studies 45 (2): 279–297, doi:10.1080/0032472031000145446
• Dyson, Time (ed.) (1989), India's Historical Demography: Studies in Famine, Disease and Society, Riverdale MD: The Riverdale Company. Pp. ix, 296
• Famine Commission (1880), Report of the Indian Famine Commission, Part I, Calcutta
• Ghose, Ajit Kumar (1982), "Food Supply and Starvation: A Study of Famines with Reference to the Indian Subcontinent", Oxford Economic Papers, New Series 34 (2): 368–389
• Government of India (1867), Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine in Bengal and Orissa in 1866, Volumes I, II, Calcutta
• Grada, Oscar O. (1997), "Markets and famines: A simple test with Indian data", Economic Letters 57: 241–244, doi:10.1016/S0165-1765(97)00228-0
• Hall-Matthews, David (2008), "Inaccurate Conceptions: Disputed Measures of Nutritional Needs and Famine Deaths in Colonial India", Modern Asian Studies 42 (1): 1–24, doi:10.1017/S0026749X07002892
• Hardiman, David (1996), "Usuary, Dearth and Famine in Western India", Past and Present 152: 113–156, doi:10.1093/past/152.1.113
• Hill, Christopher V. (1991), "Philosophy and Reality in Riparian South Asia: British Famine Policy and Migration in Colonial North India", Modern Asian Studies 25 (2): 263–279, doi:10.1017/s0026749x00010672
• Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III (1907), The Indian Empire, Economic. Chapter X: Famine, pp. 475–502, Published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Pp. xxx, 1 map, 552.
• Klein, Ira (1973), "Death in India, 1871-1921", The Journal of Asian Studies 32 (4): 639–659, doi:10.2307/2052814
• McAlpin, Michelle B. (1983), "Famines, Epidemics, and Population Growth: The Case of India", Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (2): 351–366, doi:10.2307/203709
• McAlpin, Michelle B. (1979), "Dearth, Famine, and Risk: The Changing Impact of Crop Failures in Western India, 1870–1920", The Journal of Economic History 39 (1): 143–157, doi:10.1017/S0022050700096352
• McGregor, Pat; Cantley, Ian (1992), "A Test of Sen's Entitlement Hypothesis", The Statistician 41 (3 Special Issue: Conference on Applied Statistics in Ireland, 1991): 335–341, JSTOR 2348558
• Mellor, John W.; Gavian, Sarah (1987), "Famine: Causes, Prevention, and Relief", Science (New Series) 235 (4788): 539–545, doi:10.1126/science.235.4788.539, JSTOR 1698676
• Owen, Nicholas (2008), The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885–1947 (Oxford Historical Monographs), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 300, ISBN 0-19-923301-2
• Sen, A. K. (1977), "Starvation and Exchange Entitlements: A General Approach and its Application to the Great Bengal Famine", Cambridge Journal of Economics
• Sen, A. K. (1982), Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp. ix, 257, ISBN 0-19-828463-2
• Stone, Ian, Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy (Cambridge South Asian Studies), Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 389, ISBN 0-521-52663-9

Epidemics and public health

• Banthia, Jayant; Dyson, Tim (1999), "Smallpox in Nineteenth-Century India", Population and Development Review 25 (4): 649–689, doi:10.2307/172481
• Caldwell, John C. (1998), "Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India", Population and Development Review 24 (4): 675–696, doi:10.2307/2808021
• Drayton, Richard (2001), "Science, Medicine, and the British Empire", in Winks, Robin, Oxford History of the British Empire: Historiography, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 264–276, ISBN 0-19-924680-7
• Derbyshire, I. D. (1987), "Economic Change and the Railways in North India, 1860-1914", Population Studies 21 (3): 521–545, doi:10.2307/312641
• Klein, Ira (1988), "Plague, Policy and Popular Unrest in British India", Modern Asian Studies 22 (4): 723–755, doi:10.2307/312523
• Watts, Sheldon (1999), "British Development Policies and Malaria in India 1897-c. 1929", Past and Present (165): 141–181, doi:10.1093/past/165.1.141
• Wylie, Diana (2001), "Disease, Diet, and Gender: Late Twentieth Century Perspectives on Empire", in Winks, Robin, Oxford History of the British Empire: Historiography, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 277–289, ISBN 0-19-924680-7