Famines under colonial rule

Detail

Why famine became a colonial problem

• Famine was not new to India. Bad monsoon meant bad harvest, always. But under British rule, famines came on a scale never seen before.
• The new thing was the revenue system. The Company and later the Crown fixed a cash land revenue demand — a fixed money amount, due on a fixed date, whether or not the crop came in.
• Three effects, each a killer:
• Peasant had to sell grain right after harvest to raise cash. No grain kept back at home for a bad year.
• Peasant borrowed from the moneylender to pay tax. Debt, then loss of land.

• Government income stayed steady while the village starved — so officials saw no alarm bell.

• The East India Company got the Diwani (right to collect taxes and revenue of Bengal) from Mughal emperor Shah Alam II in 1765, after Clive was made governor of Bengal. Those taxes were then used to buy Indian goods for export — tax money financed the Company's own trade and further conquest [3].

Bengal famine 1770–72

• Two years of crop failure hit Bengal first. On top of that came the Company's harsh cash revenue targets, payable regardless of harvest. That combination produced the catastrophe.
• Deaths: about 10 million — nearly one-third of Bengal's population.
• The Company did not cut the land tax during the famine. It maintained it, and in places increased it.
• Britannica records the same judgement: the famine was worsened by British policy — inflated land revenue demands and strict enforcement of tax collection while people were starving — and killed nearly a third of the region's people [3].
• W.W. Hunter, a British official writing a century later, described it plainly: the husbandmen "sold their sons and daughters, till at length no buyer of children could be found; they ate the leaves of trees and the grass of the field."
• Note for the exam: the witness here is a British official, not a nationalist. That makes the quote hard to argue away.

Great Famine 1876–78

• Deaths: up to 8 million, mostly in the Deccan plateau (the dry inland plateau of south-central India).
• Grain kept leaving the country. The administration went on exporting grain to Britain — about one million tonnes of rice per year through the three famine years.
• Inside India, some Indian traders hoarded stock to push prices higher. So the poor faced both export and hoarding at once.
• Viceroy Lytton (Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Viceroy 1876–1880, appointed by Conservative PM Benjamin Disraeli) applied 'free market' doctrine — the belief that government must let prices find their own level.
• His order: "no interference of any kind… with the object of reducing the price of food."

• In plain words: the state refused to bring food prices down, even as people died of not being able to buy food.

• Lytton's response to the famine is recorded as the much-criticised part of his viceroyalty [2].

• At the same time, Lytton hosted the Delhi durbar of 1876 — an extravagant week-long feast for 68,000 officials, satraps and maharajas, held during the famine years.
• A durbar is a grand royal court assembly. This one proclaimed Queen Victoria as Empress of India.

Note: A record of Lytton's viceroyalty, The History of Lord Lytton's Indian Administration, 1876 to 1880, was compiled by his daughter Lady Betty Balfour from private and official papers and published in 1899 — a defence written by family, so read it as the official side of the story [2].

Relief was kept small on purpose

• Relief was deliberately minimal. This was policy, not shortage of means.
• The Famine Commission of 1878–80 warned that accepting a doctrine of entitlement to famine relief "would probably lead to the doctrine that they are entitled to such relief at all times."

• Translation: officials feared that if the poor were given a right to food in a famine, they would claim a right to help in normal years too. So no right was granted.

• The Famine Commission of 1880 also observed that each province of British India was surplus in foodgrains, and that the annual surplus, including Burma, was 5.16 million tons [2].

• Key point for answers: India as a whole had surplus grain while millions starved. The problem was who could buy it and where it was sent, not how much existed. This is the entitlement idea.

• From that Commission came the Indian Famine Code of 1883 — the first modern codification of famine response anywhere. It classified levels of food scarcity and set out what the government must do at each level [2].

• So the same enquiry that refused a right to relief did create the first famine rulebook. Both facts are true; use both.

Total toll and lasting damage

• Counts of severe famines under British rule range from a dozen to over 20.
• Estimated human deaths across the colonial period: 50–100 million — close to the death toll of the Second World War.
• Famines had always occurred in India, but never on such a scale.
• Result: rural India sank into a poverty from which it never recovered under colonial rule. Each famine sold off land, cattle and seed-grain, so the village started the next cycle poorer than before.

Prelims Hooks

• Bengal famine 1770–72: about 10 million dead, nearly one-third of Bengal's population; Company kept, and in places raised, the land tax during it.
• W.W. Hunter — British official whose account ("sold their sons and daughters…") is the standard quote on the 1770 famine.
• Company got the Diwani of Bengal in 1765 from Shah Alam II; Clive was made governor of Bengal [3].
• Great Famine 1876–78: up to 8 million dead, worst in the Deccan plateau.
• Grain exports during 1876–78: about one million tonnes of rice per year shipped to Britain.
• Viceroy during the Great Famine: Lytton (in office 1876–1880), appointed by PM Disraeli [2]; ordered "no interference of any kind… with the object of reducing the price of food".
• Delhi Durbar 1876 — week-long feast for 68,000 guests, held in famine years.
• Famine Commission 1878–80: rejected an entitlement to relief; its 1880 report noted an all-India foodgrain surplus of 5.16 million tons including Burma [2].
• Indian Famine Code, 1883 — first modern codification of famine response; classified scarcity levels and set state duties [2].
• Colonial-era famine deaths estimated at 50–100 million; severe famines counted from a dozen to over 20.

Mains Points

• Famine as policy failure, not natural disaster. The monsoon failed; the deaths came from the revenue system. Cash land revenue payable regardless of harvest stripped the peasant's grain reserve and pushed him to the moneylender. Link this directly to Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari and Mahalwari demand levels.
• Entitlement, not availability. The Famine Commission's own 1880 finding of a 5.16 million ton surplus [2], set against one million tonnes of rice exported yearly during 1876–78, shows food existed but the starving could not command it. This is the empirical base for Amartya Sen's later entitlement argument and the strongest single line in an answer on colonial famine.
• Ideology killed. Lytton's 'free market' order banning any interference to reduce food prices shows doctrine overriding administration. Pair it with the Delhi Durbar of 1876 to show the gap between imperial display and imperial duty — and note that Lytton's famine record was criticised even in British accounts [2].
• Famine, drain and deindustrialisation are one chain. Revenue extraction funded the drain of wealth; the collapse of Indian handicrafts pushed artisans back onto land already overtaxed; a crowded, indebted countryside had no cushion when rain failed. Famine is the visible end of that chain, and explains why rural poverty outlived each individual famine.