Bengal famine of 1943

Bengal famine of 1943 পঞ্চাশের মন্বন্তর
File:Statesman j.jpg Image from the photo spread in The Statesman on 22 August, 1943 showing famine conditions in Calcutta. These photos altered world opinion.
Country	British India
Location	Bengal
Period	1943–44
Total deaths	Initial est.: 1.5 million; current est. 2.1 million
Consequences	Income inequality increased; Indian independence movement intensified

The Bengal famine of 1943 (Bengali: পঞ্চাশের মন্বন্তর Pañcāśēra manbantara) and accompanying major epidemics led to an estimated 2.1 million deaths during World War II, in Bengal Province (now part of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura) of the British Raj. Famine-related deaths occurred in two overlapping waves: first from starvation, then from severe epidemics of cholera, malaria, small-pox, and other diseases such as dysentery and kala-azar. The death toll from disease was multiplied by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions, and lack of sufficient access to health care. The crisis also disrupted and overwhelmed large segments of the economy and social fabric, accelerating pre-existing socioeconomic processes generating poverty and income inequality. Millions of families were impoverished.

Bengal's economy was predominantly agrarian, and for at least a decade before the food crisis, between one half and three fourths of those dependent on agriculture were already living at or near subsistence level. Underlying causes of the famine included inefficient agricultural practices, population pressures, and de-peasantisation through usury and land grabbing. The list of proximate causes included localised natural disasters (a cyclone, tidal waves and flooding, and rice crop disease) and at least five consequences of war: initial, general war-time inflation of both demand-pull and monetary origin; loss of rice imports due to the Japanese occupation of Burma (modern Myanmar); near-total disruption of Bengal's market supplies and transport systems by the preemptive, defensive scorched earth tactics of the Raj (the "denial policies" for rice and boats); and later, massive inflation brought on by repeated policy failures, profiteering, speculation, and perhaps hoarding. Finally, the government prioritised military and defense needs over those of the rural poor, allocating medical care and food very much in favor of the military, labourers in military industries, and civil servants. All these factors were further compounded by restricted access to grain: domestic sources were constrained by emergency inter-provincial trade barriers, while access to international sources was largely denied by the War Cabinet of Great Britain. The relative impact of each of these factors as a cause or contributing factor to the death toll and economic devastation is still a matter of controversy. Different analyses frame the famine against natural, economic, or political causes.

The government was slow to respond with humanitarian aid, at first relying on propaganda to discourage hoarding. It attempted to drive rice paddy prices down through price controls and a series of procurement schemes. Price controls merely created a thriving black market and encouraged cautious sellers to withhold their stocks; moreover, prices soared when the controls were abandoned. Relief efforts in the form of gruel kitchens, agricultural loans and "test works" were both insufficient and ineffective through the worst months of the food crisis phase. Despite having a long-established and detailed Famine Code that would have triggered a sizable increase in aid, the provincial government never formally declared a state of famine. Relief efforts increased significantly when the military took over crisis relief in October 1943, and more effective aid arrived after a record rice harvest that December. Deaths from starvation began to decline, but "very substantially more than half" of the famine-related fatalities were caused by disease in 1944, after the food security crisis had subsided.

Background

Main articles: Economy of India under the British Raj and Agriculture in India

From the late nineteenth century through the Great Depression, social and economic forces exerted a harmful impact on the structure of Bengal's income distribution and the ability of its agricultural sector to sustain the populace. These processes included a rapidly growing population, increasing household debt, stagnant agricultural productivity, increased social stratification, and alienation of the peasant class from their landholdings. The interaction of these left clearly defined social and economic groups mired in poverty and indebtedness, unable to cope with economic shocks or maintain their access to food beyond the near term. In 1942 and 1943, in the immediate and central context of the Second World War, the shocks Bengalis faced were numerous, complex and sometimes sudden. Millions were vulnerable to starvation.

Rice

Rice farmers ploughing a rice field with water buffaloes near Gushkara, Bengal, 1944

The Government of India's Famine Commission Report (1945) described Bengal as "a land of rice growers and rice eaters". Rice dominated the agricultural output of the province, accounting for nearly 88% of its arable land use and 75% of all crops sown. Overall, Bengal produced one third of India's rice – more than any other single province.

Rice also accounted for between 75 and 85% of daily food consumption. Fish was the second major food source, supplemented by small amounts of wheat. The consumption of other foods was typically relatively small.

There are three seasonal rice crops in Bengal. By far the most important is the winter crop of aman rice, sown in May and June and harvested in November and December. This comprises more than 70% of the rice crop grown in a given year. The second important crop is the aus or autumn crop, sown around April and harvested in August and September, which accounts for more than 20% of the yearly harvest. Finally, there is a small amount of boro or spring crop, planted in November and harvested in February and March. Crucially, the (debated) shortfall in rice production in 1942 occurred during the all-important aman seasonal harvest.

Population and agricultural productivity

One reason for the high excess mortality of 1943–45 was a clash between soaring population levels and a shortage of land in Bengal, and a longstanding history of stagnant agricultural productivity in India. Bengal was very densely populated. Moreover, according to census figures, its population had been increasing at an accelerating rate: in ten-year periods, the rate of growth started at 2.8% from 1911 to 1921, then increased to 7.3% from 1921 to 1931, and soared to 20.3% from 1931 to 1941. Bengal's population rose by 43% (from 42.1 million to 60.3 million) between 1901 and 1941, while India as a whole increased by 37% over the same period.

Aside from a great concentration of war factories in industrialized areas in Greater Calcutta, and some mining in the extensive Raniganj Coalfield of the western districts, Bengal's economy was almost solely agrarian. In an agricultural society, arable land is the most important resource, and its produce – both cash and subsistence crops – are the most important commodities. However, agricultural productivity in Bengal was amongst the lowest in the world. Agricultural production had traditionally been characterised by "dependence on monsoon rainfall [instead of controlled and reliable irrigation], archaic methods and crude tillage, low intensity of inputs, subsistence farming, proneness to famines, and the low productivity of land". Rice yield per acre had also been stable or falling for perhaps centuries, and certainly since at least the beginning of the twentieth century.

Prior to about 1920, the food demands of Bengal's growing population could be met in part by bringing undeveloped lands under the plough. Probably around the turn of the twentieth century, and certainly no later than the early 1930s, Bengal began to experience an acute shortage of land and a chronic and growing shortage of rice. Bengal's agricultural inability to keep pace with rapid population growth changed it from a net exporter to a net importer of foodgrains. Although imports constituted a small part of the total production, this may have been accompanied by a decrease in average consumption levels; it was estimated in 1930 that the Bengali diet was the least nutritious in the world:

Bengal's rice output in normal years was barely enough for bare-bones subsistence. An output of 9 million tons translates into one pound per day or less than 2,000 kcal per adult male. Even allowing for imports from neighboring provinces and Burma and trade accounted for only a small fraction of supplies in 1942/3 the province's margin over subsistence on the eve of the famine was slender.

Taken together, these conditions created a situation in which "a large proportion of the population [continually led] a quasi-famine existence". In the end, the rising population and falling productivity created a long-term decline in food availability that left a large proportion of Bengal's citizens – between one and two thirds – living at or near subsistence level at all times. "So delicate was the balance between actual starvation and bare subsistence," asserted the Famine Inquiry Commission of 1945, "that the slightest tilting of the scale in the value and supply of food was enough to put it out of the reach of many and to bring large classes within the range of famine."

Rural credit and land-grabbing

See also: Permanent Settlement, Bengal Tenancy Act (1885), and Great Depression in India

The system of land tenureship in India as a whole and Bengal in particular was very complex, and the credit transactions between landholders and tenants were equally complicated. Very broadly speaking, land rights and the resulting power and welfare gains within Bengal were divided very unequally among three diverse economic and social groups; moreover, this division of power evolved over time and expressed itself differently within the different geographic regions of the province. The three economic groups were: traditional absentee large landowners or zamindars, the upper-tier "wealthy peasant" jotedars; and at "the bottom of the pyramid", the ryot (peasant) smallholders and dwarfholders, bargadars (sharecroppers), and agricultural labourers. Zamindar and jotedar landowners were protected by legal and customary status and rights. At the bottom were the ones actually cultivating the soil, with small or no landholdings. These had very nearly no rights, and the few they had were vague, contradictory and commonly ignored. Typically this problem was compounded by a lack of written records. They laboured within a power structure decisively stacked against them and suffered persistent and increasing losses of land rights and welfare over time.

Over the decades at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the early twentieth, the power and influence of the zamindars fell and that of the jotedars rose. The shift was caused by a rent crisis that was sparked by nineteenth century tenancy legislation, and accelerated after the Great Depression. Jotedars began to make substantial profits and gain power in their villages through their two defining roles: grain or jute traders, and more importantly, creditors who extended loans to sharecroppers, agricultural labourers and ryots. The jotedars' power in the commodity and credit markets translated directly into power over their tenants. They began to leverage their economic and social clout to "[obtain] the land and occupancy rights of the [ryot] through both legal and coercive means". In a few districts in the southwest, such as Midnapore and 24 Parganas, they were able to employ political means. However, their principal instruments of self-enrichment were a combination of debt bondage through the transferal of debts and mortgages, followed by parcel-by-parcel land-grabbing.

Land-grabbing was typically accomplished through the manipulation of the informal credit market. Many formal credit market entities had disappeared during the Great Depression, and peasants who held smaller lots of land generally had no capital to utilise a formal credit market to purchase any good or service beyond their immediate means. They typically had to resort to informal local lenders; for example, when they needed consumer credit for large, occasional expenses such as weddings, religious ceremonies, births, or deaths. More frequently, they needed money to help purchase basic necessities during lean months between harvests, and so were "forced to sell their products at deflated prices during post-harvest glut, in order to pay loans taken during the pre-harvest 'starvation' season". Moreover, though land had traditionally been relatively available, the means of production (such as seed or cattle for ploughing) had always been scarce, and smallholders' lands were sometimes sold in times of distress to purchase these. At other times, peasants were simply compelled by force to take on debt.

Small landholders and sharecroppers were still required to pay rent and taxes and pay off their debts, which were characterised by usurious rates of interest. Any poor harvest thus exacted a heavy toll, given their lack of legally defined security. The accumulation of consumer debt, seasonal loans, and crisis loans began a cycle of spiraling, perpetual indebtedness. This dynamic was reinforced by laws, originally designed to alleviate usury, that restricted access to credit and discouraged or prevented the practice of using farmlands as collateral for loans. This had the unintended effect of making creditors less willing to accept farmlands as a pledge against a debt, and more likely to simply wait until their debtors were unable to repay their loans. Then it was relatively easy for the jotedars to use litigation to force debtors to sell all or part of their landholdings at a low price or forfeit them at auction. Debtors then became landless or land-poor sharecroppers and labourers, usually working the same fields they had once owned. The credit-driven slide into poverty converted farmers from small-holders into dwarf-holders, and from dwarf-holders into sharecroppers or agricultural labourers. The accumulation of household debt to a single, local, informal creditor (who also held power over land and sometimes grain or jute) also bound the debtor nearly inescapably to the creditor/landlord; it became nearly impossible to settle the debt after a good harvest and simply walk away. In this way, the jotedars effectively dominated and impoverished the lowest tier of economic classes in several districts of Bengal.

Land alienation

The end result of this process of exploitation, along with Muslim inheritance practices that divided up land "between three and five brothers", was the substantial, progressive growth in the number of landless bargadars and paid labourers in Bengal. This in turn created both high degrees of social stratification and growing inequalities in land ownership. At the time of the famine, millions of Bengali agriculturalists held little or no land. "The number of actual tillers of the soil with occupancy rights is diminishing so rapidly," the Land Revenue Commission of 1940 reported with alarm, "that the disappearance of this class is imminent". The Government of Bengal described this trend in 1940:

The Census figures show an increase [in the population that are jotedars] of 62 per cent, between 1921 and 1931, and since 1931 there has been a further process of subinfeudation below the statutory [ryot], which will swell the figures still more. At the same time a steady reduction is taking place in the number of actual cultivators possessing occupancy rights, and there is a large increase in the number of landless labourers. Their number increased by 49 per cent, between 1921 and 1931. They now constitute 29 per cent of the total agricultural population, and the next Census will show a considerably larger increase.

Two contemporary reports – the 1940 Report of the Land Revenue Commission of Bengal and the field survey published in Mahalanobis, Mukherjea & Ghosh (1946)  – included measures of the amount of land held per Bengali family. These reports agree that even before the famine of 1943, at least half of the nearly 46 million in Bengal who depended on agriculture for their livelihood were landless or land-poor labourers under consistent threat of food insecurity, with landholdings "barely sufficient for the maintenance of the families which own them".

Given "an average production of 820 lbs. of rice per acre, an average consumption of about 320 lbs. per head per year and an average family size of 5.4 persons", approximately 2 acres of farmland would provide subsistence-level food for an average family, and between 5 and 8 acres of farmland were needed to keep them in "reasonable comfort". According to the 1940 Land Revenue Board report, 46% of rural families owned two acres or less or were landless tenants. The 1946 field survey found that 77.5% did not own sufficient land to provide subsistence for themselves. Passmore (1951) describes the small- or dwarfholding ryot's economic state in the run-up to the famine: "... after a century free from war and famine, the value of his savings, his credit, and his household goods combined could not provide the purchase for three weeks' supply of rice for his family, [at the greatly inflated prices during the famine]." Millions of landless or land-poor agriculturalists in Bengal suffered from "serious undernourishment at all times", living "... on the narrow margin which separates subsistence from starvation". For these Bengalis, according to anthropologist T. C. Das, "[whenever] there was even a slight disturbance of the balance, either through natural or artificial causes, a large number of them fell victims of starvation".

Transport

The Sundarbans in NASA Landsat 7 satellite observations (merged from 1999 and 2000).

Boats were the only reliable means of transport in many areas throughout Bengal, given its "more than 90,000 villages and 20,000 miles of water communications winding through thick jungle". This was true across most of the province during the rainy seasons or all the time in portions of eastern Bengal and the vast delta of the coastal southeastern Sundarbans, where the rivers of the Ganges Delta merge into the Bay of Bengal. River transport was integral to many facets of Bengal's economic system: nearly irreplaceable for both the production and distribution of rice and jute and the livelihoods of fishermen and transport workers. It was also indispensable for the transport of the supplies and finished goods of various artisan trades, such as potters, weavers, and basket makers.

The alternatives to water transport were roads and the rail system. Roads, however, were scarce and generally in poor condition. Bengal's extensive railway system was always dependent upon relatively small boats to deliver production supplies to peripheral riverine areas and transport crops to distribution centers, and was employed even less in the commercial sphere after the demands of war clogged trains and roads with military cargo. Some of the stations did connect with important grain centers; however, boats were required to transport commercial produce, traders and trade from remote areas. Moreover, after 1941, many "nonproductive" branches of the railways were dismantled, with engines and rolling stock shipped overseas, and lines in eastern Bengal were later shut down or dismantled on the same premise as the "denial of boats" policy. Those railway lines that were left intact were almost solely utilised for military and industrial transport until the very late stages of the crisis.

The development of railways in Bengal roughly between 1890 and 1910 contributed to the excess mortality of the famine. The construction of a network of railway embankments disrupted natural drainage and divided Bengal into innumerable poorly drained "compartments". This brought about excessive silting, increased the tendency toward flooding, created stagnant water areas, damaged crop production, contributed (in some areas) to a partial shift away from the productive aman rice cultivar to less productive aush or boro cultivars, and provided a more hospitable environment for water-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria. Increased incidence of these diseases closely clustered around the tracks of the railways.

Soil and water supply

Jute fiber being dried alongside a road after retting

The soil regime in Bengal interacted with the famine in two ways. First, the soil in eastern Bengal, in combination with abundant irrigation from monsoon rains, was unique in the world for its ability to grow large amounts of high quality jute. This gave Bengal an effective world monopoly on the cash crop. Jute of lesser quality was grown in smaller quantities in western Bengal, but eastern Bengal was clearly the center of jute production. During the famine, jute-producing districts suffered higher mortality rates. Second, the sandy soil of eastern Bengal and the lighter sedimentary soil of the Sunderbans tended to drain more rapidly after the monsoon season than the laterite or heavy clay regions of western Bengal. As rule, malaria epidemics lasted approximately one month later in the areas with slower drainage. This problem was compounded by the fact that soil exhaustion created the need for large tracts in western and central Bengal to be left fallow; eastern Bengal had far fewer fallow fields. Flooded fallow fields are one key breeding place for mosquitoes that carry malaria.

Rural areas did not have sufficient access to a safe water supply in the event of an epidemic of waterborne diseases. The supply came primarily from large earthen tanks, rivers, and tube wells. In the dry season, partially drained tanks became yet another hospitable breeding area for malaria vector mosquitoes. Tank and river water, moreover, are readily susceptible to contamination by cholera; tube wells are much safer in this respect. However, landlords were often reluctant to sink tube wells for economic reasons, even when credit was extended for this purpose, and as many as one-third of the existing wells in war-time Bengal were in disrepair due to government inefficiency and the high cost of materials. The national government urged an initiative to repair these wells in November 1943, but actual work was not begun until after the cholera epidemic had subsided.

Pre-famine shocks and distress

Throughout 1942 and into early 1943, a complex series of overlapping crises placed enormous, widespread stress on Bengal's economy, particularly on its more vulnerable segments. Distressing military and political events and subsequent government and market responses created escalating price shocks that overlapped with supply shocks caused by natural disasters and plant disease later in the year. As Bengal's food needs rose from increased military presence and an influx of refugees from Burma, its ability to obtain rice and other foodgrains from outside the province was restricted by interprovincial trade barriers. The outlook of the typical Bengali, particularly in the countryside, deteriorated into a general belief in the inevitability of famine and devastating inflation, a lack of faith in the government's ability to overcome the crises, and a mood of isolation and panic. In nearly every sector of the population, the overriding concerns were the lack of food and personal safety, though a small number secured record profits amidst the havoc.

February–April 1942: Japanese invasion of Burma

Main articles: Japanese conquest of Burma, Indian Ocean raid, and Arakan Campaign 1942–43

HMS Cornwall, burning and sinking following Japanese dive bomber attacks, in the Indian Ocean, 5 April 1942

The Japanese campaign to conquer Burma began in late 1941, and from its outset a tide of refugees escaping into India through Bengal and Assam, helping to create conditions that would later set the stage for famine and epidemic in the region. The flow began with 70,000 after the bombing of Rangoon (1941–1942) in late December 1941 and increased to a "mass exodus" in February 1942. For months thereafter, desperate people poured across the border. The number of refugees who successfully reached India totaled at least 500,000; an unknown number, conservatively estimated between 10,000 and 50,000, died along the way. In later months, 70 to 80% of these refugees were afflicted with diseases such as dysentery, smallpox, malaria, or cholera, with 30% "desperately so". On 26 April, the British, Indian and Burmese forces of the Burma Army joined the civilians in a full retreat.

The influx of civilian and military evacuees from Burma had three immediate effects relevant to the famine of 1943. First, the spread of disease presented an increasingly apparent public health risk. As early as April 1942, Public Health Services officials in Bengal and Assam began generating weekly epidemiological reports on cholera, smallpox and plague "in view of the continuous flow of evacuees from Burma". Second, those who struggled through arrived in an alarming state, with "hair-raising stories of atrocities and sufferings". The sudden and disturbing appearance of these distraught refugees bred foreboding, uncertainty, and panic amongst the government and populace of Bengal; this aggravated panic buying and hoarding that contributed to the onset of the famine. Third, the influx of refugees simply meant that more food, clothing and medical aid were needed, further straining the resources of the province. In the larger picture, the influx of soldiers retreating into Bengal further compounded the strain on resources, the lowering of morale, and the impression that the Raj was weak and would certainly fall to the Japanese.

The fall of Rangoon also meant that Burmese exports of rice to India and Ceylon ceased. The impact on Bengal was indirect but powerful; although Burmese rice usually made up only around 5% of the consumption within Bengal, other areas, such as Cochin, western India, and especially Travancore and Ceylon, suddenly lost a far greater proportion of their imports. This provoked an aggressive and competitive scramble for rice across India, causing a rapid, unprecedented price inflation in Bengal and elsewhere. Between 1941 and 1942, Bengal flipped from being a net importer of 296,000 tons of rice to a net exporter of 185,000 tons. Under pressure from the UK, Bengal continued to export rice to Ceylon for months afterward, even as the beginning of a food crisis began to became apparent. Moreover, the ease with which Burmese rice had been obtained in the past had always prevented hoarding and helped stabilize rice prices. The loss of this source of foodgrains had a "vastly disproportionate effect" on price levels in rice markets in Bengal. The sudden and alarming inflation from this scramble for rice, together with transport problems caused the government's "boat denial" policy, were the direct causes of later inter-provincial trade barriers on the movement of foodgrains, and contributed to a series of failed government policies that further exacerbated the food crisis.

A further consequence of Japanese military advances was the sinking of approximately 100,000 tons of merchant shipping in the Bay of Bengal, plus two heavy cruisers (Dorsetshire and Cornwall) the aircraft carrier Hermes, and "some smaller naval vessels". This highlighted the powerlessness of the Eastern Fleet and heightened the fear of imminent invasion; shipping in the Bay of Bengal practically ceased, placing additional strain on the railways that made transport unavailable for famine relief until very late in the crisis.

1942–45: Military build-up, inflation, and displacement

Further information: Monetary inflation, demand pull inflation, and deficit spending

A trainee pilot shoulders his parachute harness in front of Hawker Hurricane Mark Is at No. 151 (Fighter) Operational Training Unit, Risalpur, India.

The fall of Burma had brought Bengal close to the war front; the war's impact fell more strongly on Bengal than elsewhere in India. As 1942 and especially 1943 wore on, major urban areas in Bengal (most especially Calcutta) swelled with ever-increasing numbers of workers in the military industries and troops from many nations. The docks of Kidderpore employed perhaps 60,000 workers (and nearby were large American and British Army depots); railway sheds in Howrah and Lilloah employed perhaps another 25,000; there were cotton mills, iron and steel works, gun and shell factories, pharmaceutical works, engineering firms, and other support industries of every kind. Because of its proximity to Burma, an unprecedented number of large-scale civil and defense-related construction works were carried out in Bengal, much more than any other region of India. Unskilled labourers from Bengal and nearby provinces were employed by military contractors for numerous small tasks and large projects, particularly the construction of American and British airfields.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of troops poured into the province from various countries, especially the United States, the UK, India, and China. Calcutta was the main resupply base for American troops fighting in China, and its grassy Maidan park the airfield for transports flying over the Himalayan mountains. Troops also passed through Bengal on their way to the border with Burma. This massive influx of industrial workers and domestic and foreign troops placed further strains on domestic supplies of every kind – especially medicine and food.

These enormous public expenditures and resulting increases in demand sparked wartime inflation across India, but especially in Bengal. There were local scarcities of daily necessities such kerosene, cloth, sugar, cooking oil, pulses, fish, matches, yarn, coal and ice; prices rose rapidly due to the general inflationary pressures of a war-time economy. Generalized demand-pull inflation spread across the entire spectrum of goods and services, including such things as bamboo umbrellas and haircuts. The productive capacity of Indian industry, which had been relatively meagre after the stagnation arising from the Great Depression, faced significant capacity constraints that drove up prices of Indian goods and commodities. The rise in prices of essential goods and services was "not unsatisfactory" and "not disturbing" until 1941, when they became more alarming. Then in early 1943, the rate of inflation for foodgrains in particular took an unprecedented upward turn.

Nearly the full productive output of India's cloth, wool, leather, and silk industries were sold directly to the military. In the system that the UK Government used to procure goods through the Government of India, rather than outright requisitioning the means of production, the productive capacity of Indian industries was left in private ownership. Firms were required to sell goods to the military on credit and at fixed, low prices. Moreover, firms were left free to charge any price they desired in their domestic market for whatever they had left over. In the case of the textiles industries that supplied cloth for the uniforms of the UK military, for example, they charged "a very high price indeed" in domestic markets. By the end of 1942, cloth prices had more than tripled from their pre-war levels; they had more than quadrupled by mid-1943. Much of the goods left over for civilian use were purchased by speculators. As a result, "civilian consumption of cotton goods fell by more than 23 per cent from the peace time level by 1943/44" The effects were felt by the rural population in a "cloth famine", one of the severe hardships of the crisis in Bengal that was not alleviated until military forces began distributing relief supplies; for example, the United States Air Force flew 100 tons of warm clothing into eastern Bengal.

The method of credit financing was also tailored to UK wartime needs. The UK agreed to pay for defence expenditures over and above the amount that India had paid in peacetime (adjusted for inflation). However, their purchases were made entirely on credit accumulated in the Bank of England and not redeemable until after the war. At the same time, the Bank of India was permitted to treat those credits as assets against which it could print currency up to two and a half times more than the total debt incurred. India's money printing presses then began running overtime, printing the currency that paid for all these massive defence expenditures. The tremendous rise in nominal money supply spurred monetary inflation, reaching its peak in 1944–45. The accompanying rise in incomes and purchasing power fell disproportionately into the hands of industries in Calcutta (in particular, munitions industries).

Finally, the urgent need for housing for the massive influx of workers and soldiers from 1942 onward also created problems. Military barracks were scattered around Calcutta. Perhaps a thousand homes, including entire villages, were requisitioned for military use and at least 60,000 occupants expelled. The Famine Commission report of 1945 stated that the owners had been paid for these homes, but "there is little doubt that the members of many of these families became famine victims in 1943."

March 1942: Denial policies

British authorities also feared that the Japanese would proceed through captured Burma and on into British India, attacking over the eastern border of Bengal. As a preemptive measure, a two-pronged scorched-earth initiative was launched in eastern and coastal Bengal. The objective of these "denial policies" was to prevent or impede the expected Japanese invasion by denying access to food supplies or transport (plus other resources) from eastern India. The policies' impact on the development of the famine — the extent to which they compounded or even caused the later crisis — has been the subject of much discussion.

The first policy, "denial of rice", was carried out in three southern districts along the coast of the Bay of Bengal that were expected to have surpluses of rice – Bakarganj (or Barisal), Midnapore and Khulna. In late March 1942, Governor Herbert, acting under orders from the UK, issued a directive requiring surplus stocks of paddy (rough, unhusked rice) and other food items to be removed or destroyed in three districts. Great urgency was attached to the task; the Governor instructed various agents to do it almost immediately. Some rice was apparently simply destroyed, but paddy was also purchased by government agents in coastal districts and stored in various locations as "denial" stock. Official figures for the amounts of rice and paddy impounded were relatively small; reductions of this level would inflict only limited damage, reducing local peasants' access to rice and contributing to local scarcities in an already perilous period. Evidence that fraud, corruption and coercive practices by the purchasing agents drained far more rice from the market than officially recorded, not only in the three designated districts, but also in unauthorised areas, suggests that the impact may have been greater. Far more damaging, finally, were the policy's disturbing impact on regional market relationships and contribution to a sense of confusion and public alarm.

Denial of boats

Boats transporting rice on the Hooghly river, 1905

A second denial policy was demanded by the military. The "boat denial policy" was designed to deny the Japanese army, if they ever invaded, Bengali vehicles that could transport troops or equipment. The policy applied to districts that were readily accessible via the Bay of Bengal and the larger rivers that flow into it, as well as the important ports of Chittagong and Calcutta. The three "rice denial" districts were affected, as were nine others: Hooghly, Howrah, 24 Parganas, Jessore, Faridpur, Tippera, Dacca, Noakhali, and Chittagong. Hastily announced "without any consultation with elected provincial authority" on 2 April 1942, the policy was implemented on 1 May after an initial registration period. It authorised the Army to confiscate, relocate or destroy any boats large enough to carry more than ten persons; it also allowed them to requisition other means of transport such as bicycles, bullock carts, and elephants. Some tools and instruments were also seized.

The Army confiscated approximately 46,000 rural boats. The policy severely disrupted river-borne movement of labor, supplies and food; the livelihoods of boatmen and fishermen were compromised. Transport was generally unavailable to carry seed and equipment to distant fields or rice to the market hubs, leaving farmers in great difficulty. Transport costs rose, and the sudden stoppage of commerce not only caused some local industries to collapse, but also struck local areas with a supply shock on rice and fish, Bengal's two staple foods. The Army took no steps to distribute food rations to make up for the interruption of supplies. Moreover, artisans and other groups who relied on boat transport to carry goods to market were offered no recompense whatsoever; neither were rice growers nor the network of migratory laborers. The large-scale removal or destruction of rural boats, indispensable vehicles in the internal transport system of districts such as Khulna, 24–Parganas, Bakargunj and Tipperah, left in its wake the "complete destruction of internal trade communication and administration" that caused a near-complete breakdown of the existing transport infrastructure and market system for movement of rice paddy.

The policy also compounded inflationary pressures. The British administration released significant funds for cash purchases of boats; the threat of punitive force and the fear of reported Japanese war crimes against captives were also employed. Compensation was paid "lavishly" for the boats and boat crews: owners were paid "the market value of the craft [and] three months' average earnings when the boat had been used as sole means of livelihood", while "[crews] received a month's wages". Many boat owners initially responded enthusiastically; authorities were able to obtain 25,000 boats within the first few days after the introduction of the policy. Cash was dispersed in lump sums of one rupee notes. These notes, however, were immediately spent on rice and cloth, both of which were already becoming scarce, since the paper they were printed on was frequently damaged by white ants. This sudden injection of cash into the local economy, and subsequent increase in demand for goods that were already becoming scarce due to war conditions, compounded the inflationary pressures.

Problems continued when many of the confiscated boats simply disintegrated in holding areas. No steps were taken to provide for their proper maintenance or repair. As a result, many fishermen were unable to return to their trade. The loss of transport was also a factor in later problems delivering relief aid to cyclone and famine victims in areas where roads were poor and other means of transport were lacking. Finally, this array of harmful effects had important political ramifications as well, as the Indian National Congress and many other groups staged protests denouncing the denial policies for placing draconian burdens on the Bengali peasants; these were part of a nationalist sentiment and outpouring that later peaked in the "Quit India" movement.

Mid-1942: Inter-provincial trade barriers

Many Indian provinces and princely states imposed inter-provincial trade barriers in mid-1942, preventing other provinces from buying domestic rice. One underlying cause was the anxiety and soaring prices that followed the fall of Burma, but a more direct impetus in some cases (for example, Bihar) was the trade imbalances directly caused by provincial price controls. The power to restrict inter-provincial trade had been conferred on provincial governments in November 1941 as an item under the Defence of India Act, 1939. Provincial governments began erecting trade barriers that prevented the flow of foodgrains (especially rice) and other goods between provinces. These barriers reflected a desire to see that local populations were well fed, thus also forestalling civil unrest.

In January 1942, the Punjab banned exports of wheat; this increased the perception of food insecurity and led the enclave of wheat-eaters in Greater Calcutta to increase their demand for rice precisely when an impending rice shortage was feared. The Central Provinces prohibited the export of foodgrains outside the province two months later. Madras banned rice exports in June, followed by export bans in Bengal and its neighboring provinces of Bihar and Orissa that July.

The Famine Inquiry Commission of 1945 characterised this "critical and potentially most dangerous stage" in the crisis as a key policy failure: "Every province, every district, every [administrative division] in the east of India had become a food republic unto itself. The trade machinery for the distribution of food [between provinces] throughout the east of India was slowly strangled, and by the spring of 1943 was dead." Bengal was thus unable to import domestic rice; this critical policy failure helped transform the combination of market failures plus some degree of food shortage into famine and widespread death.

August 1942: Prioritised distribution

File:Distribution of Food among people in Bengal.jpg

Distribution of rice in Bengal in 1943

In the eyes of the government, strategic problems stemming from the loss of Burma served to further reinforce the importance of Calcutta, which produced "as much as 80% of the armament, textile and heavy machinery production used in the Asian theater." The paramount goal became the support of this center of wartime mobilisation. To address this problem, they adopted a technique they had already been using since the outset of the war — prioritized distribution of goods and services. The Government of India made a conscious decision to divide socioeconomic groups into "priority" and "non-priority" classes according to the relative importance of their contributions to the war effort. Rather than being faced with starvation, workers in prioritised sectors – private and government wartime industries, military and civilian construction, paper and textile mills, engineering firms, the Indian Railways, coal mining, and government workers of various levels — were given significant advantages and benefits. In particular, the focus became the need to provide rice to the workers in Calcutta's vital industries. To a large extent, these priority classes were composed of bhadraloks, who were upper-class or bourgeois middle-class, socially mobile, educated, urban, and sympathetic to Western values and modernisation. Protecting their interests was a major concern of both private and public relief efforts.

Even from the outset of the war, medicine and medical care in particular had been directed to these priority groups – particularly the military. Both public and private Indian doctors, assistant-surgeons, medical graduates, antimalaria officers, medical licentiates and other medical practitioners were transferred to military duty. The highest quality medical supplies were "almost completely monopolized for military use and only shared with very specific civilian groups such as the labour employed in strategic projects and mines". During most of the famine, this directly reduced levels of medical care available to the general populace, having "milked the hospitals of India to the danger-point". These resources were later used to make dramatic improvements in public medical aid after the military assumed control of relief efforts in late 1943. For example, between 1942 and 1943, the number of vaccinations rose by 1% in rural Bengal and 55% in urban areas; in 1944, the increases were 53.2% and 287% respectively.

Then, as food prices rose and the signs of famine became readily visible around July or August 1942, the Government of Bengal and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce devised a Foodstuffs Scheme that provided preferential distribution of a number of goods and services to workers in essential war industries, to prevent them from leaving their jobs, stating, "the maintenance of essential food supplies to the industrial area of Calcutta must be ranked on a very high priority among the government's wartime obligation." Rice was directed away from the starving rural districts to workers in industries considered vital to the military effort – particularly in the area around Greater Calcutta. By December of that year, the total number of individuals covered (workers and their families) was approximately a million; during the brief crisis in the aftermath of the air raids on Calcutta, this high number necessitated "forcible requisition of rice from mills and warehouses in and around Calcutta". Essential workers also benefited from ration cards, a network of "cheap shops" which provided essential supplies at discounted rates, and direct, preferential allocation of supplies such as water, medical care, and antimalarial supplies. They also received subsidized food, free transportation, access to superior housing, regular wages and even "mobile cinema units catering to recreational needs". Their workers were also frequently paid in part in weekly allotments of rice sufficient to feed their immediate families, further protecting them from inflation.

Any civilians who were not members of these groups (in particular, labourers in rural areas) received severely reduced access to food and medical care, and this limited access was principally available only to those who arrived at "cities and selected district towns". Outside of these selected locations, "...vast areas of rural eastern India were denied any lasting state-sponsored distributive schemes" for food and medical aid, placing the rural poor in direct competition for scarce supplies and basic needs with workers in public agencies, war-related industries, and in some cases even politically well-connected middle-class agriculturalists. For this reason, the policy of prioritised distribution is among the factors sometimes mentioned in discussions of the causes of the famine.

The workers in prioritised industries in Calcutta were not living in luxury or even necessarily in comfort. Even with all their advantages, a great many urban poor were living near the subsistence level. They were, however, very much more shielded from the possibility of starvation, disease, and death.

August 1942: Civil unrest

Main articles: Quit India Movement and Indian independence movement

Police use tear gas during a communal riot in Calcutta in 1946

Social unrest, occasionally intense, had been a subtext in the political experience of Bengal since at least the 1870s. Serious political dissension was unfolding immediately prior to the famine, peaking during the Quit India Movement of August 1942. Discontent, resentment, and fear of the Raj among rural agriculturalists and business and industrial elements in Greater Calcutta had been simmering since the outset of the war. Rural discontent was especially deep in the Midnapur district in southwest Bengal, where confrontations in Tamluk resulted in the deaths of 44, including Matangini Hazra, an elderly woman who would later become a hero of the anti-colonial movement. The government also attempted to address the concerns of Calcutta's "priority class" with selective distribution of economic benefits, which altered their behaviour, but not their attitudes. The violence of the "Quit India" movement was condemned around the world and did much to harden British opinion in many sectors against India and Indians in general; some sources speculate that this reduced the British War Cabinet's willingness to provide famine aid at a time when supplies were also needed for the war effort. Madhusree Mukerjee further suggests that destruction of personal rice stores during police repression may have helped make the Tamluk district the second-hardest hit by the famine in all of Bengal in terms of percentage of excess mortality. The disorder and distrust that were the effects and after-effects of rebellion and civil unrest placed political, logistical, and infrastructural constraints on the Government of India that contributed to later famine-driven woes.

October 1942: Natural disasters

See also: North Indian Ocean tropical cyclone

Brown spot disease: symptoms of Cochliobolus miyabeanus on rice

Later in the same year, five natural disasters struck: first, the winter rice crop was afflicted by a lengthy and virulent outbreak of fungal brown spot disease. During this outbreak, a cyclone and three tidal waves in October ravaged croplands, destroyed houses, and killed thousands. The cyclone also dispersed high levels of fungal spores widely across the region, increasing the spread of the crop disease.

Fungal disease, a cyclone and the three tidal waves ravaged the aman rice seasonal cultivar (the main winter crop) of 1942, though the degree of damage is a matter of debate. Unusually warm, cloudy, and humid climatic conditions and above-average rainfall lasted two months later than average (through November), during critical stages of the rice crop's maturation. This weather pattern triggered "a massive release of disease spores at the exact time that rice plants were most susceptible to infection." "The fungus Cochliobolus miyabeanus destroyed 50% to 90% of some rice varieties, reducing the yield even more than the cyclone. According to Padmanabhan (1973), conditions were optimal for brown spot disease, and the resulting outbreak was so destructive that "nothing as devastating... has been recorded in plant pathological literature."

The Bengal cyclone of 16 October 1942 came through the Bay of Bengal and made landfall on the the coastal areas of Midnapore and 24-Parganas, reportedly causing around 40,000 fatalities and extensive damage, particularly in the area around Contai. The cyclone also created local atmospheric conditions that contributed to an increased incidence of malaria.

Then on October 16–17, three tidal waves destroyed the seawalls of Midnapore and flooded large areas of Contai and Tamluk. An area of 450 square miles (1,200 km²) were swept by the waves, 400 square miles (1,000 km²) affected by floods, and 3,200 square miles (8,300 km²) damaged by wind and torrential rain. Reserve stocks in the hands of cultivators, consumers, and dealers were destroyed. This killed 14,500 people and 190,000 cattle. "The homes, livelihood and property of nearly 2.5 million Bengalis were ruined or damaged."

Corpses lay scattered over several thousand square miles of devastated land. 7,400 villages were partly or wholly destroyed by the storm, and standing flood waters remained for weeks in at least 1,600 villages. Cholera, dysentery and other water-borne diseases flourished. 527,000 houses and 1,900 schools were lost. Over 1000 square miles of the most fertile paddy land in the province was entirely destroyed, and the standing crop over an additional 3000 square miles was damaged.

The cyclone, floods, plant disease, and warm, humid weather reinforced each other and combined to have a substantial impact on the aman rice crop of 1942. Their impact was felt in other aspects as well, as in some districts the cyclone was responsible for an increased incidence of malaria, with deadly effect.

October 1942: Unreliable crop forecasts

Boy herding cattle in Bengal in 1912

"Material relating to the economic life of the rural population was meagre," asserts Mahalanobis, Mukherjea & Ghosh (1946, p. 338), "and reliable information relating to the famine was simply not available." As early as October 1942, crop forecasts for the coming year predicted a significant shortfall, and traders began to warn the Bengal Government of an impending famine. However, the government did not act on those predictions: "The official estimates were evidently disbelieved by the very Government which issued them." There were several reasons for this. First, administrators and statisticians had known for decades that India's agricultural production statistics were "unreliable and incomplete" and "not merely guesses, but frequently demonstrably absurd guesses". The official statistics were riddled with "elements of negligence and incompetence, of subjectivity and conservatism, of corruption and absurdity... Official indifference and genuine perplexity [at the complexity of the task]". Second, there was little or no internal bureaucracy for creating and maintaining such reports, and the low-ranking police officers or village officials charged with gathering local statistics were often poorly supplied with maps and other necessary information, poorly educated, and poorly motivated to be accurate. Moreover, the already haphazard rural administration went through an increasing process of collapse through 1941 and 1942; many of these local officials went unpaid for long periods of time. Third, these forecasts had predicted a shortfall several times in previous years, but no significant problems had occurred. Finally, given the general poverty of the area, there were many other pressing needs that demanded greater attention than the collection of statistics.

December 1942: Air raids on Calcutta

The Famine Inquiry Commission's Report on Bengal (1945) discussed different potential causes and contributing factors for the famine, but singled out one event as its moment of inception: the first Japanese air raid on Calcutta on 20 December 1942. The first raid involved scores of aircraft flying over the city in broad daylight and in perfect formation, largely unchallenged by Allied defences. Raids continued throughout that week, triggering a panicked exodus of thousands from the city. As evacuees traveled to the countryside, foodgrain dealers in the city closed their shops. The Government of Bengal had placed a very high priority on ensuring that workers in the prioritised industries in Calcutta would be fed, and to meet this goal, it began seizing stocks of rice from wholesale dealers. This action shattered any trust that the rice traders had in the government, making all later government actions in the rice market considerably less effective. "From that moment," the 1945 report stated, "the ordinary trade machinery could not be relied upon to feed Calcutta. The [food security] crisis had begun."

1942–43: Shortfall and carryover

Even from the time of the famine, it was debated whether the crisis was caused by a crop shortfall in the aman harvest of late 1942 or by a failure in distribution of a rice harvest which was nearly sufficient to feed the populace of Bengal. The most influential and widely accepted analysis belongs to Amartya Sen, who concluded: "The current [rice paddy] supply for 1943 was only about 5% lower than the average of the preceding five years. It was, in fact, 13% higher than in 1941, and there was, of course, no famine in 1941." The Famine Commission Report considered that the overall deficit in rice in Bengal in 1943, taking into account an estimate of the amount of carryover of rice from the previous harvest, was about three weeks supply. Even under normal circumstances, this would have been a significant shortfall requiring food relief "on a considerable scale", but not a deficit large enough to create widespread deaths by starvation. In this view, the famine "was not a crisis of food availability, but of the [unequal] distribution of food and income."

Several contemporary experts, however, cited evidence of a much larger shortfall. Wallace Aykroyd, who had been a member of the Commission, wrote in 1975 that there had been a 25% shortfall in the harvest of the winter of 1942, exacerbated by increased exports, decreased imports, and a drain on the carryover of that year. L. G. Pinnell, director of the Department of Civil Supplies (DCS) of the Government of Bengal, was responsibile for managing food supplies from August 1942 to April 1943; he estimated the crop loss at 20%, with crop disease accounting for more of the loss than the cyclone; other government sources privately admitted the shortfall was "2 million tons". Rutger's University economist George Blyn argues that the Midnapur cyclone and floods of October 1942 plus the loss of imports from Burma caused the famine; he asserts the Bengal rice harvest had been reduced by one-third. An online review of Madhusree Mukerjee's book Churchill's Secret War provoked a debate (principally between Sen and Mark Tauger) from December 2010 to May 2011 that centred around different means of estimating the crop shortfall.

1942–43: Price shocks and policy failures

In April 1942, a jump in local inflation started in the regions of south-eastern Bengal falling under the boat denial policy. All throughout that month, the boat denial policy began, British and Indian refugees continued pouring out of Burma (many through the same southeast region, near Chittagong), and provinces affected by the cessation of Burmese imports were bidding up rice prices across India. The steep inflation spread across the rest of Bengal, especially in May and June; prices soon rose five to six times higher than they had been before April. In June, the Government of Bengal decided to establish price controls, but by the time the order took effect on 1 July, the fixed price was already considerably below market prices. The provincial government ordered a ban on exports out of Bengal two weeks later, then raised the controlled price slightly one week after that. However, the principal result of the fixed low price was to make sellers reluctant to sell – stocks disappeared, either into the black market or into storage. In the face of this obvious policy failure, the government let it be known that the price control law would not be enforced except in the most egregious cases of profiteering. This created about four months of relative price stability.

In mid-October, however, southwest Bengal was struck by series of natural disasters which destabilised prices again. The Famine Commission Report blamed the soaring inflation of that November–December on heavy speculative buying (Government of India 1945, p. 33). There was again another rushed scramble in the rice market – this time, to smuggle grain out of provinces with trade barriers to the black market in Calcutta. Between December 1942 and March 1943, the government attempted three times to "break the Calcutta market" by bringing in rice supplies from various districts around the province. These procurement schemes essentially amounted to seizing rice, then repaying the "sellers" at the low, officially sanctioned price. All three schemes failed to significantly improve the situation.

On 11 March 1943, the provincial government officially rescinded its order fixing price controls, permitting buyers to purchase rice at any price. The results were immediate and dramatic: very sharp rises in the price of rice, which doubled within two weeks. The period of inflation between March and May 1943 was especially catastrophic; May was the month of the first reports of death by starvation in Bengal. Several neighbouring provinces promised food aid in March, but all reneged, except for Orissa.

Between April and May 1943, the provincial government attempted a propaganda drive that repeatedly asserted that the rice supplies in the province were sufficient to feed its populace, and the crisis was being caused almost solely by speculation and hoarding. The goal was to "to allay fears of shortage and create confidence". The propaganda, which has been described as particularly inept, failed to persuade most Bengalis that there was no shortage of rice.

On 18 May, all inter-provincial trade barriers were abolished. Free trade caused prices to drop temporarily in Calcutta, but they soared in the neighbouring provinces of Bihar and Orissa, as Bengali traders rushed to purchase stocks. In the first week of June 1943 (during this free trade period), the government attempted a "food drive" – an attempt to locate and seize any hoarded stocks – everywhere in the province except Calcutta and Howrah. Then in the first week of July, a second food drive covered areas previously untouched. Both food drives failed to find significant hoarding. This failure directly contradicted strident propaganda that the crisis was solely caused by hoarding and further eroded public confidence in the government. This in turn strengthened the dread of a calamitous food shortage, far worse than previously imagined. Free trade was abandoned in late July and early August 1943 due to the rapid rise in prices in the neighbouring provinces.

Price controls were reinstated in August. Despite this, there were unofficial reports of rice being sold in late 1943 at roughly eight to ten times the prices of late 1942 – prices that had even then been multiple times higher than they were in 1941. Purchasing agents were sent out by the government to obtain rice, but their attempts largely failed. Prices remained high, and the black market was not brought under control.

Finally, despite having a long-established and detailed Famine Code that would have triggered a sizable increase in aid, the provincial government never formally declared a state of famine. The official explanation was three-fold: First, the declaration would have directly contradicted the propaganda drive, undermining its wartime political goals. Second, even if a state of famine had been declared, the inter-provincial trade barriers would have prevented the provincial government from obtaining the amounts that the Famine Code's provisions dictated. Third, the government did provide various other types of relief efforts.

1942–44: Refusal of imports

From late 1942 through at least early 1944, several high-ranking government officials and military officers made repeated requests for food to be imported from outside India, but the War Cabinet persistently either rejected the requests outright or bargained them down to a fraction of the original amount. Viceroy Linlithgow began making appeals in mid-December 1942 for the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, to request food imports. Initially, these requests adopted a nearly apologetic tone, and included assurances that the military would be given preference over civilians when imports were distributed. In the first week of January, Amery sent to the UK the first of repeated requests for food aid in the form of direct imports; rather than mentioning worsening conditions in the countryside, Amery stressed that Calcutta's industries must be fed or its workers would go back to the countryside to help their families. Rather than meeting this request, the UK promised a relatively small amount of wheat that was specifically intended for western India (that is, not for Bengal) in exchange for an increase in rice exports from Bengal to Ceylon. The tone of Linlithgow's warnings to Amery grew increasingly serious over the coming months, and so then did Amery's requests to the War Cabinet; on 4 August 1943 – less than three weeks before The Statesman's graphic photographs of starving famine victims in Calcutta would focus the world's attention on the severity of the crisis – Amery noted the spread of famine, and specifically stressed the effect upon Calcutta and the potential effect on the morale of European troops. The cabinet again offered only a relatively small amount, explicitly referring to it as a token shipment. A similar cycle of requests and refusals continued through 1943 and into 1944. The explanation for these repeated refusals was invariably that the Allies had insufficient shipping, particularly in light of their plans to invade Normandy – but this rationale has been debated. The Cabinet also refused offers of food shipments from several different nations. When such shipments did begin to increase modestly in late 1943, the transport and storage facilities were understaffed and inadequate.

Famine, disease, and the death toll

A child with smallpox: "Malaria, cholera, and with increasing virulence, smallpox [swept] through the hunger-stricken population unabated. Weakened bodies succumbed within hours of the onset of disease."

It is not possible to assign a definitive starting date to the actual onset of the famine, particularly since different districts in Bengal were affected at different times and to considerably varying degrees. The Government of India dated the beginning of a "food crisis" to the consequences of the air raids on Calcutta in December 1942, and the beginning of "famine" to May 1943 as the consequence of price decontrol two months earlier. In some districts, the food crisis began as early as mid-1942, but the rural poor were able to draw upon various coping strategies for a few months. Some then felt the signs of incipient famine as early as December 1942, when reports from commissioners and district officers of various districts in Bengal began to cite a "sudden and alarming" inflation, nearly doubling the price of rice; this was followed in January by reports of distress over serious food supply problems. In May 1943, six districts – Rangpur, Mymensingh, Bakarganj, Chittagong, Noakhali and Tipperah – were the first to report deaths by starvation. Chittagong and Noakhali, both "boat denial" districts in the Ganges Delta (or Sundarbans Delta) area, were the hardest hit. Dyson (1991) dates the beginning of the famine's excess mortality to the following month. Deaths began showing up later in other geographical areas; some districts of Bengal, however, were relatively less affected throughout the entire course of the crisis.

The Bengal famine of 1943 saw two waves overall of excess mortality. In the first wave, victims of pure starvation filled the emergency hospitals in Calcutta and accounted for more than half of deaths in various districts. Deaths by starvation occurred most notably through November 1943; many victims on the streets and in the hospitals were so emaciated that they resembled "living skeletons". Disease began its sharp upward turn around October 1943 and overtook starvation as the most common cause of death around December. The two trends overlapped briefly in the closing months of the year. Disease-related mortality then continued to take its toll through early-to-mid 1944.

Of all diseases, malaria was clearly the biggest killer. From July 1943 through June 1944, the monthly death toll from malaria stood at an average of 125% over rates from the previous five years; in December 1943, the excess mortality was 203% over average. Malaria parasites were found in nearly 40% and 52% of all blood samples examined at Calcutta hospitals during the peak periods in November-December of 1943 and 1944, respectively. Moreover, since its symptoms often resemble those of other fatal fevers (such as kala-azar) and since only a small proportion of victims received medical care and were examined, statistics for malaria deaths are almost certainly underestimated.

Dysentery and diarrhea result directly from famine, typically through consumption of poor-quality food or deterioration of the digestive system caused by malnutrition. Cholera is a waterborne disease associated with poor sanitation and contaminated water or food; it is often considered a disease brought on more by social disruption than malnutrition. Cholera arose from different sources near the onset of the famine – carried by escapees from Burma and erupting in the wake of the October cyclone and flooding. Smallpox was an airborne disease often associated with crowded living arrangements. Statistics for smallpox and cholera are probably more reliable than those for malaria, since their symptoms are more easily recognisable.

Map of Bengal districts 1943

Mortality statistics for the famine are conspicuously unreliable, particularly for rural areas. They were generally collected by illiterate and underpaid village watchmen known as chowkidari, whose methods were unreliable even in normal times. Moreover, many of these died or migrated during the famine and went unreplaced for weeks. There was also no system in place for counting the deaths of the thousands who died along roadsides or other areas while migrating away from rural villages. Finally, data deficiencies and unequal accuracy may explain some differences between rural and urban mortality statistics.

Although infants, young children, and the elderly might be expected to be more susceptible to the effects of starvation and disease, in fact adults and children aged 10–14 suffered the highest proportional mortality rises overall. Female infant death rates were higher than for male infants, but males suffered higher rates overall and in every other age range. The relatively protected status of females of child-bearing age may have resulted in part from fertility decreases brought on by malnutrition, which in turn reduced maternal deaths. The higher death rates for female infants held true in both urban and rural areas, perhaps reflecting a discriminatory bias. Other age- and sex-related statistics were completely inverted in urban Bengal, perhaps because the cities attracted large numbers of very young and very old migrants seeking food relief. However, there were no differences in the death rates for the sexes in urban areas.

Regional differences in mortality rates were influenced by several factors, including the effects of migration. In general, however, two groups of districts experienced the highest mortality rates: First, although the relative shortfall in the rice crop was worst in the western districts of Bengal, excess mortality was higher in the east. Districts in the east were relatively densely populated (and incidentally had higher Muslim populations), were closest to the Burma war zone, and normally ran grain deficits in pre-famine times. These also were subject to the boat denial policy and had relatively high jute production. Finally, workers in eastern districts were far more likely to receive monetary wages than to payment in kind with a portion of the harvest; the reverse was true in western districts. When prices rose sharply, their wages failed to follow suit; this drop in real wages left them less able to purchase food. The second group with the highest rates of mortality were those districts which had suffered a natural disaster immediately prior to the onset of the famine. Finally, although no demographic or geographic group was completely immune to increased rates of death by disease, only the rural poor died of starvation.

The following table, excerpted from Maharatna (1992, p. 243) shows trends in excess mortality for 1943–44 as compared to prior non-famine years. Death rates are with respect to the population in 1941. Percentages for 1943–44 are of excess deaths as compared to rates from 1937-41, while those for 1937-41 are with respect to the average annual deaths of that period.

Cause-specific death rates and relative importance of different causes of death during pre-famine and famine periods: Bengal

Cause of death	Pre-famine 1937-41		1943		1944
	Rate	%	Rate	%	Rate	%
Cholera	0.73	3.72	3.60	23.88	0.82	0.99
Smallpox	0.21	1.06	0.37	1.30	2.34	23.69
Fever	6.14	31.08	7.56	11.83	6.22	0.91
Malaria	6.29	31.82	11.46	43.06	12.71	71.41
Dysentery/Diarrhea	0.88	4.47	1.58	5.83	1.08	2.27
Respiratory	1.52	7.67	1.30	-1.82	1.39	-1.44
Injury	0.37	1.86	0.33	-0.33	0.27	-1.05
All other	3.32	18.32	5.57	16.26	3.91	3.23
All causes	19.46	100.00	31.77	100.00	28.75	100.00

Overall, the table clearly shows the dominance of malaria as the cause of death throughout the famine. Though the excess mortality due to malarial deaths peaked in December 1943, rates remained high throughout the following year. Scarce supplies of quinine (the most common malaria medication), delivered to rural areas under armed guard, were very frequently diverted to the black market. Advanced anti-malarial drugs such as mepacrine (Atabrine) were distributed almost solely to the military and to "priority classes"; DDT (then relatively new and considered "miraculous") and pyrethrum were sprayed only around military installations. Paris Green was used as an insecticide in some other areas. This unequal distribution of anti-malarial measures may explain a lower incidence of malarial deaths in population centres, where the greatest cause of death was "all other" (probably migrants dying from starvation).

Deaths from dysentery and diarrhea peaked in December 1943, the same month as for malaria. Cholera deaths peaked in October 1943 and receded dramatically in the following year, brought under control by a vaccination program overseen by military medical workers. A similar smallpox vaccine campaign started later and was pursued less effectively; smallpox deaths peaked in April 1944. "Starvation" was generally not listed as a cause of death at the time; many deaths by starvation may have been listed under the "all other" category. Here the death rates rather than percentages reveal the peak in 1943.

The two waves – starvation and disease – also interacted and amplified one another, increasing the excess mortality. Widespread starvation and malnutrition first compromised immune systems, and reduced resistance to disease lead to death by opportunistic infections. Second, the social disruption and dismal conditions caused by a cascading breakdown of social systems brought mass migration, overcrowding, poor sanitation, poor water quality and waste disposal, increased vermin, and unburied dead. All of these factors are closely associated with the increased spread of infectious disease.

Social disruption

Despite the organised and sometimes violent civil unrest just prior to the famine, there was very little looting and no organised rioting when the famine took hold. However, social disruption was deep and widespread: families disintegrated, with cases of of wives and children being abandoned, child-selling, infanticide, and both voluntary and forced prostitution. Lines of small children begging could stretch for miles outside of cities; at night, children could be heard "crying bitterly and coughing terribly... in the pouring monsoon rain... stark naked, homeless, motherless, fatherless and friendless. Their sole possession was an empty tin". A schoolteacher in Mahisadal witnessed "...children picking and eating undigested grains out of a beggar's diarrheal discharge". Author Freda Bedi wrote that it was "not just the problem of rice and the availability of rice. It was the problem of society in fragments."

Mass migration and family dissolution

The famine fell hardest by far on the rural poor. As the distress continued, families progressed through a series of increasingly irreversible famine coping strategies. First, they reduced their food intake and began to sell jewelry, ornaments, and smaller items of personal property. As the distress continued, expenses for food or burials became more urgent, and the items sold became larger and less replaceable – livestock, farming tools, the roof or doors of the house. Finally, families disintegrated. Men sold their small farms and left home to look for work or to join the army, and women and children became homeless migrants, often traveling to Calcutta or another large city in search of organised relief:

Husbands deserted wives and wives husbands; elderly dependents were left behind in the villages; babies and young children were sometimes abandoned. According to a survey carried out in Calcutta during the latter half of 1943, some breaking up of the family had occurred in about half the destitute population which reached the city.

Although the majority of the rural poor remained in their villages, sometime near July 1943 hundreds of thousands began a "terrible wandering in search of food... with hordes of people moving in the general direction of Calcutta because of vague rumours that food was to be had there." In Calcutta, evidence of the famine was "... mainly in the form of masses of rural destitutes trekking into the city and dying on the streets". Estimates of the number of 'sick destitutes' who flocked to Calcutta and wandered its streets ranged between 100,000 and 150,000. The Famine Commission Report described these wandering Bengalis in detail:

Thousands flocked into towns and cities... The wandering famine victims readily fell a prey to disease and spread disease in their wanderings... moral sense [was] lost. In their distress they often sank to sub-human levels and became helpless and hopeless automata guided only by an instinctive craving for food.

Once they left their rural villages in search of food, their outlook for survival was grim: "Many died by the roadside – witness the skulls and bones which were to be seen there in the months following the famine."

Increased vermin and unburied dead

In the cities and especially the countryside, the disposal of corpses was a problem for the government and the public. The sheer numbers of corpses overwhelmed cremation houses, burial grounds, and the public and private groups charged with collecting and disposing of the dead: "We couldn't bury them or anything. No one had the strength to perform rites. People would tie a rope around the necks and drag them over to a ditch." Corpses were stacked along the streets of Calcutta, tossed by the tens of thousands into sources of drinking water such as rivers and canals, and left to rot and putrefy in nearly any open space. The bodies were then picked over by vultures and dragged away by jackals. Sometimes this happened even before the victims had fully expired. The sight of corpses beside canals, ravaged by dogs and jackals, was common; during a seven-mile boat ride in Midnapore in November 1943, a journalist counted at least five hundred such sets of skeletal remains along the banks of a canal. Jackals would also attack the small and weak among those still living, with disturbing results. The levels of putrefaction, contamination, and vermin infestation were so overwhelming by late 1943 that the weekly newspaper Biplabi stated:

Bengal is a vast cremation ground, a meeting place for ghosts and evil spirits, a land so overrun by dogs, jackals and vultures that it makes one wonder whether the Bengalis are really alive or have become ghosts from some distant epoch.

By the summer of 1943, many districts of Bengal, especially in the countryside, had taken on the look of "a vast charnel house".

Exploitation of women and children

One of the classic symptoms of famine is that it tends to intensify the exploitation of women; sales of women and girls, for example, tend to increase. Sexual exploitation of poor, rural, lower-caste and tribal women by the jotedars had been very difficult to escape – and in some cases, socially sanctioned, – even before the famine, and during the crisis, women turned to prostitution in great numbers:

A section of the contractors has made a profession of selling girls to the military. There are places in Chittagong, Comilla and Noakhali where women sell themselves literally in hordes, and young boys act as pimps for the military. 

When taken up voluntarily, this survival strategy was not only for the women's own sakes but also, in many cases, for their children's survival, and often with regular meals as the only payment. Added to this number were the women and girls pushed involuntarily into the sex trade. In late 1943, entire boatloads of girls for sale were reported in ports of East Bengal. Families sent their young girls to wealthy landowners overnight in exchange for very small amounts of money or rice or sold them outright into prostitution; girls were sometimes enticed with sweet treats and kidnapped by pimps. Very often, these girls lived in constant fear of injury or death, but the brothels were their sole means of survival. However, any woman who had chosen or been forced to become a prostitute could not expect any social acceptance or a return to her home or family. Such women became permanent outcastes in a society that valorised female chastity.

An unknown number of children, some tens of thousands, were orphaned. However, helpless children were frequently also the victims of their own mothers and fathers. They were sold for as much as two maunds (one maund was roughly equal to 37 kilograms (82 lb)), as little as one seer (1 kilogram (2.2 lb)) of unhusked rice, or for trifling amounts of cash. Sometimes they were purchased as household servants, where they would "grow up as little better than domestic slaves". They were also purchased by sexual predators. Parents abandoned their children by the roadsides or at orphanages. Children were dropped down wells, thrown into rivers or buried alive. The fate of these women and children was an immense social cost of the famine.

Cloth famine

Another severe hardship of the crisis – the "cloth famine" – left nearly the entire population of the immiserated poor in Bengal naked or clothed in scraps through the winter. The military of Great Britain consumed nearly all the textiles produced in India by purchasing Indian-made boots, parachutes, uniforms, blankets, and other goods at steep discount rates. The relatively small proportion of materials left over for civilian use were purchased by speculators for sale to civilians, subject to similarly steep inflation. With the supply of cloth crowded out by commitments to Great Britain and price levels held captive by profiteering, anyone who was not among the "priority classes" faced increasingly dire scarcity:

The robbing of graveyards for clothes, disrobing of men and women in out of way places for clothes... and minor riotings here and there have been reported. Stray news has also come that women have committed suicide for want of cloth... Thousands of men and women... cannot go out to attend their usual work outside for want of a piece of cloth to wrap round their loins.

Many such women "took to staying inside a room all day long, emerging only when it was [their] turn to wear the single fragment of cloth shared with female relatives."

Poor sanitation

Generally unsanitary conditions and declining hygiene standards, brought on by a host of circumstances dictated by the famine, facilitated the spread of disease. The "cloth famine" made clean clothing (or in many cases, any clothing at all) scarce; disposal of corpses in rivers and other water supplies contaminated drinking water. Migration involved leaving behind all the utensils and facilities necessary for washing clothes, preparing food, and taking care of other necessities of life. Many of those who migrated to the cities simply drank contaminated rainwater from streets and open spaces where others had urinated or defecated. Particularly in the early months of the crisis, conditions did not necessarily improve for those who were under medical care:

Conditions in certain famine hospitals at this time... were indescribably bad... Visitors were horrified by the state of the wards and patients, the ubiquitous filth, and the lack of adequate care and treatment...[In hospitals all across Bengal, the] condition of patients was usually appalling, a large proportion suffering from acute emaciation, with 'famine diarrhoea'... Sanitary conditions in nearly all temporary indoor institutions were very bad to start with...

The general disruption of many core elements of society brought an acute breakdown of sanitary conditions.

Relief efforts

Until the military assumed control of relief efforts in September 1943, government aid seldom provided much help to the rural poor, directing most of its cash and grain supplies instead to the relatively wealthy landowners and urban bhadraloks. After an initial spate of humanitarian aid for the cyclone-stricken areas around Midnapore in October 1942, the government response was slow, and relief efforts were very limited until April 1943. The response was slowed both by a failure to grasp the nature and scope of the problem and by political factors brought on by a public propaganda campaign declaring "sufficiency" in Bengal's rice supply, denying that there had been any significant crop shortfall, and blaming rising prices on profiteering and hoarding. In April, more cash and grain began to flow to the outlying areas, but relief efforts were misdirected. Famine relief came in three major forms: agricultural loans (for the purchase of paddy seed, plough cattle, and maintenance expenses), gratuitous relief, and test works. Agricultural loans offered no assistance to the large numbers of rural poor who had little or no land. Grain relief was divided between cheap grain shops and the open market, with far more going to the markets. Supplying grain to the markets was intended to lower grain prices, but did not accomplish that aim, instead putting rural poor in direct competition with wealthier Bengalis at greatly inflated prices. As the depth and scope of the famine became unmistakable, the government began setting up gruel kitchens in August 1943; the gruel, which often provided barely a survival-level caloric intake, was sometimes unfit for consumption – moldy or contaminated with dirt, sand, and gravel.

The was rampant corruption and nepotism in the distribution of government aid; often as much as half of the goods supplied would disappear into the black market or the hands of friends or relatives.

Despite having a long-established and detailed Famine Code that would have triggered a sizable increase in aid, and despite a statement privately circulated by the government in June 1943 that famine might need to be declared, the government never formally declared a state of famine. Significant aid was not provided until the military took over crisis relief in October 1943, especially after November. In particular, grain was imported from the Punjab, and medical resources were made far more available. However, effective relief from the food crisis came from a record rice harvest that December.

Economic and political effects

Mahatma Gandhi in 1944

In its aftermath, the famine greatly accelerated pre-existing socioeconomic processes generating poverty and income inequality, severely disrupted important elements of Bengal's economy and social fabric, and ruined millions of families. The crisis overwhelmed and impoverished large segments of the economy. A key source of impoverishment was the widespread household coping strategy, namely the sale of assets for food. As the famine wore on, unprecedented numbers of smallholders and dwarfholders tried to save themselves by selling or mortgaging their paddy lands in part or in full, thus falling from the status of peasant landholder agriculturalist to that of landless agricultural labourer. Nearly 1.6 million families, roughly one-quarter of those who had owned paddyland before the famine, sold or mortgaged some or all of their land during the course of the crisis:

Land alienation in Bengal, 1940–41 to 1944–45
Number of sales of occupancy holdings

1940–41	1941–42	1942–43	1943–44	1944–45
141,000	711,000	938,000	1,491,000	1,230,000

This crisis-driven drop into a lower income group happened in other occupations as well. In absolute numbers, among the hardest hit by post-famine impoverishment were women and landless agricultural labourers, whilst in relative terms, those engaged in rural trade, fishing and transport (boatmen and bullock cart drivers) suffered the most. In absolute numbers, agricultural labourers faced the highest rates of both destitution and mortality.

The "panicky responses" undertaken by the UK government in the wake of the fall of Burma had profound political consequences: "...it was soon obvious to the bureaucrats in New Delhi and the provinces, as well as the GHQ (India)," wrote Bhattacharya (2002b), "that the disruption caused by these short-term policies—and the political capital being made out of their effects—would necessarily lead to a situation where major constitutional concessions, leading to the dissolution of the Raj, would be unavoidable." For example, nationwide opposition to the boat denial policy, as typified by Mahatma Gandhi's vehement editorials, played a role in strengthening the Indian independence movement, since the dispute "...galvanized both the Nationalist struggle in India and London's extreme response to the same, contributing significantly to the way that the 'Quit India' movement of 1942 played out."

Media coverage

The People's War, an organ of the Communist Party of India, published graphic photos of the famine by Sunil Janah.

Calcutta's two leading English-language newspapers were The Statesman (at that time a British-owned newspaper) and Amrita Bazar Patrika. In the early months of the famine, government applied pressure on newspapers to "calm public fears about the food supply" and follow the official stance that there was no rice shortage. This effort had some success; The Statesman, for example, initially published editorials asserting that the famine was due solely to speculation and hoarding, while "berating local traders and producers, and praising ministerial efforts." News of the famine was also subject to strict war-time censorship – even use of the word "famine" was prohibited – leading The Statesman later to remark that the UK government "seems virtually to have withheld from the British public knowledge that there was famine in Bengal at all".

Beginning in mid-July 1943 and more so in August, however, these two newspapers began publishing detailed and increasingly critical accounts of the depth and scope of the famine, its impact on society, and the nature of British, Hindu, and Muslim political responses. For example, a headline in Amrita Bazar Patrika that month warned "The Famine conditions of 1770 are already upon us," alluding to an earlier Bengal famine that caused the deaths of one third of Bengal's population. It also published an editorial cartoon showing starving peasants gazing at distant international food aid ships with the caption "A Mirage! A Mirage!" The Statesman's reportage and commentary were similarly pointed, as for example when it opined that the famine was "man-made".

A turning point in news coverage regarding the famine came on 22 August 1943, when The Statesman published a series of graphic photographs of the starvation and suffering. These "gruesome" images greatly affected both domestic and international perceptions and sparked an international media frenzy. Not only was the rest of the world unaware of the famine in Bengal before the photographs were published, many even in India itself had little idea of the scope of the social destruction. The photos of human suffering under British rule had a profound psychological effect and marked "for many, the beginning of the end of colonial rule". The decision by editor Ian Stephens to publish the photographs and adopt a defiant editorial stance has won accolades from many (including the Famine Inquiry Commission) and has been described as "a singular act of journalistic courage and conscientiousness, without which many more lives would have surely been lost". The photographs also spurred Amrita Bazar Patrika and the Communist Party's organ The People's War to publish similar images; the latter would make photographer Sunil Janah famous.

Depictions

The famine has been dealt with in celebrated novels and films. The novel Ashani Sanket by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay is a fictional account of a young doctor and his wife in rural Bengal during the famine. It was adapted into a film of the same name (English title: Distant Thunder) by celebrated director Satyajit Ray in 1973. The film features in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. Also well-known are the novel So Many Hungers! (1947) by Bhabani Bhattacharya and the story Aakaaler Sandhane by Amalendu Chakraborty (the basis of the 1980 film Akaler Shandhaney by Mrinal Sen).

A Bengali play about the famine, Nabanna, was written by Bijon Bhattacharya and staged by the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1944 under the direction of Sombhu Mitra and later in 1948, by Bohurupee under the direction of Kumar Roy. IPTA also staged the play in several parts of the country and collected funds for famine relief in rural Bengal.

A contemporary sketch book of iconic scenes of famine victims, Hungry Bengal: a tour through Midnapur District in November, 1943 by Chittaprosad, was immediately banned by the British and 5000 copies were seized and destroyed. One copy was hidden by Chittaprosad's family and is now in the possession of the Delhi Art Gallery. Another artist famed for his sketches of the famine was Zainul Abedin.

Debate over primary cause(s)

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1943

Debate over the specific cause or causes of the Bengali famine hinges on a series of interlinked questions: when the nature and scope of the disaster were recognized, whether enough food was available at the provincial or national level (or via international food aid arranged by Great Britain) to feed the population of Bengal, and whether the failure of the colonial rulers to alleviate the crisis was due to incompetence or insensitivity to Bengal's needs. The relative impact of each of these factors as a cause or contributing factor to the levels of death and economic devastation is still a matter of controversy. In addition to the complexity of the issues and the questionable accuracy of much of the statistical data that could resolve the debates, a potentially complicating factor is that the conclusions are highly politicised, which may tend to predispose the content and tone of the conclusions reached.

The question of when the famine was or should have been recognised is relevant to a discussion of the unreliable crop statistics. The 1942–43 Annual Report of the Indian Statistical Institute (1945, p. 107) asserts that the lack of reliable crop output statistics left the government effectively uninformed about the state of agricultural output, precluding any timely response. Others, however, have expressed doubts that the government was naive or "caught napping" when it rejected those statistics out of hand.

The issue of the degree of crop shortfall in late 1942 and its impact in 1943 has come to dominate the historiography of the Bengal famine. The issue lies at the heart of a larger debate over the relative importance of food availability decline (FAD) versus the failure of exchange entitlements (FEE) as causes of famine. Both the FAD and FEE lines of thought would agree that Bengal experienced at least some level of grain shortage in 1943 due to the loss of imports from Burma, damage from the cyclone, and brown spot infestation. Crucially, however, FEE analyses do not consider it the main factor, while FAD-oriented analyses of scholars such as Bowbrick (1986), Alamgir (1980), Goswami (1990) and Collingham (2012) hold that a sharp drop in the food supply was the pivotal determining factor. Tauger (2003) and Padmanabhan (1973) in particular argue that the impact of brown spot disease was vastly underestimated, both during the famine and in later analyses. The signs of crop fungal infestation by Cochliobolus miyabeanus are subtle; given the social and administrative conditions at the time, local officials would very likely have overlooked them.

Those adhering to FEE would argue that market failure – essentially inflation and the disruption of the grain market – converted a local shortage into a horrific famine. Scholars such as Cormac Ó Gráda, while asserting that there was indeed a significant food shortage (FAD), emphasise wartime priorities that drove the UK government and the provincial government of Bengal to make fateful decisions: the "denial policies", the use of heavy shipping for war supplies rather than food, the refusal to officially declare a state of famine, and the Balkanisation of grain markets through inter-provincial trade barriers. Others insist that the decline in workers' real wages through inflation was the key cause, exacerbated by a host of largely political factors, including prioritised distribution and abortive attempts at price control. Amartya Sen in particular attributes the most devastating periods of inflation to heavy speculative buying. The FAD-oriented analysis of Bowbrick (1985), however, disagrees at length.

Some FEE-based analyses suggest that the famine was a result of policy failure or bungling. Others assert that prioritised distribution and the denial policies reflected the War Cabinet's callous willingness to "supply the Army's needs and let the Indian people starve if necessary" when weighing how to allocate wartime resources. In this view, economic policies were designed to serve externally oriented British military goals at the expense of internally oriented Indian interests, and so the UK government bears moral responsibility for the rural deaths. The policies may have met their intended goals, but only at the cost of harrowing, large-scale dislocations in the domestic economy. Far from being accidental, these dislocations were fully recognised beforehand as fatal for identifiable Indian groups whose economic activities did not directly, actively, or adequately advance military goals. The analyses split into two broad camps: those who think the government unwittingly caused or was unable to respond to the crisis, and those who think it willfully ignored the plight of starving Indians. The former see the problem as a series of avoidable war-time policy failures and "panicky responses" from a government that was spectacularly inept overwhelmed and in disarray, the latter as a conscious miscarriage of justice by the "ruling colonial elite" who abandoned the poor of Bengal.

A third line of argument, present since the days of the famine but expressed at length by Mukerjee (2011), accuses key figures in the UK government (particularly Prime Minister Winston Churchill) of genuine antipathy toward Indians – an antipathy arising mainly from a desire to protect imperialist privilege, but tinged also with racist undertones. This is attributed to British anger over Bengali's widespread nationalist sentiments and the perceived treachery of the violent Quit India uprising. An example of the disagreement over this issue can be found in differing explanations of the War Cabinet's refusal to free shipping for the transport of grain to Bengal. For example, Collingham (2012, p. 153) opines that although the massive global dislocations of supplies caused by World War II virtually guaranteed that hunger would occur somewhere in the world, Churchill's animosity and even racism toward Indians decided the exact location where famine would fall. Mukerjee (2011, pp. 112–14, 273) makes a stark accusation:

The War Cabinet's shipping assignments made in August 1943, shortly after Amery had pleaded for famine relief, show Australian wheat flour traveling to Ceylon, the Middle east, and Southern Africa – everywhere in the Indian Ocean but to India. Those assignments show a will to punish.

In contrast, Tauger (2009, p. 193) strikes a far more supportive stance:

In the Indian Ocean alone from January 1942 to May 1943, the Axis powers sank 230 British and Allied merchant ships totaling 873,000 tons, in other words, a substantial boat every other day. British hesitation to allocate shipping concerned not only potential diversion of shipping from other war-related needs but also the prospect of losing the shipping to attacks without actually [bringing help to] India at all.

For their part, the Famine Commission Report absolved the imperial government from all major blame. It laid some responsibility at the feet of unavoidable fate, but reserved its most forceful finger-pointing for local politicians in the Government of Bengal:

But after considering all the circumstances, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it lay in the power of the Government of Bengal, by bold, resolute and well-conceived measures at the right time to have largely prevented the tragedy of the famine as it actually took place.

The attempt to exonerate itself and shift blame to Indian officials began as early as 1943, as an editorial in The Statesman on 5 October noted disapprovingly. Some sources allege that the Famine Commission deliberately declined to blame the UK or was even designed to do so; however, Bowbrick (1985, p. 57) forcefully defends the report's accuracy.

An final line of blame-laying holds that major industrialists either caused or at least significantly exacerbated the famine through speculation, profiteering, hoarding, and corruption  – "unscrupulous, heartless grain traders forcing up prices based on false rumors" Working from an assumption that the Bengal famine claimed 1.5 million lives, the Famine Inquiry Commission made a "gruesome calculation" that "nearly a thousand rupees [£88 in 1944; equivalent to £4,896 or $1,523 in 2023] of profits were accrued per death". As the Famine Inquiry Commission put it: "a large part of the community lived in plenty while others starved ... corruption was widespread throughout the province and in many classes of society." British Field Marshal Viscount William Slim observed that "the horrible thing about Calcutta was the contrast of the blatant wealth of some of its citizens with the squalid misery, beyond mere poverty, at their very doors."

At the most basic level, all sides of the argument could be seen as framing the famine either as a misfortune or an injustice.

See also

• 2008 global rice crisis
• Bihar famine of 1873–74
• Famine in India
• List of famines
• Theories of famines
• Famine#Causes

References

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• Ghedin, Elodie; Zhang, Wen Wei; Charest, Hugues; Sundar, Shyam; Kenney, Rick T.; Matlashewski, Greg (1997). "Antibody response against a Leishmania donovani amastigote-stage-specific protein in patients with visceral leishmaniasis" (PDF). Clinical and diagnostic laboratory immunology. 4 (5): 530–535. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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External links

• Bengal Famine materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
• Hungry Bengal - War, Famine, Riots, and the End of Empire 1939-1946
• "BBC/OU: The things we forgot to remember - The Bengal famine".