![]() As a result, millions died.Īlso read: Award-winning photographer asks India’s ‘hungry to dream about food’, gets panned He was transferred to Madras during the famine of 1877, with the British Raj implementing “less expensive” policies for mitigation. However, Temple was castigated by the British government for being too extravagant. At the time, the lieutenant-governor of the Bengal Presidency, Sir Richard Temple, acted swiftly, importing half a million tonnes of rice from neighbouring Burma.Īs a result, the mortality was very low and millions of lives were saved. The areas that constitute modern-day Bihar were ravished by a famine a few decades prior, in 1873. All boats that were large enough to carry more than 10 people (and crops) were destroyed, disrupting distribution of food.Īs Mukherjee notes, over 46,000 boats were destroyed, and the scale of damage led to a near-complete breakdown of transportation infrastructure. The second part of the directive was to deny boats and other forms of transport. John Herbert, the then-governor of Bengal, directed rice and paddy to be removed or destroyed in these cities immediately. ![]() First, rice was denied to districts along the southern coast of Bay of Bengal, which typically have a surplus of rice. Fearing a Japanese invasion via Burma, the British Raj set about devising a double attack. This was a part of Britain’s 1942 “Denial Policies”. Churchill diverted large supplies of crops and rice, using thousands of boats, from the coastal areas to deny supplies to the Japanese forces should they invade India. Japan, an Axis power fighting the British-led Allied nations, had an active naval presence in the waters of the Bay of Bengal in the early 1940s, and had annexed Burma (now Myanmar) in 1942. Journalist Madhushree Mukerjee, in her book Churchill’s Secret War, noted the policies that enabled the famine. Other studies and investigations have also pointed to the famine’s origins in the unfair policies of Churchill, who is widely celebrated in the West for his leadership of Britain during the Second World War. Moisture depletion showed a clear pattern of hampering food production for all famines except in 1943. Using station‐based historical observations and simulations from a computer fed with a hydrological model, the researchers were able to reconstruct and determine the link between famines and droughts in India. “And so we started our research thinking the famines would have been caused by drought due to factors such as lack of irrigation.”Īcknowledging that the role of agriculture remains undefined in famines, Mishra and his team set out to study the state of agriculture in the country during these periods of famine. “There have been no major famines since independence,” said Mishra. “The Bengal famine of 1943 was completely because of policy failure,” Vimal Mishra, the lead author of the study, told CNN. Such policies included not the large-scale export of rice, and prioritizing vital supplies for soldiers engaged in the Second World War.Īlso read: Winston Churchill - war criminal, enemy of humanity & decency Though India suffered a drought period from 1937-1945, the worst of it was reportedly experienced in 1941.Īccording to the researchers, there was abundant rain during the 1943 famine. They concluded that the 1943 famine was caused due to policy failures alone and no natural causes.Ī loss in soil moisture leads to failure of crops, thus setting the stage for famines, which are prolonged periods of food shortage in a given area. They found that the first five famines were accompanied by indicators of droughts, mainly low soil moisture. ![]() The team analysed the causes of these famines using historical weather and soil data.
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