1942 Bengal Famine
  • Hi;
    Its good that the "Bengal Famine" has been mentioned even though in a
    different context. This has been a point which has always been left out when
    the British rule is being defended. Hope somebody can give a good
    description on this terrible event as a new thread.
  • On the 16th October 1942 the whole east coast of Bengal and Orissa
    was hit by a cyclone. A huge area of rice cultivation up to forty
    miles inland was flooded, causing the autumn crop in these areas to
    fail. This meant that the peasantry had to eat their surplus, and the
    seed that should have been planted in the winter of 1942-3 had been
    consumed by the time the hot weather began in May 1943.

    This was worsened by exports of food and appropriation of arable
    land. However, nobel laureate Amartya Sen has shown conclusively that
    there was no overall shortage of rice in Bengal in 1943: availability
    was actually slightly higher than in 1941, when there was no famine

    It was partly this which conditioned the sluggish official response
    to the disaster, as there had been no serious crop failures and hence
    the famine was unexpected. Its root causes, Sen argues, lay in
    rumours of shortage which caused hoarding, and rapid price inflation
    caused by war-time demands which made rice stocks an excellent
    investment.

    so more than shortage it was the capacity to afford rice at double
    the price that caused it.
  • Amartya Sen was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for his
    studies of the Bengal famine and other famines in Asia and Africa.


    Citing the Bengal Famine and other examples from the world, Amartya
    Sen argues that famines do not occur in functioning democracies.

    During the British rule in India there were approximately 25 major
    famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in South India,
    Bihar in the north, and Bengal in the east in the latter half of the
    19th century, killing between 30 and 40 million Indians

    Though malnutrition and hunger remain widespread in India, there
    have been no famines since the end of the British rule in 1947 and
    the establishment of a democratic government. There has however been
    a recurrent threat of famine in Bangladesh

    Possibly over a million people died in the Bangladesh famine of 1974,
    and one disturbing fact.At the height of the 1974 famine in the newly
    born Bangladesh, the US had withheld 2.2 million tonnes of food aid
    to 'ensure that it abandoned plans to try Pakistani war criminals'
  • Hi;
    There is a popular belief in the so-called developed countries that to be
    great a country/company/individual has to go through a really harrowing
    experience. They are of the opinion that the reason India tends to lag
    behind in some areas is because we have not 'suffered' enough. In these
    discussions somehow this 1942 famine gets conveniently left out. To fair to
    us i think we have been through more suffering than most countries and are
    still at logger-heads with our neighbhours.
    Just the fact that we have become one of the fastest growing economies after
    loosing more than 5million to famine and a lot more to 2 major wars with our
    neighbhours, all in a spcae of 50 years, definitely makes us great.
  • hi Rahul
    I have this favourite theory o mine. you could call me crazy for that
    but somehow I fee corruption is the driving force in our progress

    only if we put a road a politician can make money.
    only if we build a dam a politician gets his commision.

    and incidentally when it is in place it spurs on development and
    revenues.
    lazy politicians cannot spur on development because they dont
    envision new projects.this theory goes wrong only in the case of arms
    of war.

    one small maths. sps can correct me if I am wrong.

    on the old mahabalipuram road which has seen the greatest price rise
    amongst any property in india in a span of 3 years.

    an acre used to cost 5 lakhs say 5 years back.
    when that land changes hands the government makes 14% by way of
    registrations.
    so it amounted to 70,000 rupees.

    then the government made a plan for a 6 lane express way on this
    road. and the land prices hit the roof.

    the same land costs a crore per acre now. and changes hands faster.
    the government makes 14 lakhs now. the politicians make a good cut on
    the road and everyone is happy.
    venketesh
  • Thats a nice conspiracy theory! But I think you are right! Every state is
    competing with each other in attracting foriegn companies to invest in thier
    state. It could be because of the foreign companies are ready to pay huge
    bribes and start work. TN seems to be getting a lot FDI these days!!!
    Anyways the bribes are being paid by companies who can afford it and not by
    the common man. I say let those guys pay the bribes to setup companies here!
    ;)
  • I am not sure if you all noticed, Andhra is currently generating lot of corrupt money for built small dams..Most of the money in real-estate is coming from andhra for multiplication purposes.

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