‘In the first half of nineteenth century, there were seven famines, with an estimated total of one and a half million deaths from famine. In the second half of nineteenth century, there were twenty-four famines (six between 1851 and 1876, and eighteen between 1876 and 1900), with an estimated total according to official records, of over 20 million deaths’.– R.P. Dutt, India Today, Calcutta, 1970, p. 125.
The British insisted that they had rescued India from “timeless hunger”. However, in 1878 Indian nationalist writers quoted from the prestigious Journal of the Statistical Society that there were 31 serious famines in 120 years of British rule against only 17 recorded famines in the entire previous two millennia. Malabika Chakrabarti’s study of the famine of 1896-97 in Bengal is an important contribution in the field of area studies in long-term dearth. The famine of 1896-97 was the most devastating of its kind since the Orissa famine of 1866-67.
The famine was caused by crop deficiency due to both crop failure and supply failure in the grain market. Thus, in the author’s estimate both food availability decline (FAD) and failure of exchange entitlement (FEE) within the peasant economy, in the form of lack of purchasing capacity of the peasant society, need to be analysed in order to understand the reasons for the food crisis developing into a famine in 1896-97. While the focus is on the famine, the author widens the canvas by raising issues related to ecology, market mechanism, demography, nutrition, and gender relations. The work evokes larger questions related to anachronisms present in a rural society.
Numerous studies have drawn attention to the monoculture of rice in the pattern of crop distribution in Bengal. By the end of the nineteenth century, as far as food crops are concerned, there was a near total dependence on rice cultivation in eastern India. The cultivation of other food crops and commercial crops like jute, indigo, poppy was on a far lesser scale. Ecological imbalances and exogenous factors as wars affected the availability of rice and its price structure. The colonial government continued to treat famines as catastrophic events and failed to develop long-term plans to deal with the recurring crisis. It remained unbending in its adherence to the laissez-faire policy of leaving the import of rice to the deficit areas in the hands of private traders. In the case of the famine of 1866, government in an ostrich-like manner rigidly held on to the laissez faire policy. This aggravated food shortage because in several parts of Bengal, private channels of trade gauged the incapacity of the starving to purchase food and refrained from importing food despite the high prices. During the famine of 1873-74, the government did render help by importing grain, but kept aloof in 1896-97.
There was a general shortfall in agricultural production throughout eastern India in 1896-1897. For instance, in the Santhal Parganas the normal production was about 15 million maunds. The deficit in 1896 was estimated to be around 6.5 million maunds. The shortfall in production was reported from several districts of Bengal. The famine of 1896-97 was thus mainly a rice famine caused by the large-scale failure of the winter rice crop. The deficit in rice cultivation would have been mitigated by the cash crops and jungle produce like mahua flowers. However, in 1896 even these produce that had provided some respite during times of crisis failed. The situation resulted in a sharp increase in prices. An important point that Malabika Chakrabarti makes is that price stimulus failed to attract supplies from surplus to scarcity and from scarcity to famine tracts. Exports continued during years of food-crisis, grain loans were not forthcoming and charity dried up. The author studies about fifteen districts of Bengal where food shortage assumed famine proportions and concludes that the class of small peasant proprietors, wage labourers and artisans were the worst hit. These districts were more susceptible to market penetration and expansion of trade (including changes in the local market) due to relative absence of diverse non-agricultural occupations and decline of existing professions. Amartya Sen’s entitlement thesis and Paul Greenough’s analysis of the breakdown of the traditional social order based on annadata-posya relationship is drawn upon to highlight the fact that a patron-client relationship between unequally endowed classes (the mahajans and zamindars on the one hand, and the subordinate classes of rural society on the other) failed to bear the strain of economic crisis in 1896.
Social tensions that remained dormant during normal times, surfaced during times of crisis like the famine. The author discusses the increasing crime rate in the form of occasional grain riots and looting, migrations from the famine affected regions and the heightened distress. However, there is rarely a discussion on the buying capacity of the industrial city of Calcutta and the military needs of the Empire. Thus, while the author has painstakingly reconstructed a detailed account of the famine of 1896-97, mainly from original sources, the question of export of rice from the rice-deficit areas has not been explored fully to incorporate the pulls of the military and other needs of the empire. Although these official accounts are extremely insightful, regretfully, there is an over-dependence on them. Had the author coordinated the use of colonial discourse with the insights drawn from contemporary Bengali literary and non-literary sources like the journals Anushilan o Purohit, Bangadarshan, Bandhab, etc., and newspaper accounts (which the author has consulted sparingly), the narrative would have illustrated the underlying tensions of rural society with greater sensitivity. That the author has also not deemed it necessary to describe the political fallout of the famine, at a time when the educated middle-class of Bengal was becoming increasingly restive and active within the Indian National Congress and other regional associations, is surprising. The book should nevertheless be appreciated for aiming to perform the difficult task of treatment of a famine both as an ‘event’ and a ‘process’.
Srimanjari teaches in the Department of History, Miranda House, University of Delhi.