2.1. Famines

In any country where the population is dense and the means of communication backward, the failure of a harvest, whether produced by drought, by flood, by blight, by locusts, or by war, causes intense distress. Whether such distress shall develop into famine is merely a matter of degree, depending upon a combination of circumstances—the comparative extent of the failure, the density of the population, the practicability of imports, the facilities for transport, the resources of private trade, and the energy of the administration.

Drought, or a failure of the regular rainfall, is the great cause of famine. No individual foresight, no compensating influences, can prevent those recurring periods of continuous drought with which large Provinces of India are afflicted. Even an average rainfall in any one year, if irregularly distributed, or at the wrong seasons, may affect the harvest to a moderate degree; so also may flood or blight. The total failure of one monsoon may result in a general scarcity. But famine proper, or widespread starvation, is usually caused by a succession of seasons of drought. The cultivators of India are seldom dependent upon a single harvest, or upon the crops of one year. In the event of a partial failure, they can draw for their [Page 540] food-supply either upon their own grain pits or upon the stores of the village merchants. The first sufferers, and those who also suffer most in the end, are the class who live by daily wages. But small is the number that can hold out, either in capital or credit, against a second year of insufficient rainfall; and even the third season sometimes proves adverse. The great famines in India have been caused by drought, and usually by drought continued over two or three years.

It becomes necessary to inquire into the means of husbanding the water-supply. That supply can be derived only from three sources—(1) Local rainfall; (2) natural inundation; and (3) artificial irrigation from rivers, canals, tanks, or wells. Any of these sources may exist separately or together. In only a few parts of India can the rainfall be entirely trusted, as both sufficient in its amount and regular in its distribution. These favoured tracts include the whole strip of coast beneath the Western Ghats, from Bombay to Cape Comorin; the greater part of the Provinces of Assam and Burma; together with the deltaic districts at the head of the Bay of Bengal. In these provinces the annual rainfall rarely, if ever, falls below 60 to 100 inches; artificial irrigation and famine are there alike unknown.

The rest of the Indian peninsula may be described as liable more or less to drought. In Orissa, the scene of the most intense famine of recent times, the average rainfall exceeds 60 inches a year; in Sind, which has been exceptionally free from famine under British rule, the average drops to less than 10 inches. The local rainfall, therefore, is not the only element to be considered. Broadly speaking, artificial irrigation has protected, or is now in course of protecting, certain fortunate regions, such as the eastward deltas of the Madras rivers and the upper valley of the Ganges. The rest, and by far the greater portion, of the country is still exposed to famine. Meteorological science may possibly teach us to foresee what is coming.¹ But it may be doubted whether administrative efforts can do more than alleviate the calamity when once famine has declared itself. Lower Bengal and Oudh are watered by natural inundation as much as by the local rainfall; Sind derives its supplies mainly from canals filled by the floods of the Indus; the Punjab and the North-Western Provinces are dependent largely upon wells; the Deccan, with the entire south, is the land of tanks and reservoirs. But in all these Provinces, when the rainfall has failed over a series of [Page 541] years, the canal supply must likewise fail after no long interval. Waterworks on a scale adequate to guarantee the whole of India from drought not only exceed the possibilities of finance; they are also beyond the reach of engineering skill.

The first great famine of which we have any trustworthy record is that which devastated the lower valley of the Ganges in 1769-70. One-third of the population of Bengal is credibly reported to have perished. The previous season had been bad; and, as not uncommonly happens, the break-up of the drought was accompanied by disastrous floods. Beyond the importation into Calcutta and Murshidabad of a few thousand hundredweights of rice from the Districts of Bakarganj and Chittagong, it does not appear that any public measures for relief were taken or proposed.¹

The next great famine was that which afflicted the Karnatik from 1780 to 1783, and has been immortalized by the genius of Burke. It arose primarily from the ravages of Haidar Ali's army. A public subscription was organized by the Madras Government, from which sprang the 'Monegar Choultry,' a permanent Madras institution for the relief of the native poor. In 1783-84, Hindustan Proper suffered from a prolonged drought, which stopped short at the frontier of British territory. Warren Hastings, then Governor-General, advocated the construction of enormous granaries, to be opened only in times of necessity. One of these granaries or golas, stands to the present day in the city of Patna, but it was never used until the scarcity of 1874. In 1790-92, Madras was again the scene of a two-years' famine, which is memorable as being the first occasion on which the starving people were employed by Government on relief works. Famines again occurred in Southern India in 1802-04, 1807, 1812, 1824, 1833, 1854, and 1866. A terrible dearth in 1838 caused great mortality in the North-Western Provinces.