Famines were a frequent occurrence in South Asia until 1900, and were often
devastating in impact. A series of nineteenth century famines were triggered by harvest
failure. Food procurement for World War II, combined with a crop failure, caused the
harshest famine of the twentieth century, the 1943 Bengal famine. Famine-like conditions
recurred also in 1966 and in 1972, but the extent of starvation-induced death was limited on
both occasions. Why did these episodes develop? Why did they cause death and distress on a
very large scale at times? Why did the frequency of their occurrence fall in the twentieth
century?
The world history of famines tends to approach these questions by using two keywords,
‘natural’ and ‘manmade.’ These terms are not rigorously defined anywhere, but they are
widely used as a way to analyse the causes of famines and famine intensity.2
Usually, natural refers to a large and sudden mismatch between demand for and supply
of food, caused by a harvest failure, though the disastrous effects that follow can sometimes
be attributed to a prehistory of bad diet and malnutrition. Modern famine analysts and
historians owe their conception of ‘natural’ to Thomas Malthus. Malthus used the word
‘nature’ in a wide range of senses, including the ‘natural carelessness’ with which some
populations reproduced. But one meaning is particularly relevant in this context. This
meaning is expressed in the sentence: ‘Famine [is] the last and most dreadful mode by which
nature represses a redundant population.’ In other words, famine is the inevitable result of
overpopulation.3 Using ‘Indostan’ or India as one of his examples, Malthus suggested that the
yield of land was so low here and the population ordinarily lived with so little food that the
effect of a ‘convulsion of nature’ such as a crop failure could be immediate and devastating.
Manmade now-a-days almost always refers to some sort of political action that shifts
food away from one group to another.4
It connotes state failure. The state has a particularly
important role to play because famine relief should not be priced nor withheld from anyone.
State relief often fails to be enough, it is said, because politicians believe in an ideology that
advocates weak relief, and the political system allows them to get away with it. The political
factor is especially common during wars, in despotic regimes, and during temporary
