Famines and Famine Policy in Colonial India

Why colonial India suffered repeated devastating famines, how famine codes developed, and what Amartya Sen's work revealed about their causes.

Colonial India experienced many devastating famines. Understanding them helped shape modern thinking on hunger and public policy.

Major famines

Bengal, 1770: early in Company rule.
The Great Famine of 1876 to 1878, affecting southern and western India, killed millions.
1896 to 1897 and 1899 to 1900: widespread famines across India.
Bengal, 1943: killed around 3 million people during World War Two.

Causes

Droughts and crop failures were triggers, but economic and policy factors turned shortages into disasters:

Low incomes and little savings among rural labourers and artisans.
Market forces: grain was sometimes exported or moved away from famine areas to where prices were higher.
Policy failures: some officials believed government intervention in grain markets was harmful, following strict free-market ideas, and relief was limited.
Revenue demands that continued during hard times.

The Famine Codes

After the Great Famine, the Famine Commission of 1880 recommended a systematic approach. Famine Codes from the 1880s set out:

Early warning signs of famine.
Relief works, such as road building, to provide wages.
Free food for those unable to work.

These codes later influenced independent India’s drought relief and ideas behind employment guarantee schemes.

Amartya Sen’s insight

Economist Amartya Sen, in Poverty and Famines in 1981, argued that famines are often caused not simply by a lack of food, but by entitlement failure: people lose the ability to obtain food because their incomes collapse or prices soar. In the 1943 Bengal famine, food availability was not dramatically lower than in earlier years, but wartime inflation and policy failures left millions unable to buy food.

Sen also observed that famines have rarely occurred in functioning democracies with a free press, since governments face pressure to act.

After independence

India has not experienced a major famine since independence, though hunger and malnutrition remain challenges.

Food in the market, hunger in the village

During a drought, grain is still available in town markets, but prices have tripled. Landless labourers, whose farm work has disappeared, cannot afford it. Without relief works or free food, many starve even though food exists nearby. This is entitlement failure.

Thinking famines are caused only by a lack of food

Famines often result from people losing the means to buy food, combined with policy failures, even when food is available.

Key takeaways

Colonial India suffered repeated devastating famines.
Low incomes, market forces and policy failures turned droughts into disasters.
Famine Codes from the 1880s set out relief works and early warnings.
Amartya Sen showed famines often reflect entitlement failure, not just food shortage.