British Economic Policies: Famines and the overall impact

Famines and the overall impact

A famine is a time when large numbers of people cannot get enough food and many die. Under British rule, famines came again and again. A failed monsoon often started them, but rules made by people turned a bad harvest into mass death.

Why famines hit so hard

Think of a family with no savings. One bad month, and they have to sell their land or go hungry. Most Indian peasants lived like that under British rule.

• Revenue first. The land tax was high and had to be paid in cash, even in a bad year. Under dual government in Bengal, the revenue demand stayed heavy, and the 1770 famine killed about a third of the people.
• Cash crops, not food. Many peasants grew indigo, cotton or jute to pay the tax, so there was less grain stored in the village.
• No other work. Deindustrialisation had pushed weavers and artisans onto the land, so when crops failed there was no other job to fall back on.
• Money leaving the country. The drain took away savings that could have built irrigation or food stores.

What the commissions did

After each big famine, the government set up a commission, a group of officials to study what went wrong. The Strachey Commission (1880) led to the Famine Code of 1883. This code set rules for when a famine should be declared and how relief, such as work on public projects, should be given. Later commissions under Lyall (1898) and MacDonnell (1901) pushed for irrigation and early relief. The Woodhead Commission (1944) studied the Bengal famine of 1943, which happened during the Second World War.

An easy way to remember the order: S, L, M, W, which is Strachey (1880), Lyall (1898), MacDonnell (1901) and Woodhead (1944). The first three came in quick succession around the terrible famines of the late 19th century. The last came after the wartime Bengal famine of 1943. If a question gives you a commission and a year, match it to the famine just before it.

The overall impact

For Mains, tie it together: land systems raised revenue and debt, cash crops tied peasants to world prices, deindustrialisation pushed people onto land, and the drain took away savings. The result was poverty and famine, which became the core of the nationalist economic critique.

This is why leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji and R.C. Dutt said that British rule, not nature alone, kept India poor. Their argument turned hunger into a political issue and gave the freedom movement its strongest economic case.

A useful idea for answers: later, the economist Amartya Sen argued that famines are often caused not by a total lack of food, but by poor people losing the means to buy it. The Bengal famine of 1943 is his best-known example.

What UPSC asks: Prelims: the famine commissions and their years. Mains: how British policy turned food shortage into famine. Next likely angle: food security today and the lessons India learnt.