Two Famines

Bengal 1943 Bangladesh 1974

Adam Bumpus
Senior Lecturer
School of Geography
 Last time
Concept of food security
Shifting from macro to looking
at micro scale
Entitlements (Sen)
Availability
Access
Untilization
Stability

Key concepts: Livelihood security

Households Cultural acceptability
Time Gender Equality
Poverty Human rights
 Overview
1. Famines
2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
3. The 1974 Bangladesh Famine
4. Vulnerability and Risk
5. Conclusions
 1. Famines
a localised, exceptional emergency
situation, characterised by a sudden rise in
mortality (Mdecins Sans Frontires,
1995).
Famines are food crises, that are
exceptional events, with

increases in mortality, and

severe social disruption

 1. Famines
Causes of Famine vary from place to place,
but can distinguish between:
Underlying long-term processes

Short-term triggers

What happens during a famine

Long term effects of famines

2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Highest death rate during May
October 1943
But high levels of death for a few
years after because of epidemics
Close to 3 million deaths
(estimates 1.5 - 4m)
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Official Famine Inquiry Commission (1945)
explained famine as the result of a decline in food
availability.
Several factors affecting rice supply:
1. October 1942 cyclone affected rice crop (tidal waves
and fungus in crops)
2. Japanese occupation of Burma stopped imports of
rice from Burma to India
3. Colonial authorities unwilling to
increase shipping services to
transport grain to India
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Several factors affecting rice supply:
4. Interprovincial movements of grain prohibited
5. British rice denial policy removal of rice
stocks from three coastal districts near Burma
Price increase of 4 x the norm from March to
October 1943
Yet, while rice supply fell between 1942 and
1943, there was more rice available: measured
in terms of volumes of rice, and and rice / capita,
than there was in 1941, when there was no
famine
2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Who died? Almost exclusively rural famine
Highest mortality in landless labourers, small
traders and artisans who lost income/couldnt
afford food
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
% of the rural population made destitute:
10.5 % of fisherman

6.9% of transport workers

6.1% of agricultural laborers

2.0% of part peasant (smallholders) / part

labourers
1.3% of peasants and
sharecroppers
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
140

120

100

80

Agricultural Laborers
60
Fisherman

40

20
Peak Deaths
0

Amount of rice that could be bought with a unit of paid labour

December 1942 - December 1943 (index December 1942 = 100)
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Why these people?
1. Wages of some groups fell

e.g. fishermen:
British boat denial policy destroyed or removed
boats from river systems to deny their use to the
(potentially) invading Japanese
Disrupted transport of food
Disrupted income of boat owners who
earned money from fishing and transport
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Compared to people in Calcutta:
employed in military-related industrial activity
received food rations

the maintenance of food supplies to the

industrial area of Calcutta must
be ranked on a very high priority
among the governments wartime obligation
(Government of India).
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Why these people?
2. Rice prices increased steeply
Rumors of impending shortages (cyclone 1942,
threat of Japanese invasion) lead to hoarding
increased price of rice
Instability in war time economy lead to
increased investment in rice stocks rice $
Employment and rising wages in Calcutta
increased demand and ability to pay
increased price of rice food
countermovement
 2. The 1943 Bengal Famine
Bengal economy in a boom, and there
was enough food in aggregate
It was rising food prices and falling
incomes in rural areas that caused the
famine: the rural poor who relied on
income to buy food could no longer
purchase enough food
3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Triggered by flooding along the
Brahmaputra River from June to
September 1974
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
1.5 million deaths in total:
1 million from Aug 1974 Feb 1975
500,000 throughout 1975
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Floods and rice production:
Crop due for harvest July August partly
damaged
Loss of the seedlings yet to be
transplanted for harvesting in December
Imports difficult due to shortage of US$

Food aid (from USA) restricted due to US

objection to Bangladesh sales of Jute to
Cuba
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Yet, still, volume of rice / capita increased
between 1971-1974, it fell in 1975
(loss of December 1974 harvest).
1974, in the first half of the year, was a
peak year for rice production
So, why the deaths in 1974?
3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine

?
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Who died?
Almost entirely rural people

By number, more farmers were destitute than

any other occupation (39%), followed by
agricultural laborers (24%) and other laborers
(20%)
But looking at intensity of destitution, as a % of
occupations, rural laborers were three times
more likely to be destitute than farmers
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Concentration of deaths in three districts:
Mymensingh

Sylhet

Rangpur

Yet in all three rice production increased

between 1973-74, as did food availability
/ capita
Indeed, these three were in top 5 of the
19 rural districts for rice availability
3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Yet, still, the ability of rural people to purchase
rice fell in 1974, especially after the floods

labour / rice exchange rate index

120

100

80

60
labour / rice exchange rate
index Rice exchange rate of
40
rural labour during
20
Bangladesh Famine of
1974 (1974 months
0 compared to same
month in 1973)
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
The people most affected by declining
access were those already living with
some degree of hunger
Why?
Mostly rising rice prices

But also, falling incomes

3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine

W
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Causes:
Cyclone and floods caused reductions
in employment in rice production
rural workers not employed to
transplant seedlings (floods washed
them away), so lost their incomes
Rice prices rose because of
expectations of scarcity caused by
floods speculative rises in prices
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Bangladesh famine 1974 (after Sen):

Flood

Disrupted
farming
Market expectation
of scarcity

No income for
farm workers No income + Increased
higher food rice price
price
= famine
 3. The 1974 Bangladesh
Famine
Causes:
Rice prices had been rising due to inflation
throughout the early 1970s
And rose steeply in early 1974 before
the floods
A global phenomenon, escalated
massively by OPEC embargo Oct 1973
+
Floods ramped up price further at the
same time as workers lost income
Micro and macroeconomic effects
 Food insecurity exists when people lack access
to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food
and are therefore not consuming the food
required for normal growth and development, and
for an active and healthy life.
 4. Food Insecurity,
Vulnerability and Risk

Vulnerability refers to the full range of factors that

place people at risk of becoming food insecure,
including those factors that affect their ability to
cope.
 The structural dimension of
vulnerability
Risk: The possibility of a range of possible
outcomes resulting from a decision or
course of action.

The potential for realization of unwanted,

adverse consequences to human life,
health, property, or the environment;
 The structural dimension of
vulnerability
Vulnerability
"Vulnerability has (thus) two sides:
an external side of risks, shocks
and stress to which an individual or
household is subject; and an
internal side which is
defencelessness, meaning a lack of
means to cope without damaging
loss"
Robert Chambers 1989
 The structural dimension of
vulnerability
Vulnerability

Usually poor people are more vulnerable

than non-poor, but social vulnerability
and poverty is not the same.

Not all people are vulnerable in the same way

and to the same extent.

We see this in the cases of food access in the

context of the 1974 famine in Bangladesh
 4. So
There was enough food in 1943 and 1974
Access to food was key (prices and salaries)
Political (non-)intervention a driving factor
Some people were at more risk than others,
and were therefore socially vulnerable
 4. Food and Famine
The causes of famine are complex:
Food systems, economic systems, legal systems, political
systems, war
Need not be linked to a decline in food production; who
has access where and when is of central importance
Are often linked to failures in peoples command over
food, due to one or more of:
rising prices
falling incomes
Scale important:
Global (macro) changes e.g. politics, climate, are
dynamically linked to local (micro) processes
Food for healthy planet means we need to look at both
Thoughts on population and
poverty