Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/Archive 8

This is an archive of past discussions about Bengal famine of 1943. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

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Estimates

Up until April 2017, the article gave the full range of estimates, from 1.5 million to 4 million. But now the article only mentions the lower end of estimates, 1.5 to 2.1 million, completely ignoring Sen's most widely cited ~3 million estimate. And the reasoning for favouring Maharatna's lesser known 2.1 million estimate is unsatisfactory, citing a single source claiming that's the consensus, despite plenty of other sources pointing to Sen's estimate as being the consensus. The article is giving undue weight to a particular POV, favouring the lower-end estimates and completely ignoring the higher-end estimates. Maestro2016 (talk) 10:33, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I am on vacation and away from my source docs but newer estimates frankly supersede Sen's. If Sen ever argues against the newer figures, then his older ones can regain relevance. He should publish a squib or blog post on the topic. So should Greenough. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:29, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- @Maestro2016: I will return to editing the article this weekend, when my sources arrive from the US. I will then respond to your post. But basically Lingzhi is right about Maharatna's estimates, which as far as I know have not been disputed by Sen. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:52, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Using a Single Estimate

Considering the multiple resources and citations involved in this article it is unfair to cite just one specific citation with a precise number. Tragedies of this magnitude are never precise, and most official claims have some level of merit. Even if one citation is considered more accurate to others it doesn't automatically make it a confirmation: none of these estimates are confirmations, that's what an estimate is. Pikazilla (talk) 13:36, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Length issues

Concerns about the length of this article were raised at a recent peer review and at the recently archived FAC. At 16,500 words and 103kb of "readable prose", it is way, way above all WP guidelines relating to article length. Two processes suggest themselves: split the article, perhaps between "causes" and the famine itself, or on some other basis; or retain the single article format, but reduce the text by removing much of the amount of explanatory detail. Personally I prefer the latter option; I've discussed the matter with Lingzhi, the principal author, and I think he concurs, but maybe other interested editors will have a view? Encyclopedia articles are not required to be exhaustive; I believe that this article could be reduced by as much as a third of its wordcount, while remaining comprehensive – it will still be long, but not egregiously so. I won't begin serious copyedits until after the holidays, but as an indication of my good intentions I've posted a slightly shorter version of the lead. Brianboulton (talk) 23:35, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Seems sensible to me. As I noted in my cursory PR, there is a level of detail which, while impressive, is not, in my opinion, really necessary to understand the main topic. I can only imagine how difficult this process is for Lingzhi after all that effort. I note, however, that the article on the Japanese conquest of Burma is remarkably light on information about the refugee crisis that the conquest precipitated; I wonder if the detail in this article on that subject can simply be transposed there, maybe to an "Aftermath" section, which that article completely lacks. FactotEm (talk) 11:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Funny you should mention the Burma campaign specifically – well I tried moving info there once and was very immediately shot down by that page's WP:OWNer... For the record, I did not add many many many of the details herein. They were added later by an editor who said he/she wanted to add context, which he/she would then later delete... For the record again, when examining every section, very careful consideration needs to be given to whether or not there is any direct connection to the famine/disease humanitarian crisis or its aftermath... The whole point of the Burma Campaign bit, IIRC (I may miss a point or two; I haven't read it in a while), was that the Burma fall was a watershed moment. Govt shifted resources to military use and esp. the loss of water transport made the military use all railway transport for its own purposes; rice resources that had provided a security blanket were lost, price speculation followed soon after. One source explicitly links the refugees to the spread of disease and all sources mention the two side-by-side and let readers draw their own conclusions (even contemporary medical authorities responded as if that were the case). And so on. If a detail is logically linked to the food crisis/rampant disease etc. it should be kept. If not then it should not... I guess there's a little room for extra learning opportunities via wikilinks (eg Matangini Hazra) but... not too too much. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 14:16, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

The long and involved paragraph beginning with the fall of Rangoon could be edited down substantially without its central tenant, which is well made, being lost. Agree with FactotEm above, that some of the trimming doest mean the text will be lost, more that it would serve better elsewhere Ceoil (talk) 01:41, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

A dynamic list of sources not currently present in the article for various tasks of comparison

Extended content

Arun Agrawal (2013), "Food Security and Sociopolitical Stability in South Asia", in Christopher B. Barret (ed) (ed.), Food Security and Sociopolitical Stability, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 406–427, ISBN 978-0-19-166870-8 {{citation}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
Appadurai, Arjun (1984), "How Moral Is South Asia's Economy?—A Review Article" (PDF), The Journal of Asian Studies, 43 (3): 481–497
Bhatia, B. M. (1991), Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India With Special Reference to Food Problem, 1860–1990, Stosius Inc/Advent Books Division. Pp. 383, ISBN 81-220-0211-0
Center of Military History, Burma, 1942, U. S. Government Printing Office, ISBN 978-0-16-088260-9
Fay, Peter Ward (1995), The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942–1945, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-08342-8, retrieved 10 November 2013
Ghose, Ajit Kumar (1982), "Food Supply and Starvation: A Study of Famines with Reference to the Indian Subcontinent", Oxford Economic Papers, New Series, 34 (2): 368–389
Goodall, Felicity (2011), Exodus Burma: The British Escape through the Jungles of Death 1942, History Press, ISBN 978-0-7524-6664-4
Leigh, Michael D. (2014), The Evacuation of Civilians from Burma: Analysing the 1942 Colonial Disaster, A&C Black, ISBN 978-1-4411-6394-3
McLynn, Frank (2011), The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942–45, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-17162-4, retrieved 6 November 2013
Moreman, Tim (2013), The Jungle, Japanese and the British Commonwealth Armies at War, 1941–45: Fighting Methods, Doctrine and Training for Jungle Warfare, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-135-76456-2, retrieved 7 November 2013
O Grada, Cormac (1997), "Markets and famines: A simple test with Indian data", Economic Letters, 57: 241–244, doi:10.1016/S0165-1765(97)00228-0
Roy, Tirthankar (2011), Economic History of India, 1857–1947, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-807417-5
Chaudhary, Latika; Gupta, Bishnupriya; Roy, Tirthankar; Swamy, Anand V. (2015), "Agriculture in Colonial India", in L. Chaudhary, B. Gupta, T. Roy, and A. Swamy (eds) (ed.), A New Economic History of Colonial India, Routledge, pp. 100–116, ISBN 978-1-317-67433-7 {{citation}}: |editor= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
Roy, Tirthankar (2016), "Were Indian Famines 'Natural' OR 'Manmade'?", LSE Working Papers (243/2016), London School of Economics
Warren, Alan (2011), Burma 1942: The Road from Rangoon to Mandalay, A&C Black, ISBN 978-1-4411-0673-5
C. Wilson (2014), Churchill on the Far East in the Second World War: Hiding the History of the ‘Special Relationship’, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-137-36395-4

Heavy editing

A couple of weeks ago, after discussion with the article's main editor Lingzhi, I embarked on a programme of "heavy editing", with the twin objectives of reducing the text to a more reasonable length, and adjusting the balance of the content to provide a better focus on the famine itself, rather than on background and causes. Before I began, the article consisted of 16,555 words arranged in sections as follows:

(Figures adjusted 17.1.18)

Lead ~~486~~ 352
Background ~~2656~~ 1322
Pre-famine ~~8329~~ 5410
Famine ~~1306~~ 1208
Social disruption ~~1197~~ 1108
Relief efforts ~~399~~ 399
Econ/pol efforts 16 275
Media coverage ~~428~~ 417
Depictions ~~221~~ 221
Debate ~~1217~~ 1113 Revised wordcount 11,820

These figures indicate the disproportionate attention given in the article to background and pre-famine factors. So far I have managed to reduce the Background session by about 50%, and am curently making inroads into the Pre-famine section. Ultimately I hope we'll have an article with no more than 10,000 words, which gives more appropriate emphasis to the famine itself and its consequences. If anyone is so minded, the discarded material from the Background and Pre-famine sections can be recovered via the article history and used as the basis of a "Causes" article, but in this article a much briefer summary of these factors is called for.

It's a big undertaking and may well extend over many weeks. I'm happy to discuss here any issues arising. Brianboulton (talk) 19:30, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreed that the background was far too heavily emphasized in the article--doubly so when those background factors are represented in adequate subpages and are linked within. I've made substantial trims reflecting this; I hope they meet with approval. Overall the article has gone from 218,823 bytes (Dec 16, when the reduction effort began) to 176,274 bytes today. Palindromedairy (talk) 23:18, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Disagree, at least to the extent that it existed before other editors added massive amounts of pointless fluff. The famine was a famine, and millions of innocent people died. That is very well known. The key point emphasized in all (and by "all", I mean "all", as in "every single instance") relevant literature was the causes. Will read carefully and restore if necessary...Having said that, thank you for taking out all that Cripps mission verbiage. But some deleted bits about the war are less extraneous. The war + administrative ignorance (and very arguably for everyone except Churchill, callousness) were probably the the causes (stipulating that the scope of the fungal infection was and is unknown and unknowable); this is the paradigmatic case (and it literally is the paradigmatic case in relevant academic literature) of a man-made famine. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:38, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

For war material, I tried to be very careful in removing only stuff that applied to the war at large but not to the famine specifically. That having been said, I'll of course be happy to go over anything you feel might have been deleted that harms a wider understanding of the article. Cheers. Palindromedairy (talk) 16:09, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Forex, the sunk shipping made UK place railways under primarily military use for quite some time esp. in the earlier stages of the famine etc., which made the latter unavailable for famine relief. I'll look again soon. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:27, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I have carried out further bold editing in the Prefamine section. As a result, the wordcount now stands at just over 10,000, organised thus:

Lead...................... 338
Background......... 1322
Prefamine............ 3645
Famine/aftermath 3616
Debate................. 1111

I believe that this proportionate organisation is roughly right. I haven't begun to look at the later sections, but I would expect the necessary editing there to be a good deal lighter, and perhaps offset by some adding back of material in the reduced sections. I'll be resting from the article for a few days in order to concentrate on a few other things. Brianboulton (talk) 18:46, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

A well deserved break. Having followed the edits closely, I think overall "judicious", and thank Brian for all the time he has given. I also think, given the wide respect and clout that Brian has earned over the years, displayed by his obvious neutral approach here, that his edits will quell a lot of the hostility on this talk, or lay a better foundation for argument. Ceoil (talk) 09:41, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

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Unclear sentence

I tried to copy edit this but found I wasn't sure what it meant: "Deaths from starvation began to decline, but 'very substantially more than half' the famine-related fatalities were caused by disease in 1944, after the food security crisis had subsided."

This could mean: "More than half the famine-related fatalities in 1944 were caused by disease." Or: "More than half the famine-related fatalities overall were caused by disease in 1944." Also, who is being quoted? SarahSV ^(talk) 14:56, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

More than half the deaths occurred in 1944, after the food security crisis had abated. These were caused by disease. the direct quote comes from Amartya Sen (1981), p. 215 but the same thing is stated in multiple sources. Tks for your help... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. SarahSV ^(talk) 15:20, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Smallpox image

Lingzhi, I'm replying here to your note on my talk about why I removed File:Smallpox child.jpg. It isn't an image from Bengal (so far as we know), so it's misleading. There's no need for a generic illustration of smallpox, and that particular image looks as though it may indeed have come from this area during that period, particularly with the quote and the scholarly source in the caption. You only realize it doesn't when you look at the file page, and most readers won't do that. I suppose we could add to the caption that it doesn't, but my preference would be to leave it out. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:05, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

This will have typos since I'm on a cellphone. Taking the informational value of the article as a whole entity involves conveying the human aspect without falling into deliberate editorial heartstrng tugging. I feel period specific photos are always too distant and grainy to convey the human aspect. It becomes too numeric and impersonal, "oh yeah millions died around a century or two ago". The photo in the Infobox and this img are the most humanizing elements of the entire article. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:16, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

But we don't know that this image is from Bengal in 1943. We might just as well add generic images of people dying of starvation: "this is what it probably looked like". SarahSV ^(talk) 02:26, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

If you google Bengal famine and "the Statesman", it returns some terrible images, presumably from their collection. Someone should write to them and ask if they will release some high-quality images. (Your smallbox image is now returned under that Google search too, because it has been in this article.) SarahSV ^(talk) 02:33, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I will happily forward the literally scores of emails I have sent. I practically became penpals with some copyright holders. They never released the copyrights. Ask Nikkimaria if I didn't pester her to distraction over image licensing. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:43, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing them if you're willing to forward. I'd like to try to get some releases. Look at this, for example. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:47, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Here I should tell you that many of the imgs on the Internet are completely mislabeled. Dollars to donuts says that img is from a famine from considerably earlier than 1943-44. Trust not the Internet, young Skywalker. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:01, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I got your email, thanks. It's the Statesman images I'd like to focus on. I wonder whether the article should have a subsection on their publication. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:06, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

They were discussed at length in the version that I wrote. Who knows what the hell is on the page now... certainly not me. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:08, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm about to read your first version of the rewrite. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:12, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/attribution Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:15, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Still making my way through it. It's excellent. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:17, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Lingzhi:, I've read through it once, and I'm going to read the current version again and try to compare. How do you feel about the current versus your original? Yours does flow very well. I have some criticism (of both versions), but I'll leave that for later.

Re: images. We should ask on Commons about the copyright status of images from India from that period. According to the Hirtle chart, they are PD in the US if published "without compliance with US formalities, and in the public domain in [the] source country as of 1 January 1996". If published "in compliance with all US formalities (i.e., notice, renewal)", then it's 95 years after publication. Unless they were also published in the US within 30 days, in which case it's different; see the chart.

I will write to the Statesman to try to get better copies; I don't hold out much hope but I will try. If you want to take this to FAC, there will be problems with the famine images, which are on Commons but I'm not sure they should be. They're taken from Bengal Speaks (1944), but this is given as though it's a page from that book. Those look like newspaper images pasted onto cardboard. They don't look like original photographs taken by the book author(s). SarahSV ^(talk) 22:15, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I have not read through the entire article in its current version, and am not eager to do so. This whole experience has been a major source of stress, discouragement, weariness and burnout for me for several months. I have oft been on the edge of quitting Wikipedia altogether. Even staying on, the nature of my contributions as a Wikipedian has changed. When helping with various content review forums (FAC principally) I used to read through entire articles very carefully, literally bottom-to-top and then top-to-bottom. I occasionally worked hard on copy editing large bolts of text from those articles, with Roman Catholic Church (remember all that?) being a typical example... Now I can seldom bring myself to read much of anything at all. It's too wearying. I have recently really enjoyed working on a javascript tool that aids content review, because javascript programming and then checking program output do not involve actually reading articles...So... i will read the whole thing when it's done done done, and probably complain about what was taken out. But I am not eager to engage with the text... As for the images, I am not sure how many of the ones I selected have been deleted by other editors. ***I checked the ones I had used***, sometimes at great length (again, you can ask Nikkimaria what an annoyance I have been) and unless I am mistaken they were OK... The ones on the page now are almost all Fowler&Fowler. I am not at all eager to engage with Fowler&Fowler. If you wanna interact with Commons, the Statesman, and other Wikipedia editors... I dunno how much energy and will to participate I can muster. I can try to help sometimes. That's all I know at the present... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:47, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I understand. I don't want to throw a spanner in the works, and if everyone is happy (or at least okay) with the way things are, that's fine. But I did wonder whether we ought to restore your version and work from there, because it flows so well. Otherwise we're copy-editing the copy edits of the copy edits. But I've probably arrived too late in the game to be suggesting things like that. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:54, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Ha! Ha! Ha! I would do that if I could of course. I would never have added the... content... that was added; I protested powerlessly as it aaccumulated. But you need to discuss this with @Brianboulton:. I have no vote and no voice. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:25, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

The task I originally undertook, as is clear from my comments earlier on this talk page, was to reduce an overblown text of 16,500 words to something of more readable size and balance. This I have largely done, by removing much detail from the backgound and causes section in an effort to transfer the focus of this article to the famine itself, and its consequences. As predicted there is much less excision required in these later sections. I am not sure which version Sarah is alluding to when she suggests we "restore your version and work from there", but I think it's rather too late for that. As to "copy-editing the copy edits of the copy edits", to some extent that is the nature of Wikipedia; no text is finally settled for all time. What is confusing, though, is when two copyeditors are working on the article simultaneously, and with that in mind I'll desist from further editing until Sarah has completed what she intends to do. When the copyediting phase has finished, al concerned editors can discuss the final shaping of the article. Brianboulton (talk) 11:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

This reminds me of Wikitruth's motto: "The truth was there three revisions ago."

Lingzhi's rewrite of 8 April 2017 (also available here, although there may be minor differences) was 14,600 words "readable prose size". By 16 December 2017, it had grown to 16,555 words, and not because of Lingzhi's editing. This seems to have been caused by a considerable expansion of "February–April 1942: Japanese invasion of Burma" (which has its own article, Japanese conquest of Burma), and "1942–45: Military build-up, inflation, and displacement", which both became too long and needed to be reverted. (But I do like Brian's edits to those sections.)

The danger of working from the inflated version is that, in trying to reduce the size overall, we lose important details from other sections. For example, rice denial, boat denial, cloth famine, and the effects on women and children ought not to be reduced. The denial policies are crucial. (They would make interesting stand-alone articles.)

Has anyone considered asking a subject-matter expert for a review? I've done this several times and it's always helpful, although it can take months to organize. SarahSV ^(talk) 15:26, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

(←) Brian has been a true superhero in his edits. He deserves whatever praise or credit we can offer... barnstars are insufficient. He seems opposed to the idea of going back to the prev version, tho he says he didn't see it (the latest version is a blanked page). I am of course biased in favor of my own version, so my thoughts might be discounted... I can see no way out of the impasse other than weaving the current version and my old one together, but am still open to suggestions...your further thoughts solicited... As for expert opinion, who would you suggest? I emailed... wow, hard to recall... I emailed Madhusree Mukerjee, Paul Greenough, Debarshi Das, Iftekhar Iqbal.. seems like I'm forgetting a couple.. some for very brief exchanges and some for multiple instances of lengthy correspondence. I may have worn out my welcome for some or all of the above; I do not know. Your thoughts on expert opinion? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 17:04, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I would look for a reviewer who could remain anonymous if they wanted to. I'll email you with some ideas about how to find someone. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

(Incidentally) I have no objection to material that I've removed being judicially restored by experts. But let's bear in mind that an encyclopaedia article is supposed to be summary in form, not exhaustive, and I wouldn't want to see the overall length ballooning again. Brianboulton (talk) 20:59, 8 February 2018 (UTC)