Talk:Indian famine of 1899–1900

Hoarding

There's a section which describes hoarding behaviour.

Corn hoarding is in fact the right thing to do when there is a shortage of food. Corn holders do this selfishly, to increase their profits, for they predict prices will rise. But what this actually results in is *rationing*, which is exactly what you want - it's better to have a shortage over a year than normal behaviour for six months and then a famine. Of course, by the time you've got a famine, things are so serious that even hoarding doesn't save you - people are still dying. But it's still less than would otherwise occur.

"This meant that the Baniya sahukars could resort to hoarding during times of scarcity, driving up the price of food grain, and profiteering in the aftermath."

Believe me, when there's a famine, it's not hoarding which drives up prices - it's the fundamantal shortage of food. And to call making money from it "profiteering" is impossible to justify. You cannot sell something to someone at a price higher than they will pay for it. People are paying through the nose for food *because there is so little food* - it's got nothing to do with who *holds* the food - unless you argue the merchants hold ALL the food and are starving people into paying through the nose - which is utter tosh, because the merchants are competing against each other and that competition drives down prices as is normal. Food prices reflect *genuine scarcity*.

There's also discussion about the exporting of food. There is no mention of where the food is being exported *to*. This famine was widespread. Many areas experienced shortage; others experienced famine. The holders of food stocks will, in their selfish interest, want to sell their goods for the highest price. This will be where the famine is hardest. This is exactly what you want - the very limited food supplies being distributed to the places which are in greatest need. I'm sure those who rioted - short of food as they were - were in nowhere near as bad a state as those who were dying and so physically unable to riot.

Finally;

"For example, in Jodhpur State, a famine-stricken area in Rajputana, in August 1899, the state officials set up a shop to sell grain at cost price, forcing the Baniya merchants to eventually bring down their prices."

Which is utter stupidity. There is no such thing as selling at cost. It means the profit of the farmers was being paid indirectly by taxation. By selling at cost, this means the merchants would not be able to sell in this area. The robustness and size of the supply of food has been destroyed. Furthermore, it discourages merchants from taking the risks in the first place to buy and sell food. This in turn will tend to leave food supply and so food prices in state control - which is a recipie for absolute disaster.

All in all, this section about usary is entirely wrong.

It is however fully quoted, so it is valid material by Wiki standards. What is needed is a rebuttal of the quoted work, which is IMHO written by someone who has no clue about free markets and freedom.

Toby Douglass (talk) 11:39, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you'd better do it, or insert some referenced qualifiers at key points. Johnbod (talk) 11:56, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I barely had a couple of hours to write this before I had to go away on a family emergency. As the banner at the top of the page loudly proclaims, it is still under construction. So before Mr. Douglass proceeds to teach me freshman economics, and, in the process, even more loudly proclaim his own ignorance, I'd say hold your horses. OK? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

And, Mr. Douglass, before you dump another megabyte of text here, we are talking about an incompletely monetized exchange economy. For the vast majority of people who died of starvation (in famines in India in the 19th-century), the available food supply depended on their "employment entitlements," or the demand among the primary (landed) food producers for their services, for which they were paid in kind (or, in some cases, a combination of cash and kind). A localized crop failure, therefore, could create a famine, not because it led to an aggregate shortage of food, but because it (all at once and catastrophically) deprived this population of the means to acquire food. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:46, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Not that you sound bitter and twisted in any way ;-) Toby Douglass (talk) 19:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

:) Well, I am a little exhausted after the last few days, and didn't realize that it had been five days since I last edited this page. Had no idea too that it had been mentioned on the Main Page and was therefore seeing more scrutiny. I understand some of your frustration, but the article is less than half finished. The topic, moreover, is complicated. I usually get criticism from the Left for being an apologist. Which means I could your help when I get battered by the other side again. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

No worries. I was mainly upset that I saw Smith's stuff being used as an explanation for behaviour which apparently caused a lot of suffering. That's unfair - Smith would have been disgusted at the way the Indian economy was run, given what sounds like a whole set of restrictions of personal economic behaviour and so lack of freedom. Toby Douglass (talk) 11:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

It is still (last I saw) only a nomination for DYK & can be withdrawn I think by you as main author if you wish. Johnbod (talk) 01:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

It was on DYK - that's how I came to view the page. Toby Douglass (talk) 11:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, they forgot to tag it then. Johnbod (talk) 11:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Mortality

The article cites Davis's book Late Victorian Holocausts as saying the death toll for the 1900 famine was between one and ten million. If memory serves Davis actually provides a number of secondary sources on the death toll between 1896-1902, the lowest being 6 million, the highest 19 million, although it seems the source for this was an anonymous writer in the Lancet. Maharatna estimates the famines (1897 and 1900) about 8.4 million people in all. If there are no problems, could I amend the mortality section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.209.74.218 (talk) 20:52, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Victorian Holocaust

I just noticed that every single holocaust has it's place on Wikipedia, except for the Victorian Holocaust where the British caused the deaths of close to 30 million indians. --68.46.148.86 (talk) 16:25, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Views of Victorian famines in modern economic history

@Ms Sarah Welch: Sorry to undo your edit, but it doesn't help when people add material from a polemical book by Mike Davis or Nick Dirks, without considering that the picture might be more complex. Please read: "Were Indian Famines ‘Natural’ Or ‘Manmade’?" by Tirthankar Roy, London School of Economics, June 2016. Its abstract says, "Were the Indian famines natural (geographical) or manmade (political) in origin? I review the theories of Indian famines and suggest that a mainly geographical account diminishes the role of the state in the occurrence and retreat of famines, whereas a mainly political account overstates that role. I stress a third factor, knowledge, and suggest that limited information and knowledge constrained state capacity to act during the nineteenth century famines. As statistical information and scientific knowledge improved, and prediction of and response to famines improved, famines became rarer."

In my view, polemical accounts, such as were popular 20 years ago, don't take into account information gathered by the British (by civil servants and ultimately by the three Indian Famine Commissions). In fact, there are those who say that Amartya Sen's work on entitlements and famines is a mathematical reworking of things already hinted at in Indian Famine Commission reports. In other words, it doesn't help to turn famine pages into shrines for those who died and then attempt to lay the blame at the doorstep of only the British. It is not like famines did not occur before the British. It is more that the British kept meticulous records. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:02, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

PS @Ms Sarah Welch: Here is something from a differnt WP page: The evidence from 19th-century data suggests that local crop failures led to famines not because they created aggregate food shortages but because they drastically reduced the demand for the services of certain segments of the population, consequently depriving them of the means to acquire food. According to , famines were not natural phenomena but rather a result of the breakdown, in the wake of local crop failures, of social and economic networks in these regions. The Famine Commission of 1880, appointed by the Government of British India, described the situation with clarity and poignancy:"

"The first effect of a drought is to diminish greatly, and at last to stop, all field labour, and to throw out of employment the great mass of people who live on the wages of labour. A similar effect is produced next upon the artisans, the small shop-keepers, and traders, first in villages and country towns, and later on in the larger towns also, by depriving them of their profits, which are mainly dependent on dealings with the least wealthy classes; and, lastly, all classes become less able to give charitable help to public beggars, and to support their dependents. Such of the agricultural classes as possess a proprietary interest in the land, or a valuable right of occupancy in it, do not require as a rule to be protected against starvation in time of famine unless the calamity is unusually severe and prolonged, as they generally are provided with stocks of food or money, or have credit with money-lenders. But those who, owning only a small plot of land, eke out by its profits their wages as labourers, and rack-rented tenants-at-will living almost from hand-to-mouth, are only a little way removed from the class of field-labourers; they possess no credit, and on them pressure soon begins."

Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:55, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Citations

References

• Famine Commission (1880), Report of the Indian Famine Commission, Part I, Calcutta
• 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

@Fowler&fowler: Your "complex picture" concerns are appropriate, and Tirthankar Roy source meets RS guidelines, but what you reverted has no relation to your concerns. You removed data and sources that improved NPOV. The colonial British records were better than before, and more systematic no doubt. The article should mention them. But The Lancet and other sources meet RS guidelines. We can't take sides per NPOV. Does Tirthankar Roy conclude colonial British administration records are the only reliable source of data? or, is he stating that other estimates of fatalities are wrong? I don't see such claims.

On Mike Davis... his Late Victorian Holocausts book has been peer reviewed, by scholars such as Amartya Sen. See this, for example. Sen writes in his review, "Davis has given us a book of substantial contemporary relevance as well as great historical interest." Sen also adds some caution, such as "The devastations that Davis describes in illuminating detail should not be seen merely as the result of market forces, or of a declining village community, but rather as a basic failure to have an adequately broad economic policy, involving public action at different levels." Davis's book has attracted other reviews, some published in peer reviewed journals, which I remember reading some 15 years or so ago. He has also been cited many times, again in peer reviewed publications. His book therefore is notable and meets RS guidelines, and represents a side of the debate which needs to be summarized (even if you or I or Sen may question him on polemics and some points). FWIW, I have seen original version of The Lancet, it verifies what Davis claims it reported, and in this article I quoted two sources for the 19 million death estimated therein.

Perhaps you can explain the rationale behind what you actually reverted better. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 12:34, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

(ps) I found The Lancet article: Vol. 157, No. 4059, June 15 1901, pp. 1713-1714. There are numerous secondary sources that cite the 19 million deaths from this article. The Lancet article estimates 20,000,000 deaths, of which 1,000,000 it estimates as caused by plague, the rest to famines and famine-related diseases (over a 10 year period, inclusive of the 1899-1900 famine). The April 13 1901 issue of The Lancet, pp. 1107-1108 also mentions some other interesting specific regional data on deaths from the famine. There is more in other articles of The Lancet. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 15:15, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch: ::OK, fair enough. I'm pretty busy, so I'll do it in bits and pieces over the remainder of the day. First, the picture. It is from a Russian book, appearing on page 177 (not page 185 as stated in the image) but saying nothing about the famine of 1899 or 1900. The previous page in the book says, "In China, ... the God of travelers helped me. I met and spent six days in the company of the most interesting of four million Chinese people ..." and the next page, 178, says, "Six years old he lives in exile, but he does not interrupt his relations with his country. ... the older the empress, the closer the return of Kang-yu-Wei. Every day brings him closer to China." The caption of the picture says, "British India: (four more words which I can't make out, referring to a pyre?, but with no years mentioned.) The last chapter is on India. It says the author was there during Younghusband's expedition to Tibet (British expedition to Tibet) in the winter of 1903-1904, which is a few years after the famine of 1899-1900, so either he didn't take the picture himself, or the picture is not of that famine. He also makes some WP:RS observations: India has two doors, to the west is the white door through which all the conquerors came, such as the Aryans; to the east is the yellow door, through the Brahmaputra river valley, though which the yellow tribes came into the Ganges plains." He then tells us a long story about Krishnaswamy Naidi and his wife Lacchmi who apparently exasperates KN, for he is heard shouting "God Shiva save us!" in response. Later the author says, "The first people who meet him are the people of Bengal. who are ... the greatest cowards, even among the Indians." Then there are many pages about Lord Kitchner's massacre with memorable words like "These are the cries of the brave, beaten, murdered - whose lord Lord Kitchener was told to cut in two and bury them in different places, so that they could not rise from the dead even on the day of the judgment of Allah." So, we don't even know if the picture in question might not be the handiwork of Lord Kitchner. As far as I can tell, the only place in the book where any words relating to "famine' are mentioned is on one page, "The idea is simple and understandable to the whole population: - At the time when we are dying of hunger, they are waging our money for the only war they need. The rich ranks of hunger strikes, when millions of Indians died, literally, starving to death, threatened the rebellion of even those who had come to be slaves of the Hindus."

You grab such a picture, with such documentation, and put it blithely right into the lead with edit summary "add sources," not to mention all the other stuff you add that is more than just sources. How much time has that wasted of mine already? Seriously, you think that picture belongs to the lead! More coming later. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:28, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: There are two pictures in the book. One on page 177 and one on page 185!! The one I had added was indeed from 185. But you make a good point, both on the quality of the source and the dating details (I rechecked and am not sure which year is the page 185 image from). Yes, it is better if the source states that image is indeed of 1899-1900 famine. I am ok with keeping that image out. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 17:00, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch: Thanks. (I saw one picture and assumed there were none other.) I have now rewritten the Mortality section using all the textbook or monograph sources availabe to me. The journal articles I will add later. As your own efforts to rewrite things in an NPOV manner indicate, mortality is a many unsplendored thing, not always rendered in the changeable crisscross directions of a sortable table. Accordingly, I have done away with the table. I have incorporated most of the text you added, with the exception of McKinnon. The reason for excluding him is simlpy that contemporaneous sources are almost like primary sources, that there are many such available, and that allowing one would by default allow every other. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:38, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Why isn't this simply regarded as a genocide? Is it because Wiki authors find no value in the lives of Indians?

The British did these "famines" 4 times after doing the same exact policy measures that starved the Irish to death during the Potato Famine. Please explain how doing something 5 times in which tens of millions die so they can sell food at exorbitant prices and export it shouldn't be called an intentional act of causing a massive death toll so they could make a profit? 47.20.242.106 (talk) 07:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC)