It was the worst summer for India as a whole. Drought and extreme heat have affected 33 crore Indians across the country in an unimaginable way. Even more so, this summer brought about an even worse, more devastating climatic disaster: the Odisha Famine - 1866. Few people are aware of this famine. The Famine is described in detail in the pages of Indian history, which are rich in ideas.
Very few commemorative events have been held in this regard. But this Odisha Famine killed about 10 lakh Indians in East India.
The famine took a heavy toll on the present-day state of Odisha, where one in three people died from the famine. The overall death rate is staggering. The Odisha Famine killed more people than the Great Irish Famine (the Irish Potato Famine). The Odisha Famine was also an important turning point in Indian politics. This led to a national debate on Indian poverty. Some of these debates resonate even today in drought relief efforts.
'No relief is the best relief'
Although famine was not new to the Indian subcontinent, British colonialism increased the incidence and severity of famines.
The East India Company destroyed the previously strong garment industry and pushed many Indians into agriculture. As a result, the Indian economy became more dependent on the monsoon than before.
The main cause of this famine which occurred about 155 years ago was the failure of monsoon.
"We can no longer conceal the fact that we face a dearth which affects all," declared a British figure in a Calcutta newspaper in 1865.
Indian and British newspapers carried news of rising prices, dwindling grain stocks, and the desperation of farmers who had no means of food.
But this did not make the British government take action. It was common economic wisdom in the mid-19th century that government intervention in dealing with famine was unnecessary and dangerous. The market would correct itself, and the Malthusian theory held that higher deaths were nature's response to population growth. During the famine that devastated Ireland some two decades before this famine, the British government decided, based on the same logic, that no relief was good relief.
In 1866, the then colonial governor of Bengal (then annexed to Orissa) Cecil Beeton made a similar stand when he visited Orissa by air. At that time, he said, 'No government can prevent or mitigate the destruction through such visits.'
'Too late, too rotten relief'
Regulating skyrocketing grain prices risks upsetting the natural laws of economics. "If I attempt to do this, I must consider myself no better than a bandit or a thief," said Governor Cecil Beaton.
It was not easy to ignore the disaster in Orissa in May 1866. British officers found their soldiers and police officers starving in Cuttack, Orissa. The people who remained in Puri were digging trenches to collect the dead. "I could hear them screaming for food for miles," commented one observer.
Amidst such ominous consequences, Beeton in time embarked on the importation of rice to Orissa. But, the effort was hampered by brutal and excessive rains and floods. This relief was too small, too late, too rotten. People of Orissa had to lose their lives due to the administration not taking timely action.
Many western-educated Indians have been blaming the British rule for years for turning India into a poverty-stricken country as a whole. This inspired the early nationalist Dadabai Naoroji to begin his lifelong study of Indian poverty. As the famine subsided in early 1867, Dadabai Naoroji formulated the 'drainage theory'. That is, the theory was that Britain became rich by absorbing India's wealth.
Dadabhai Naoroji admits that "security of life and property is no doubt better in these times", but says, "More than ten lakh lives perished in a single famine, a strange example of the value of life and property thus protected."
An indifferent answer
His point is simple. India had sufficient food resources to feed the hungry. But why did the government allow people to die? Naoroji notes that 200 million pounds of rice were exported from India to Britain in 1866, when the people of Orissa were dying out. He also found similar high exports in other famines in India. "Lord, when will this end?" Naoroji asks.
Chennai Provincial Famine
But, this did not end soon. Different famines occurred from 1869 to 1874. During the Madras famine of 1876 to 1878, similar to the Ireland and Orissa famines, Viceroy Lytton did not intervene to control the famine, in which about 40 to 50 lakh people died.
In 1901, Romesh Chander Dutt, another nationalist, estimated that 1.5 million people died in the 10 major famines of the 1860s. Indians were very poor then, and the government's response was indifferent. "Every year when there was a drought there was a famine," he notes.
Richer, less dependent on agriculture, India can now ensure that doesn't happen. However, some problems still persist. The Supreme Court of India has opined that some state governments are acting too slowly in mitigating the drought in 2016. For these reasons it is very important that we remember the Orissa famine even now. This human disaster, and others that followed, inspired Indians to fight against British colonial rule.
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