Difference between revisions 827523977 and 827622014 on enwiki

==Who died?==
{{further|Bengal famine of 1943}}
Article needs a demography section: population, Muslim/Hindu, how many urban/living in villages, family structure (Greenough), who died, male/female, etc. Explain who "priority classes" were; stores on factory premises; workers paid with grain from July 1942 (Greenough). 80,000–150,000 villagers moved to Calcutta after July.

(contracted; show full)*[http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/feb/17/bengal-destitute-children#S5CV0397P0_19440217_HOC_157 Hansard], 17 February 1944.

==Priority classes==
"Concern for Calcutta's 'priority classes' accounted for the forcible requisition of rice from mills and warehouses in and around the city in late December 1942" (Ó Gráda 2010).

==Responsibility==
===Discussion at the time===

*Amery, [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/jun/03/food-situation Hansard], 3 June 1943: "The latest reports from India are that the wheat just reaped is a bumper crop, and the other spring crops are good. The crop is moving slowly to the market and prices are still high. The rice situation still causes anxiety and must continue to do so so long as the Burma crop is lost to us. The chief concern at present is for Bengal and especially Calcutta, where the price of rice is shown as more than eight times pre-war, though this is not true of India generally."
*[http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/jul/01/food-situation Hansard], 1 July 1943.
*Amery, [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1943/jul/14/india-food-supplies Hansard], 14 July 1943: "The present difficult situation is due to a widespread tendency of cultivators to withhold foodgrains from the market, to larger consumption per head as the result of increased family income, to hoarding by consumers and others, and, in many parts of India, to the fact that the methods by which surplus supplies of foodgrains have in normal times moved from areas of production to areas of consumption have ceased to function or been seriously weakened."⏎
*[http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1943/sep/22/india-food-situation Hansard], 22 September 1943.
*Amery, [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/sep/23/india-food-situation Hansard], 23 September 1943.
:*Viscountess Astor: "Will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear to the world that this awful situation is not the fault of the British Government? I would ask him to bear in mind the anti-English propaganda that is going throughout the world about India."
*Amery, [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/oct/12/india-food-situation#S5CV0392P0_19431012_HOC_256 Hansard], 12 October 1943: "At the beginning of the year His Majesty's Government provided the necessary shipping for substantial imports of grain to India in order to meet prospects of serious shortage which were subsequently relieved by an excellent spring harvest in Northern India ... The problem so far as help from here is concerned is entirely one of shipping, and has to be judged in the light of all the other urgent needs of the United Nations. ... As far back as April, 1942, [the central government of India] inaugurated a "'Grow More Food"' campaign, which brought 8,000,000 new acres under food crops last year and will bring 12,000,000 this year. In a situation in which the difficulty was mainly, though not entirely, one of distribution, their efforts have been primarily directed to securing grain from surplus areas to meet the needs of the areas in deficit.⏎
⏎
"
*[http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1943/oct/12/food-situation#S5CV0392P0_19431012_CWA_6 Hansard], 12 October 1943: "Captain Gammans asked the Secretary of State for India, what steps he has taken to make known to the United States of America and other parts of the world that the responsibility for dealing with the famine in Bengal rests upon the Bengal Government and not upon the Secretary of State; and that that Government is a constitutional body elected under the provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935?"
*Amery, [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1943/oct/14/food-situation#S5CV0392P0_19431014_CWA_114 Hansard], 14 October 1943: "Reliable statistics of mortality are not available, but I understand that the deaths in Bengal are estimated at about 1,000 a week including Calcutta but may be higher" (Amery)."
*[http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/nov/11/india-food-situation#S5CV0393P0_19431111_HOC_155 Hansard], 11 November 1943.
*Amery, [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/jan/20/food-situation#S5CV0396P0_19440120_HOC_121 Hansard], 20 January 1944: "As the result of relief measures and an excellent winter rice crop there is now no general shortage of food in Bengal. ... There are still no reliable figures, but the Government of India, on the basis of present information, consider that the abnormal mortality due to the famine and to disease in the last five months of 1943 has not exceeded 1,000,000" (Amery)."

===Later views===
*Sen, Amaryta (1981). [https://books.google.com/books?id=FVC9eqGkMr8C&pg=PA55 "The Great Bengal Famine"]. ''Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation''.
*Bowbrick, Peter (May 1986). [http://www.bowbrick.org.uk/Publications/The%20Causes%20of%20Famine%201986.pdf "The causes of famine: A refutation of Professor Sen's theory"]. ''Food Policy''. 11:2, pp. 105–124.
(contracted; show full)mines generally away from food availability decline (FAD) per se to the distribution of, or entitlements to, what food was available. In Bengal, Sen argued, the problem was less the supply of food in 1943 than its distribution; in theory there was enough to feed everybody, but massive speculation, prompted in large part by wartime conditions, meant that a minor shortfall in food availability was transformed into a disastrous reduction in market supplies. Sen's analysis has been enormously influential.