Indian famine of 1899–1900
The Indian famine of 1899–1900 began with the failure of the summer monsoons in 1899 over Western and Central India and, during the next year, affected an area of 476,000 square miles (1,230,000 km2) and a population of 59.5 million.
In the Central Provinces and Berar, an area that had suffered extreme distress during the famine of 1896–1897, the year 1898 had been favourable agriculturally, as was the first half of 1899; however, after the failure of the summer monsoon of 1899, a second catastrophe began soon afterwards.
[11] In 1900, a Niño+1 year, malaria epidemics, occurred in the Punjab, Central Provinces and Berar, and the Bombay Presidency, with devastating results.
[9] The Report on the Famine in the Bombay Presidency, 1899–1902 pronounced the epidemic to be "unprecedented," noting that "It attacked all classes and was by no means confined to the people who had been on relief works ..."[15] Parts of Punjab region, specially Bagar tract, were also affected.
[18] The mid-19th century was also a time of predominance of the economic theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and the principle of laissez-faire was subscribed to by many colonial administrators; the British, consequently, declined to interfere in the markets.
[18] 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.
[19] The sahukars, in their effort to drive up prices, were even able to export grain out of areas of scarcity using the faster means of transport that came in with British rule.
[19] A British deputy district collector recorded in his report, "The merchants first cleared large profits by exporting their surplus stocks of grain at the commencement of the famine, and, later on by importing maize from Cawnpore and Bombay and rice from Calcutta and Rangoon.
[22] The construction of the Indian Railways between 1860 and 1920, and the opportunities thereby offered for greater profit in other markets, allowed farmers to accumulate assets that could then be drawn upon during times of scarcity.
[23] There were other changes in the economy as well: a construction boom in the Bombay presidency, in both the private and public sectors, during the first two decades of the 20th century, created a demand for unskilled labour.
According to (McAlpin 1979, p. 156), "Famines in the nineteenth century tended to be characterized by some degree of aimless wandering of agriculturalists after their own supplies of food had run out."
Since these migrations caused further depletion among individuals who were already malnourished and since new areas exposed them to unfamiliar disease pathogens, the attendant mortality was high.
[25] A greater availability of jobs throughout the presidency and a better organised system of famine relief offered by the provincial government allowed most men in afflicted villages to migrate elsewhere as soon as their own meager harvest had been collected.
Those left behind could tend the livestock, live off the short harvest, and expect that the government would step in to provide relief—including grain sales or gratuitous relief—if necessary.
[32] Environment and development scholar Arun Agrawal argues that on account of the more liberal government relief in 1898 and 1899, "the number of people who died was far fewer" than in the famine of 1896–97 (whose mortality he puts at nearly 5 million).
[33] However anthropologist Fagan considers the famine in 1899–1900 to be the worst on record, suggesting that although the viceroy, Lord Curzon "led the public appeals for humanitarian aid, ... (t)he initiatives from his government ... were grossly inadequate.
[36] Among contemporaneous accounts, a 1901 estimate published in The Lancet, put the excess mortality, from "starvation or to the diseases arising therefrom," in India in the decade between 1891 and 1901 to be 19 million.
[42] As, in some parts of western India, it typically took eight to ten oxen to plough and harrow the hard ground, both cultivation capacity and agricultural income were drastically reduced for many years afterward.
These falls, however, were typically matched, and even exceeded, in the worst hit areas of the Deccan, by heavy decline in numbers of agricultural stock.
"[44] A memorial plaque is erected in a compound of I P Mission church in Prantij, Gujarat which cites a well in which 300 children who died in famine were buried.
