Christian missions in the Telugu country - Uecf.net

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE 29
still contain more than enough food for the whole popula-
tion. What is technically called famine is usually
confined to a certain area and is the result of the failure
of rain in that area. India suffers through its excessive
dependence on a single industry, that of agriculture,
two-thirds at least of its whole population being occupied
on the land. Everywhere the majority of people
depend for their livelihood on cultivation. Wherever,
therefore, rain fails to fall, the bulk of the labourers
unmediately lose their means of subsistence. During
the drought they have no work to do, therefore they
can earn no wages. If their wages are generally paid
in grain, their food supply is directly cut off ; if in cash,
then they have no money with which to buy food. The
market may be fuU of grain, but that is of small avail
to the poor labourer who is destitute of cash. The
famine, therefore, is a famine of wages or money, rather
than of food. It is, in many respects, similar to the
unemployment problem in England, but with one
aggravation : no
sooner is it certain that the crops are
going to be a failure over any considerable district than
the price of food-stuffs in the market is immediately
raised. They may become double or treble the normal
price. Perhaps the best way for English readers to
understand what famine means in India is to suppose
that half the people, say, of London, including all the
poor with insignificant exceptions, were thrown simul-
taneously out of work, while at the same time the price
of food was enormously enhanced.
India, depending wholly as it does on the monsoons
for its rain, is more liable to famine than any other