INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

A FEW GENERAL CRlTICIS.lfS. 119
about' ourselves, not only from an insufficient
knowledge of our language, but, more frequently,
from not thoroughly understanding the matter
in hand? Similarly, Anglo-Indians are able to
pick holes in the remarks and criticisms of the
home papers on Indian affairs j and when they
have to deal with criticisms not altogether of
a friendly nature, it is not unnatural that they
should express the resentment they feel at being
lectured by people who know little or nothing
of the practical detail required to work out the
very ideas which they suggest.
The great stumbling-block to a due appreciation
of the difficulties of the famine by the
public, is the apparent simplicity of the whole
affair. A rich nation says-" Given a distressed
district with a certain popUlation, requiring so
much daily food for so many mouths," and then
asks, "What is easier than to buy this food and
give it to the poor people?" Or to quote a somewhat
similar idea, but much more elaborately expressed,
in the' Saturday Review' of 3d N ovember
1866: "In the bare idea of famine there
is something of a peculiarly painful and shock·
ing character. An epidemic may be considered