INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

2 TRADITIONAL AND
Experience, in famines as in all other instances,
should tell its own tale; but in contrasting
results, the public must forget its European
stand - point of view. What we call
civilisation has advanced gradually throughout
the West; but in the East it has gone by
"forced marches," with all the leaps in the
dark naturally attached thereto; and the question
therefore arises, whether our experience in
India has been developed in a ratio corresponding
to our apparent advancement.
I have not succeeded in devising to my
satisfaction a method of comparison between
former and recent famines. To contrast them
effectively, I should have wished to exhibit in
parallel columns the respective details of the two
famines. Unfortunately this was impossible.
Up to the latest (1868-69) of our previous famines,
we have no reliable statistics even of the
mortality; and if such important data are not
available, it may be presumed that all other information
is of an equally vague character. All
that can be done, therefore, is to give as clear
an account of the various famines as the state
of our records will permit, and ask the reader