INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

]20 A FEW GENERAL CRIT[(JISJ/S.
beyond the prevention of human science-at
least of human science in its present stage; it
may attack those who have all the resources of
the highest civilisation at their command-and
its fatal triumph over these resources, although
it may excite regret, leaves no room for the still
more painful and humiliating sense of selfreproach.
But with famine it is altogether
different. It gives the lie to some of our most
essential conceptions of modem civilisation to
find, in the same community, some members
enjoying every luxury that wealth can procure,
while others are dying for want of
bread."
It is no doubt difficult for people at home to
picture such a calamity as famine in its true
colours; but it is not therefore the less incumbent
on them to do so, in order that they
may have a just appreciation of the whole
crisis if they desire to criticise the management
of it. I will therefore first state some
of the difficulties which surround the subject
in a general way, and will leave till later those
difficulties which require discussion in detail.
In the latter case, I will confine my remarks