INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

A FEW GEXERAL CRITICISJ/f!. 129
The following chapter will discuss, in some
detail, the many and various difficulties attached
to the management of famines, and
will deal with several points which have been
brought to the public notice in the press. The
whole of these, it will be found, are amenable
to the guiding, improving, and corrective influences
of experience. At present we have our
comparatively new machine, and we have to
find out all its faults and correct them, and to
develop all its resources. We must be patient
in this; "Rome was not built in a day."
Experientia docet.
Public opinion nowadays is, as it were, a
very sensitive barometer. Fonnerly, in cases of
famine it was sluggish; a scarcity did not even
effect a movement, while a famine produced a
slow and only a slight elevation. Now, should
there be a speck on the horizon, a few days
without rain at the proper period, even although
the rains have hitherto been favourable, a
sudden and decided rise is registered, and famines
and rumours of famine are the cry. And
this sensitiveness has been carried to the extent
that makes it desirable to receive such alarms