INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

AND PRESS CRITICISJl. 141
consequence rose before other markets were
aware of the want, and therefore before they
could send relief by the export of their extra
supplies. Again, when food was cheapest--i.e.,
after the spring crop in April-the numbers re~
Heved were at a maximum. This was caused by
the normal want of employment for the agricultural
classes at this season: the previous harvest
has been reaped, and until the rains return to
moisten the ground, and render it fit to plough,
there is little or no work for the agriculturist,
hence the influx of labourers to relief-works.
But the most striking feature in the table is the
case which exactly reverses the foregoing one
-VIZ., when food was dearest, in August and
September, the number on the relief-works was
a minimum! But it is accounted for as easily
as in the last case. These same agriculturists
have again got their normal employment, which
is the cultivation of their fields and the reaping
of the harvest.
The last two cases cited can barely be brought
to bear on the immediate subject in handviz.,
the difficulty of deciding at an early date
whether a famine is impending or not-but they