INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

MITIG.ATIVE ME.ASURES. 203
relief by Government is fostered in every one's
breast, which is not an encouraging sign: it engenders
a feeling of dependence. Government
has and should exact its unqualified right to
demand that each one will act prudently; that
be will exercise thrift in the expenditure of
food, and so tend to economise, or in other words
to increase, the food-supplies. And .this is all
the more important in India. There it is the
custom of the agricultural population to subsist
for the greater part of the year on their own
private stores: they depend to a very small
extent on the markets for the provision of
food. It is on account of this principle of economising
food - supplies that Government acts
judiciously in withholding information from the
general public as to the amount of relief that it
is prepared to give.
It has before been noticed, that omng to the
variety of soil, products, &c., and, within certain
limits, also owing to the variety of climate, the
whole of India, or even a large proportion of it,
is seldom subject to famine at one and the same.
time. Migration, therefore, from stricken tracts
to favoured districts, is a legitimate prospect to