Why was there a sudden spurt in famines in colonial India since the mid-eighteenth century? Give reasons.
Approach · directive: “give reasons”
What it asks · Explain why famines became frequent and deadly under colonial rule, showing that drought was the trigger and colonial policy the cause of mass starvation.
Open with · Bengal's famine of 1770 came five years after the Company took the Diwani; the 1876–78 famine killed over five million in the Deccan and south. Drought was the trigger; colonial policy turned scarcity into mass death.
Cover
- Rigid cash revenue: the Permanent Settlement (1793) fixed demand regardless of harvest; defaulting estates were auctioned; Ryotwari and Mahalwari pressed peasants too.
- No reserves: grain sold at harvest to pay revenue, debt to moneylenders, so one failed monsoon meant hunger.
- Commercialisation and deindustrialisation: cash crops displaced food; ruined artisans crowded onto the land.
- Exports amid hunger: about one million tonnes of rice a year left India during 1876–78 while traders hoarded.
- Laissez-faire: Lytton barred any interference to reduce food prices.
- Grudging relief: the Famine Commission of 1878–80 resisted a right to relief; camps were few; victims put at 50–100 million.
Close with · By compiling the drain of India's wealth, Dadabhai Naoroji (Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, 1901) and R.C. Dutt (Economic History of India) gave famine-era poverty its political explanation, the founding charge of economic nationalism.
Question: UPSC's CS (Main) 2022, GS Paper I — paper ↗. Approach: Minimalist IAS, checked 16 Oct 2026 (how we verify) — UPSC publishes no model answers. ·
Model answer· 225words · Minimalist IAS
Bengal's famine of 1770 came five years after the Company took the Diwani; the 1876–78 famine killed over five million in the Deccan and south. Drought was the trigger; colonial policy turned scarcity into mass death.
Revenue and agrarian reasons
- Rigid cash revenue: the Permanent Settlement (1793) fixed demand whatever the harvest, and defaulting estates were auctioned; Ryotwari and Mahalwari pressed peasants too.
- No reserves: peasants sold grain at harvest and borrowed from moneylenders, so one failed monsoon meant hunger.
- Commercialisation and deindustrialisation: cash crops took land from food, while ruined artisans crowded onto farms.
Market and policy reasons
- Exports amid hunger: about one million tonnes of rice a year left India during the 1876–78 famine, as traders hoarded stocks.
- Laissez-faire: Viceroy Lytton barred any government interference to bring food prices down.
- Grudging relief: the Famine Commission of 1878–80 feared a right to relief; camps were few and ill-supplied. Estimates put famine victims under British rule at 50 to 100 million.
- Wartime strain: the Second World War's disruption fed the Bengal famine of 1943.
- Cash revenue demand
- grain sold, no reserve
- monsoon fails
- exports and hoarding lift prices
- mass starvation
By compiling the drain of India's wealth, Dadabhai Naoroji (Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, 1901) and R.C. Dutt (Economic History of India) gave famine-era poverty its political explanation, the founding charge of economic nationalism.
Prepared by Minimalist IAS to the answer standard of Shivam Singh (mentor, 7 years) · facts checked against official sources (how we verify) · updated 16 Oct 2026. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.
