ABSTRACT
Between 1870 and 1879, Florence Nightingale published a number of papers and pamphlets drawing the attention of the British public to the miserable conditions of Indian peasants. They dealt with three main issues: the inability of the British administration to prevent famines in India, the evil of the moneylenders, and irrigation as a famine-preventive measure. Over ten years, she relentlessly put forward her arguments; she often repeated herself, but never deviated from her objective. Her voice became stronger as the years went by. Her pioneering work in this field was her unpublished book, The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life and Death in India. Her aim was to argue a case for irrigation in India as a famine-preventive measure and to show that what was preventable was not being acted on. Florence considered moneylending in India as an evil that overshadowed everything.
