ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 outlines policies and assesses solutions offered by British interventions in famine relief and agricultural credit, mainly as applied in Bihar. The account of famine begins by assessing its nature and impact, revealing aspects of social deprivation, production and trade, and then focuses on government relief measures and their shortcomings, in particular how they could be manipulated by well-placed people. A second section turns to government loans for agriculture and why they had little effect in Bihar. The third section discusses government involvement in cooperative credit. It concludes that attempts to reverse the alleged subordination of agriculturists to moneylenders were often diverted into reinforcing the existing order, even indigenous credit systems. The chapter concludes with descriptions of particular instances of debt and lending in Bihar in order to understand local arrangements and assess the particular British animus against professional moneylenders.
