ABSTRACT
The pressure to rely on private charity rather than on the government is disheartening and comes across almost as a threat. Though the memo from the Board of Revenue, which was a crucial entity in the disastrous decision-making, admits that famine might be in store, it illustrates, as well, an inane reliance on supposed economic truths by promising to provide daily information on the prices of crops, as though such information might help the starving. It also illustrates how locals’ views were ignored. To live in India during a famine, especially as a poor person, then, meant being left to one’s own resources. The bulk of the population being agriculturalists will obtain such high prices for their short produce, that, as a rule, they will not, it is expected, suffer very materially.
