ABSTRACT
Damning in its conclusions, this chapter includes some of the questions the parliamentary commission was being asked to consider in its investigation of the government’s response to the Orissa Famine. As remarked by the Commissioners, the unfortunate reply made by the Board of Commissioner’s telegram seems to have stifled and put an end to all further discussion regarding the importation of rice from that time until a period when the state both of the weather and the people rendered it too late to import it with successful effect. It is now certain that the relief actually afforded by public works was, from first to last, almost nominal, and that early in February 1866, ‘famine relief’ was, in the Commissioner’s words, ‘at a stand still’ and this failure was due to ‘the valuelessness of money paid for labour in the absence of procurable food.
