In the pre-independent India, famines-situations of extreme scarcity of food, were
a common cause of large scale starvation deaths. The Bengal famine in 1943-45, for
example, took about 3 to 5 million people’s lives in and around Bengal, Assom and
Odisha. Read the following:

“I was the oldest among my siblings. I used to work to survive. I worked as a
daily labourer. At that time I left my father in the village and took my brothers
and sisters to Kolkata. They only had some flour available as food. We went wherever
food was distributed. I saw many people suffering in the streets of Kolkata. I saw
mothers carrying their sons in their arms who were actually dead. But the mothers
were still sprinkling them with water, trying to revive the children. I saw many
things. People ate grass, snakes. I lost two sisters and a brother.

“These are the people who are farmers, agriculturists. They’re not beggars so
they did not even know how to beg. They have huge self respect. When they came, they
just sat on the pavements and they died there. And when that picture hit the people
of Kolkata, at that point suddenly everyone understood the scale of the disaster.”

There have been instances in India history where famines happened because food
grains supply was not organised by the rulers. This could have been arranged from
stocks or supplies could have been brought from other regions. By the time of
India’s Independence, governments