The wartime famine in the Bengal and Orissa provinces of British India; scholarly consensus puts the dead at about 2.1 million, within estimates running from 800,000 to 3.8 million. Why it happened is the most consequential argument in famine studies: contemporary officials blamed a harvest shortfall from cyclone, blight and lost Burma imports, while Amartya Sen showed the rice supply was barely below normal and located the disaster in collapsed purchasing power, hoarding, trade barriers and wartime priorities. That analysis of entitlement rather than supply reshaped how famine and food security are understood, and the debate between the two readings is still live. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Milestone Year WhenBeginning in May 1943, spanning into 1944 1 LocationBengal Province and Orissa Province, British India 1 Classification
Type/ClassificationAgricultural Famine or Disaster 1 Connections
Associated With
Amartya Sen's entitlement analysis of this famine reframed hunger from supply to access, the core of modern food security
Source Bengal Famine of 1943 (Wikipedia)
Open Questions
Source Amartya Sen (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Found In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.
Source Amartya Sen (Wikipedia)
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.
Source Amartya Sen (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Bengal Famine of 1943 (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead section; causes and Ó Gráda consensus estimate
The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine during World War II in the Bengal Province and Orissa Province of British India.
Infobox, Date
1943-1944
lead description (milestone-kind)
The wartime famine in the Bengal and Orissa provinces of British India; scholarly consensus puts the dead at about 2.1 million, within estimates running from 800,000 to 3.8 million.
View the Source Amartya Sen (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationPoverty and Famines (1981) sectionQuote, Poverty and Famines (1981) section
famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food.
Open Questions (1 open question)
Was the Bengal famine of 1943 caused mainly by a real shortage of food, or by wartime policy and unequal distribution, and how many people actually died?
Amartya Sen's entitlement-failure analysis holds the 1943 famine was a distributional and wartime policy failure rather than an absolute food shortage, while death toll estimates themselves range from 0.8 to 3.8 million, with Cormac O Grada putting scholarly consensus near 2.1 million; the atlas records both the mechanism and the count as unsettled rather than adopting one figure.
What would resolve this A reconciled demographic reconstruction of wartime Bengal mortality that scholars broadly accept, and agreement on how much of the shortfall was genuine crop failure against wartime denial policy and market failure.
Economic history and historical demographyAmartya Sen (Wikipedia)
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.