The Foreign Policy of John Rawls and Amartya Sen by Leavitt Neal;

Author:Leavitt, Neal;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Political Economy

Food inflation is the proximate cause of the Great Bengal Famine. The story of the famine, however, does not end here. It is important to understand why the price of rice increased so much, so fast, in 1943. What events brought on this bout of food inflation?

Sen’s answer to this question is exact and unsparing. The supply of rice in Bengal may have increased in 1943—relative to the 1941 level. However, the demand for rice and other goods increased even more because of “the war economy in Bengal.”[16] In particular, Sen notes that “Bengal saw military and civil construction at a totally unprecedented scale” in 1943. And why were there such large and unprecedented public expenditures in urban Bengal in 1943? Because “the Japanese army was around the corner.”[17] That is to say, the risk of a Japanese invasion—a risk that increased somewhat when Japan occupied Burma in 1942—set off a very hasty preparation for war by the British authorities in Bengal. Large sums of money suddenly entered into the Bengali economy. It was this injection of money into the Bengali economy that caused the price of rice and other goods to rise so fast.

The conclusion Sen draws from these economic facts is startling: “The 1943 famine can indeed be described as a ‘boom famine’ related to powerful inflationary pressures initiated by public expenditure expansion.”[18] The “war boom” is what lies behind the Great Bengal Famine, not an overall drop in the food supply.

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