A severe famine struck the Ganga–Yamuna Doab and nearby regions in 1860–1861, with very high mortality. It became one of the early large-scale famine crises under Crown rule, shaping later debates about how the colonial state should respond to food shortages. The disaster also highlighted how drought, fragile rural incomes, and disease could combine into mass death.
In 1865, a poor monsoon reduced the rice crop in Orissa (now Odisha), where most people depended on that harvest for food. Early official estimates underestimated need, delaying decisive relief planning. This set the stage for a fast-moving famine once local grain supplies ran down.
By mid-1866, the famine intensified, and Orissa’s weak transport links made it hard to move grain into the interior. Relief shipments arrived late, and many deaths were linked to cholera before the monsoon and malaria afterward, not only starvation. The scale of mortality made the famine a major indictment of administrative readiness and infrastructure.
Food imports increased in 1867, and harvest conditions improved enough that the immediate crisis eased by 1868. The famine’s aftermath left a lasting policy lesson: relief had to be anticipated early, and physical access to markets mattered. These lessons fed into later famine planning and infrastructure projects.
During the Bihar famine of 1873–1874, authorities spent heavily to import rice from Burma and organized relief to prevent mass death. The episode became an important counterexample: famine mortality was not inevitable if the state moved food quickly and funded relief at scale. It influenced later arguments for formal famine procedures.
In 1876, intense drought and crop failures in the Deccan helped ignite the Great Famine of 1876–1878 across Madras and Bombay presidencies and the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad. The famine lasted about two years and produced very high excess mortality. It became one of the defining famine disasters of the British Raj period.
As starvation spread, relief rations and spending became a major political dispute, with officials trying to limit costs even as deaths rose. Disease outbreaks, including malaria after rains, increased deaths among people already weakened by hunger. Public criticism helped push the government toward creating more standardized famine policy tools.
After the Great Famine, the Government of India appointed a Famine Commission whose report was issued in 1880. The commission’s work helped formalize how officials assessed scarcity and organized relief, and it became a key reference point for later “famine codes” (standard rules for declaring famine and delivering aid). The report also reinforced the link between famine risk and transport and market access.
A new, wide-reaching famine began in Bundelkhand early in 1896 after drought and monsoon failures and spread across many provinces and several princely states. Cholera and malaria epidemics contributed heavily to deaths during the crisis. The famine renewed criticism of how grain markets, exports, taxation pressures, and relief rules interacted during scarcity.
In 1899, the summer monsoon failed over western and central India, starting the Indian famine of 1899–1900. The affected area and population were extremely large, and many districts had not fully recovered from the 1896–1897 crisis. As food prices rose and disease spread, famine conditions worsened into 1900.
During 1900, epidemics—especially malaria after the rains—drove mortality higher among famine-weakened communities. Officials and later analysts noted repeated patterns: cholera often surged before the rains when people crowded into relief systems, and malaria often surged afterward. The crisis reinforced the idea that famine policy had to address disease risks, not only food supply.
In 1943, Bengal suffered a catastrophic famine during World War II. Many researchers emphasize that the disaster was not simply a lack of total food produced, but a breakdown in people’s ability to access food—driven by wartime disruption, inflation, and administrative choices. The famine killed millions through malnutrition and disease and became a defining late-Raj humanitarian crisis.
In 1944, the Government of British India appointed the Famine Inquiry Commission (Woodhead Commission) to investigate the Bengal famine. The inquiry reflected intense political pressure and concern about the government’s credibility during wartime. Its findings shaped how the famine was officially explained and debated in later histories.
The Famine Inquiry Commission’s report was issued in 1945, creating an official record of causes and administrative actions during the Bengal famine. Coming at the end of British rule (India became independent in 1947), the Bengal famine and its inquiry became a lasting reference point for arguments about colonial governance, wartime policy, and responsibility for mass starvation. In the 1860–1943 span, it stands as the final major famine disaster of the British Raj.
Major famines in the British Raj (1860-1943)