But in Sen’s analysis, the prime mover behind the initial decline in food availability was not a major shortfall in grain output within Bengal, but a spike in food prices induced by speculation and hoarding in response to the perception of shortfall. I find that statement puzzling. Yes, Sen and Ó Gráda do agree that British war-time policies helped bring about the famine through intentional military choice, callous indifference, and unintentional blunders. In Diane Coyle’s review of Eating People is Wrong , she remarks Ó Gráda “broadly agrees with Amartya Sen’s famous conclusion that it was a famine of policy rather than nature”. This post includes remarks on the Bengal famine of 1943, the Great Irish Potato Famine, and some of the ‘Victorian’ famines of British India in the late 19th century. Yet few seem to have noticed his disagreements with the Nobel laureate who transformed the thinking on the subject. Whether markets help cause or exacerbate famines is one of the great questions of political economy. Cormac Ó Gráda’s recent book Eating People is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, its Past, and its Future, along with his earlier volume, Famine: A Short History, quietly, calmly, and unostentatiously undermines many of the key empirical observations about markets and famines made by Amartya Sen.
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