You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
None
Independent India's struggle to overcome famine, hunger, and malnutrition, as told through the voices of politicians, planners, and citizens alike.
This history of the Bengal Famine of 1943 describes the interplay of politics, economics, sociology and military policy, which caused a famine due to a lack of cash, not a lack of food. The Famine, whose story is almost unknown due to wartime censorship by the British, occurred because of a hyperinflation in the price of rice caused by the provisioning for the major offensive against the Japanese on India's eastern borders. Relief efforts were halfhearted because much of the countryside was in a state of endemic revolt against the British. The logistical problems caused by massive gifts of food by the British and Indian troops to the starving people threatened to stall the forthcoming offensive. The cause of the Famine was the deadly alienation between the Bengalis and their British rulers.
The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The author develops the alternative method of analysis—the 'entitlement approach'—concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation.
In Starvation as a Weapon Simone Hutter explores, within the framework of international law, the legality of using deliberate starvation as a means to an end. A close look at modern famine shows that, in many cases, food scarcity is not the product of coincidence, but a side effect or result of a deliberate strategy. Starvation is an efficient instrument when used to exert pressure and power, in times of war and peace. Simone Hutter demonstrates how international human rights law and international humanitarian law prevent deliberate starvation as a means of achieving political goals. She focuses on highly divisive and under-discussed instances in which states deploy deliberate starvation domestically, i.e. within the state’s own national territory.