The Magazine Page

Grey River Argus, 22 October 1943, Page 7

The Magazine Page

ISSUED BY A TRADE UNION EDITORIAL BOARD. AMERY SHUFFLES WHILE INDIANS DIE The Bengal famine still continues. Hundreds of men, women, and children die with every day that passes. A serious outbreak of cholera adds to the terrible death-ro'l. Starving, disease-ridden crowds of peasants flock to the cities, there to beseige the relief depots. The heavy death-roll, and the obviously inadequate measures taken by the authorities —local, Provincial, and Central—to obviate the famine, is stirring Jhe .people of India to fierce resentment; and anger. One officialdom blames the other for allowing the present deplorable situation to develop. 'Hoarding, profiteering, and corruption by wealthy landowners and merchants of the province is said to be rampant, and increases the difficulty of getting the available food to the starving populace. And in Britain, where workers’ organisations and humanitarians are demanding of the Government an explanation for the Bengal famine, a great deal of shuffling is going on. Mr. Amery, Secretary for India, gives as the main reason for the Bengal famine, (and apparently for the famines which destroy thousands of Indian lives with monotonous regularity every year), an increase in the population due to “British development.” This “British development” has led to a position where the hand cannot sustain the population, he savs.

It seems, then, that! Mr. Amery is resigned to the fact that recurring famines must be the lot of the Indian people for as long as “British development” continues. We would say that if this is the case the sooner “British development” ceases the better it will be for the Indians.

In rebuttal of Mr. Am'er.y’s contention that the land could not sustain the population, it is claimed that large shipments of India’s food supply have been made this year to countries in the Middle East and Ceylon. And Mr. Amery himself puts forward as a contributory cause of the food shortage the fact that much food had been diverted to supply the needs of the armed forces!

Aii article in a July issue of the “Tribune,” (a British periodical), the author of which returned to Britain in March after living many years in the Fan East, gives an illuminating picture of the situation in India. It should be remembered that this article was written long before flnx official admission appeared in. the daily press of the [amine conditions which existed.

The writer illustrates the appalling poverty of the Indian peasant and factory worken., /The peasant, he states, receives about £lO per year from the sale, (at fixed Government prices), of his produce. Out of this he must pay approximately £7 in taxes, rent and interest, leaving only £3 on which to feed and cloth himself and his family for the year. This amount would not be sufficient to maintain life even in peacetime when prices were much lower than they ai'e to-day. He must borrow at exorbitant rates of interest ranging from 10 to 300 per cent. But now the village markets have been denuded of grain. It has all been brought up by Government agents for export and for military purposes, and by hoarders, profiteers, and speculators to send to the towns in order to keep the extensive black market well supplied.

The Government has set the retail price of grain; but most of the grain is sold in the black- market at prices beyond the reach of the average peasant and worker. It is true that Government grain shops exist in the towns. However, the shops are far too few in number’ and have not much grain to sell. They open daily for only a couple of hours. Starving crowds of men, women, and children queue up and wait for hours on end in the 'burning sun or streaming rain to buy their daily ration of griain. Many are turned away. If they are still alive they queue up again the next day, and the next day . . . .Sometimes a crowd, desperate with hunger, tries to loot a shop. The every-ready police and military fire on the crowd. Order is restored. This then, according to this writer, is the real situation in India.

Hundreds of millions of pounds flow yearly into the pockets of capitahsts in India and in Britain—proceeds of exploitation of Indian peasants and workers. Wealth arid luxurious living for the few —abject poverty and starvation for the people who alone create the fabulous riches of’lndia —that “brightest jewel in the British Crown.”

Profiteering’, black-marketing, exporting of the people’s food supply, an utter disregard by the Government for the welfare of the working people, the .almost, incredible poverty of the workers and peasants—these appear to be the real causes of the famine and disease which state India today.

And Mr. Amery and his Governmental colleagues cannot escape their share of the responsibility for the position. They must have been aware of the developing conditions in Bengal which have now reached a climax. It was in their power to have prevented the deaths from starvation and disease of several thousand Indians; it was in their power to have saved the lives of the thousands who are yet to die because aid cannot reach them in time.

Such a cry of protest must go up from the people of the British Empire that the exploiters of India will hesitate to perpetrate similar atrocities in the future.