The Famine of 1896-1897 in Bengal: Availability or Entitlement Crisis?

The book is a focused treatment of a famine both as an ‘event’ and a ‘process’. It is a close-up of a peasant economy in the throes of a crisis which temporarily eroded the value-system determining the normal pattern of entitlements. An investigation of the socio-economic, ecological and cultural determinants of the famine helps evolve a coherent framework. The emphasis is on the distinctive problems of the various economic regions, most notably the tribal belts. Chakrabarti applies Amartya Sen’s theory of exchange entitlements to a nineteenth century famine situation in Bengal, and finds that a market-based entitlement failure precipitating severe famine conditions, "even without receiving any impulse from food production", has little relevance here. Though the book underlines the predicament of the subalterns, the famine is not seen from the viewpoint of any specific group or community. The focus is, rather, on the phenomenon of famine in its totality – on the agony and trauma of a peasant society thrown out of gear in an abnormal situation, and the crisis of identities that ensued.