1 Introduction

Notes 1Introduction 1. Phakirmohana Senapati, Atma-Jivana-Carita (My Times and I), Translated by John Boulton, (Bhubaneswar: Orissa Sahitya Akademi, [1917], 1985) pp 28–9. 2. Senapati, Atma-Jivana Carita, p 29. 3. Poverty is an indeterminate term that has many distinct meanings (See, for example, B. Baulch (ed.), ‘Editorial: the New Poverty Agenda: a Disputed Consensus’, in IDS Bulletin, 27, 1, 1996, p 2 and other articles in this special issue on Poverty, Policy and Aid). The same is true for hunger. The concept of ‘poverty’ is commonly used in association with terms such as ‘insecurity’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘destitution’, ‘incapacity’, ‘powerlessness’, and ‘ill-being’, to imply constraints on a person’s ability to act or to fulfill their aims or goals (see Chapter 2 and 3 of this volume). Hunger engenders similar images of ‘incapacity’ and ‘insecurity’ through limitations on one’s ability to act created by one’s limited access to a suitable quantity and balance of nutri- ents. In India, poverty is defined by the Planning Commission in terms of a nutrtional baseline measured in calories (the ‘food energy method’). The Planning Commission defines India’s ‘poverty line’ to be a per capita monthly expenditure of Rs49 for rural areas and Rs57 in urban areas at 1973–4 all-India prices; corresponding to a total household per capita expenditure sufficient to provide a daily intake of 2 400 calories per person in rural areas and 2 100 in urban areas in addition to basic non-food items (e.g. clothing, transport). See further in World Bank, India: Achievements and Challenges in Reducing Poverty: a World Bank Country Study (Washington DC: World Bank, 1997), p 3ff. Linkages between ‘poverty’, ‘hunger’ and ‘famine’ are usefully explored in A. Sen, Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981) and other references cited in footnote 9 p 225–6. Broader conceptions of poverty alleviation and hunger alleviation in terms ‘security-provision’, capacity-building, and generating opportunity for ‘self-realization’ (an ‘enabling’ and ‘protective’ role) are discussed more fully in Chapters 2 and 3 of this volume. 4. See further in Sir John Stratchey, India: its Administration and Progress (4th edition), (London: Macmillan, 1911); B. Mohanty, ‘The Orissa Famine of 1866: Demographic and Economic Consequences’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2–9 January 1993. 5. Parliamentary Papers of Great Britain, House of Commons Accounts and Papers 16: East India, ‘East India Famine: Papers regarding the famine and the relief operations in India’, (London: HMSO, 1901), para. 1. 6. H. Verney Lovett, ‘The development of famine policy in India’, in H.H. Dodwell (ed.), The Cambridge History of India, Volume 6: the Indian Empire 1858–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p 296. See further in B.M. Bhatia, Famines in India: a Study in Aspects of the 224 Notes 225 Economic History of India (1860–1945) (London: Asia Publishing House, 1963); B.M. Bhatia, ‘Famine and agricultural labour in India: a historical perspective’, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 10, 4, 1975; W.R. Aykroyd, The Conquest of Famine (London: Chatto and Windus, 1974); J. Dreze, Famine Prevention in India (WIDER Discussion Paper No 3, Development Economics Research Programme, London School of Economics, 1988); G.A. Harrison (ed.), Famine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Ira Klein, ‘When the rains failed: famine, relief and mortality in British India, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 87, 2, 1984 (June); Ira Klein, ‘Death in India, 1871–1921’, Journal of Asian Studies, XXXII, 4, 1973; A. Loveday, History and Economics of Indian Famines (New Delhi: Usha, 1985); M.B. McAlpin, Subject to Famine: Food Crises and Economic Change in Western India, 1860–1920 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Tim Dyson, ‘On the demography of South Asian famines’, Population Studies, 45, 1991; M. Alamgir, Famine in South Asia: the Political Economy of Mass Starvation (Cambridge: Delgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, 1980); H.K. Mishra, Famines and Poverty in India (New Delhi: Ashish, 1991); S. Gopal, British Policy in India: 1858–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 7. Parliamentary Papers of Great Britain, House of Commons Accounts and Papers 16: East India 1901, para. 3. 8. The 1880 Famine Commission established general proposals for treating famines, recognising the responsibility of the state to provide necessary means of relief during times of famine but emphasising that any such relief should be administered such that it did not: check the growth of thrift and self-reliance among the people, or to impair the structure of society, which, resting as it does in India upon the moral obligation of mutual assistance, is admirably adapted for common effort against a common misfortune. ‘The great object … of saving life and of giving protection from extreme suffering may not only be as well secured, but in fact will be far better secured, if proper care be taken to prevent the abuse and demoralisation which all experience shows to be the consequence of ill-directed and excessive distribution of charitable relief.’ Parliamentary Papers of Great Britain, 1901 House of Commons Accounts and Papers 16: East India, para. 7. See further in Government of India, Report of the Indian Famine Commission, 1880 (London: HMSO, 1980) and useful commentary in B.M. Bhatia, Famines in India; Lovett, The Development of Famine Policy in India; Lance Brennan, ‘The Development of the Indian Famine Code’, in Bruce Currey and Graeme Hugo (eds), Famine as a Geographical Phenomenon (Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 1984); Sir John Stratchey, India: its Administration and Progress, (4th edition) (London: Macmillan, 1911); and passim in other literature introduced in note 6 above. 9. J. Dreze and A. Sen, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995) pp 1–2. These themes are expanded further in J. Dreze and A. Sen, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); E. Ahmed, J. Dreze, J. Hills and A. Sen (eds), Social Security in Developing Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); J. Dreze and 226 Notes A. Sen (eds), The Political Economy of Hunger (3 volumes) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); J. Dreze and A. Sen, Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 10. Dreze, Famine Prevention in India, pp 101–3. 11. Ibid, p 103. 12. For an introduction and overview see, for example, references cited in note 6, along with discussion in Jeremy Swift (ed.), ‘New Approaches to Famine’, Special Issue of IDS Bulletin, 24, 4, 1993; also compare with discussion in Simon Maxwell and Margaret Buchanan-Smith (eds), ‘Linking Relief and Development’, special issue of IDS Bulletin, 24, 4, October 1994; M. Watts, Entitlements or Empowerment? Famine and Starvation in Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, 51 (July), 1991; M. Watts and H. Bohle, ‘Hunger, Famine and the Space of Vulnerability’, GeoJournal, 30, 2, 1993; R. Bush, ‘The Politics of Food and Starvation’, Review of African Political Economy, 68, 1996; Jonathon Fox, ‘Governance and Rural Development in Mexico: State Intervention and Public Accountability’, Journal of Development Studies, 32, 1, 1995. Some of these debates are summarized in B. Currie, ‘Food Crisis and its Prevention: a Study in the Indian Context’, Contemporary South Asia, 1, 1, 1992. 13. Dreze and Sen, India: Economic Development, pp 87–8. 14. Indeed Dreze and Sen suggest that lack of free press and freedoms of speech and association are important in explaining why famine was able to develop in, for example, China in 1959–61 or Bengal in 1943. In con- trast, they indicate that there have been a number of threats of severe famine in India since Independence (e.g. Bihar in1967, Maharashtra in 1973, West Bengal in 1979, Gujarat in 1987), but that famine did not eventually materialize – mainly owing to timely public intervention. See further in Dreze and Sen, Hunger and Public Action, Chapter 1, p 8 ff and Chapter 8, p 122ff. 15. Chief Justice B.L. Hansaria, in High Court of Orissa (Cuttack) Original Jurisdiction Case No. 3517 of 1988 (Bhawani Mund v. The State of Orissa and others), Original Jurisdiction Case No. 525 of 1989 (Anukul Chandra Pradhan v. The State of Orissa and others), 12 February 1992, para. 1. 2 Poverty, Politics and the Political 1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, [1762] trans. Christopher Betts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p 116. 2. Sheldon Wolin, ‘Fugitive Democracy’ in Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Bundaries of the Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p 31. 3. See, for example, L. Doyal and I. Gough, A Theory of Human Need (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991); C.B. Macpherson, Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (eds), The Quality of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); R. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), each giving substantial attention to the role of civic engagement and public participation in quality life. Notes 227 4. Aristotle, Politics Translated by T.A Sinclair. Revised and Re-presented by Trevor J. Saunders. 1992 Reprint. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p 187. 5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, p 117. 6. A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.Translated by H. Reeve, revised by F. Bowen (Ware: Wordsworth, [1835, 1840], 1998), p 226. 7. Sheldon Wolin, ‘Fugitive Democracy’, p 41. 8. J.S. Mill, ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, in J.S. Mill, On Liberty and other Essays, edited by John Gray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1861], 1991), p 227. 9. These issues are discussed more fully in W. Donner, The Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 10. Aristotle, The Politics, p 59. 11. See T.H.Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and other Writings (1881–8), edited by P.

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