Bengal famine of 1943

The Bengal famine of 1943 was a catastrophic famine in the province of Bengal, in British India, during the Second World War. Historians estimate that around two to three million people died, mostly from starvation, malnutrition and diseases such as malaria and cholera. It was not caused by a simple lack of grain but by a combination of factors: the loss of rice imports from Burma after Japan's conquest, a cyclone and crop disease in 1942, wartime inflation, hoarding, and government policies such as the denial of boats and rice in coastal areas and the priority given to the army. Debate continues about how far British decisions, including those of Winston Churchill's government, made the crisis worse. Amartya Sen later argued that the poor lost access to food rather than that food ran out.

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