page_title: Great Famine of 1876–1878
section_title: Preceding events
hierarchical_section_title: Great Famine of 1876–1878 / Preceding events
caption_attribution_description: English: Grain on the Madras beach https://archive.org/details/faminecampaignin01digbuoft
context_page_description: The Great Famine of 1876–1878 was a famine in India under Crown rule. It began in 1876 after an intense drought resulting in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau. It affected south and southwestern India for a period of two years. In its second year famine also spread northward to some regions of the Central Provinces and the North-Western Provinces, and to a small area in the Punjab. The famine ultimately covered an area of 670,000 square kilometres and caused distress to a population totalling 58,500,000. The death toll from this famine is estimated to be 5.5 million people.
context_section_description: In part, the Great Famine may have been caused by an intense drought resulting in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau. It was part of a larger pattern of drought and crop failure across India, China, South America and parts of Africa caused by an interplay between a strong El Niño and an active Indian Ocean Dipole that led to between 19 and 50 million deaths.
  The regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable.  The cultivation of alternate cash crops, in addition to the commodification of grain, played a significant role in the events.
  The famine occurred at a time when the colonial government was attempting to reduce expenses on welfare. Earlier, in the Bihar famine of 1873–74, severe mortality had been avoided by importing rice from Burma. The Government of Bengal and its Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Richard Temple, were criticised for excessive expenditure on charitable relief. Sensitive to any renewed accusations of excess in 1876, Temple, who was now Famine Commissioner for the Government of India, insisted not only on a policy of laissez faire with respect to the trade-in grain, but also on stricter standards of qualification for relief and on more meagre relief rations. Two kinds of relief were offered: "relief works" for able-bodied men, women, and working children, and gratuitous (or charitable) relief for small children, the elderly, and the indigent.
caption: Grain destined for export stacked on Madras beaches (February 1877).
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