THE FAMINE IN SOUTHERN INDIA.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1055, 14 November 1877, Page 3

THE FAMINE IN SOUTHERN INDIA.

[From the “ Times of India.”]

If doubt still lingers in the mind of any reasonable human being as to the real character of the famine in Southern India, an examination of the mortuary returns of the eleven affected districts of the Madras Presidency would lay it at rest. Those returns have just been completed up to the end of June, and we have them before us. They begin with October last, and it is easy to trace month by month the pressure of the famine on the population by the appalling mortality from November and December onwards. In October, 1876, the greater number of the districts showed a smaller [death-rate than the average of that month in the proceeding five years. In North Arcot, South Arcot, Chingleput, Madura, Salem, and Coimbatore there was a falling off in the average number of deaths in October and November. In the Madras districts, in Kurnool, in Cuddapah, in Bellary, and in Nellore the deaths exceeded the usual proportions from the very first. In December the mortality increased everywhere except in South Arcot. From the Ist October up to the 30th June out of the 15 $ millions inhabiting those eleven districts, 573,065 died. The average mortality for the corresponding nine months of the previous five years was 221,263, Thus we got an excess of deaths amounting to the appalling number of 351,802, which must be ascribed directly or indirectly to the famine. This is exclusive of the mortality in Mysore, which has been proportionately much greater. It is also exclusive of the mortality m July and August, and in the first ten days of September. There is no reason to suppose that the mortality since the end of June has diminished ■ there are grounds for believing that it may have increased. Wo cannot err much in assuming that nearly 100,000 deaths over and above those set down in the official returns up to the end of June, must be added to the total in those returns to get an approximate idea of the sacrifice of life in the Madras Presidency since the Ist October. We may safely estimate the deaths from famine, or diseases consequent on famine, at 450,000. The estimate cannot bo considered exaggerated. Speaking roughly, 40,000 persons have perished every month from October to Juno in the Madras Presidency, md the death-rate shows little signs of iiminithing. There is good reason to fear •hat these figures, appalling as they are, do iot tell the whole truth. Quito recently it .v»is found that the mortality in some of the relief camps had not been included in the •eturns sent up by the district officials, who mly took note of the deaths occurring in the owns and villages. Missionaries state that hey have seen bodies preyed upon in the emoter districts by kites and jackals • no •egister of deaths in the desolate fields md by tho rosdeido can ho reasonably looked for.