THE INDIAN FAMINE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5118, 18 August 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE INDIAN FAMINE.

There is no change for the better in India. The famine has not abated, and affair* everywhere are becoming critical. The price -of grain is advancing, most of the Burmese rice crop has been secured for English consumption; and there is no rain. The condition of the people on the relief works is gradually deteriorating. In eight districts where the annual death rate of the winter Season is usually not more than 20 per 1000, it ranged from 37.3 to 148.3 in December, and from 62.6 to 118.7 in January. Many of the deaths are due to starvation, or disease engendered by starvation, but these are debited to "cholera." The best authorities estimate the total loss of life that will follow from famine at a million, and think that the Madras census of 1881, with its thirty million souls, will show, if not a, retrograde, a stationary population. A fact is cited by the London Times' correspondent which upsets the assertion that periodical famines and pestilences are necessary to keep down the redundant population of Hindostan. The remarks on this head, the correspondent holds, would he pertinent to the subject if the famine had displayed itself in the most thickly-populated districts of the country, but as a matter of fact, the most thickly-populated districts have been able not only to grow food enough for their own necessities, but to export to places where there was a scarcity. Tanjore, for instance, with its 540 to a square mile, has known no famine nor distress beyond that incidental to the raising of prices of food from 100 to 200 per cent, above the ordinary rates ;. while Kurnool, Cuddapah and Bellary, with only 130, 160, and 150 inhabitants to a square mile, have felt the pressure most severely. There is no evidence of any value to show that the population in India is beyond the capacity of the land to support. Every pound of grain consumed in the famine tract of the south during the present scarcity has been supplied by India itself ; and while an enormous local failure of crops over an area inhabited by 20,000,000 of people has prevailed, has still been able to add largely to her exports of wheat to Europe. There is nothing in the condition of the famine-stricken district to point to over-population, and when the famine is over it may he found that the districts are suffering from want of people to till the soil.—English paper.