THE FAMINE IN INDIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5171, 18 October 1877, Page 3

THE FAMINE IN INDIA.

(Prom the London Times, August 17.)

The country will be very glad to Bee that the famine,iu Inffia finds a prominent place in her Majesty's speech on the prorogation of Parliament. Iu his observations on the East India Loan Bill last week Lord Northbrook said that “in famine, as in war, when the safety or the honor of the Country is concerned, the great object to aim at is success, and not economy.” It cannot be double'l that public opinion at home will sustain this declaration, and it is of good omen that the reference in the Queen’s speech shows tint the Government at home are as impressed with the necessity as the Government of Calcutta. Yet the sorrowful foreboding must fdioo its way into many minds that in dealing wi h the famine iu Madras we cannot hope for complete success. The letters received by the mail which arrived on Saturday are overshadowed with the deepest gloom. It would lie difficult to deepen the darn ness of the picture drawn by our correspondent at Bellary ; and Ins account of the gradual exhaustion of the vital power of resistance in the famine districts is confirmed by other writers, to whom another correspondent, “Indicus,” refers. It-is true that some rain has fallen since these letters were written, and the early spring crops may bo assumed to be saved ; but nothing has happened to mitigate the severity of the pressure which must be anticipated this autumn. If anyone will turn to our telegraphic report in another column, of the meet ing at Madras last week, he will learn something of the truth. Eighteen millions are suffering from direct want. A million and a half'depend for food upon public relief. Over half a rnill on have died. These are the statements of the Duke of Buckingham and of Surgeon-Major Cornish, the Sanitary Commissioner of Madras. It is added that the necessity for help is increasing. In the presence of calamities so'awful an appeal for assistance is a duty the officials in India could not neglect and we cannot disregard ; and yet the worst is still to come. We must look for things to be worse before they will mend, and they are already almost too painful to be described. Pestilence has come in the wake of famine, and has found its victims an easy prey. We .are told that riding through a particular district was like going over the scene of a great battle. In another sorely stricken area, out of a population of 180,000, no fewer than 150,000 are receiving relief. It is says much for the courage of our officials in the Presidency that they do not resign themselves to despair in the presence of a calamity which is already of such vast proportions and is destined to be still greater. There is no slackening of effort. The Governor of Madras and his assistants do not abate one jot of energy, and while they solicit help they are still more anxious to secure our sympathy. Tlieir first suggestion is that some thought should be occasionally directed by Englishmen at home to their fellow-subjects in Southern India—that some of the sympathy so freely bestowed on sufferers in Eastern Europe should be extended to the greater army of victims in Madras and Bombay The burden of the Government of India, always great, has become indefinitely greater by the accepted duty of guarding its people against the periodical famiues which visit the Peninsula. It is no secret that many men of the largest experience in Indian administration, some of them holding the highest offices at the present time, are of opinion that it is impossible for the Indian Government to discharge this superadded obligation. They declare that famine wll beat all our efforts, and that while we may succeed in reducing the finances of our great dependency to a condition of extreme embarrassment, we shall fail in preventing the widespread ravages of death. We do not know. We cannot pretend that there is no danger that these dark prophecies may be, in part at least, fulfilled; but we shall try to defeat them. The Englishmen to whose charge the afflicted districts are primarily committed will not give way, even though they should not be supported at every stage by that sympathy from home which is so dear to the absent. They will doggedly persevere ; nor shall they . lack their reward, though it may appear to be delayed. It is but too true that they have had difficulties within and without against which to contend. Lord Salisbury admitted last week—what the evidence of our columns has long been showing—that there has been a controversy, and a somewhat embittered controversy, between the medical authorities in Calcutta and the medical authorities in Madras as to the amount of food necessary to keep an Indian laborer at work ; but he denied that there had been any restriction placed on the Madras Government in the matter of food relief. At the same time, the result of a communication from the India' Office to the Viceroy was that tile Viceroy sent a message to Madras, which was followed by the Madras Government raising the rate of relief. Without the imposition of any express restrictions, the Madras Government had evidently deferred to what they understood to be the judgment of the Viceroy in Council, Was the relief previously given, infact, too low? Medical men may dispute over the number of grains of nitrogen and carbon necessary to sustain Hindoo life ; but their wisdom can only be the fruit of experience, and it in by no experience that * it must be tested'.* If men "do not keep alive on the rations allotted them, it may be concluded that the rations are insufficient. Our correspondent at Bellary, describes in a painfully vivid way the falling away of men iu the working gangs. It is not merely that they are emaciated; they bear on their skin the peculiar famine marks described by Dr. Donovan in his account of the Irish Famine of 30 years since—“ If we look at thousands of the people collected on the relief works, these ‘ famine marks ’ are of almost universal prevalence.” This is a terribly significant statement. Deaths from small-pox and cholera may be accepted as inevitable. No arrangements could have prevented the people gathering together in search of relief, and the scarcity and impurity of the water supply were the irremediable consequences of the primary cause of the Famine—the absence of rain. The time may come when it will be necessasy to put the Hapless recipients of relief on short allowance, but so far there has been no scarcity of food in reserve requiring this step to be taken. If there has been a deficient allotment, it was from a miscalculation of the medical authorities, coupled, perhaps, with some forgetfulness of Lord Northbrook’s principle that the great object to aim at is success, and not economy. Auothei statement made by our correspondent iu the Bellary district ought to be made the subject of an immediate official inquiry. He says that the Madras Irrigation Company for a long time past have been talking of putting boats for traffic on their canal between Kurnool and Ouddapah, hilt that it has not been done, and, consequently, all the grain for the Kurnool district has to, hauled by carts and bullocks. He adds, what is obviously true, that a supply of boats would be simply invaluable in bringing up food. It is difficult to understand why this want has not been supplied. The Madrasees are ingenious enough in making boats out of the most unpromising materials, and the roughest lighters or x-afts would serve for the carriage of food. We fear there is some truth in the suggestion that Englishmen at home have given too little thought to this latest Indian Famine. We may, perhaps, say. for ourselves that we have not stinted to call attention again and again, at short intervals, to this terrible visitation of want. People at home have possibly been iu some measure callous to the Famine in Southern India because they have teen confident that its difficulties and dangers would be surmounted, as were the difficulties and dangers of the famine in Behar ; it they have been comparatively inattentive to its progress, it was because of their confidence in their fellow-countrymen in the Bast. What has been done can be done and will bo done, and we have not thought whether the dimensions of the work of to-day are the same as those of three years since. It is also true, and the truth ought not to be concealed, that the national imagination finds a difficulty in following two great events at the same time. There was never a more signal illustration of this than in the comparative feebleness of the ira-pi-essjon excited by the storm-wave in Lower Bengal atthe beginning of thiayear. No calamity bo fatal to human life has ever happened within

the period ol human history.-All the aeaths of the present war, though it should be prolonged far beyond the expectation of any of us, would not amount to the number that perished within a few hours in Bengal, Yet the catastrophe roused little emotion, far less than has often been occasioned by the death or peril of death of half-a-dozen men. We may cite other examples to illustrate the truth that the public atteutiou has been too much '■'coupled with the changes and chances of the War in the East, to the exclusion of matters well deserving of x'egard ; but it is needless. The truth is admitted, and, being admitted and realized, we should take some pains to euro the defect it reveals. We cannot do better than begin with the famine in Southern India, l.et not the appeal now at length made to us fall unheeded. Our countrymen at Madras call upon the municipalities at home, and their cry must be heard. We have hitherto been too little concerned with the awful trial that has befallen our fellow-subjects; let us redeem the past by keeping it before our eyes and in our minds aud hearts until all that we can do is done iu order that it may be ovei'oome.