BENGAL FAMINE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1943, Page 3

BENGAL FAMINE

PEOPLE IN DESPERATE PLIGHT ADEQUACY OF RELIEF QUESTIONED DESTITUTE PEOPLE FLOCKING TO CALCUTTA (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 12. “It is claimed here that there is too much over-dramatisation of the famine, but from what I have seen it would be impossible to go anywhere in the Empire’s second city and avoid the horrors of starvation,” says the Calcutta correspondent of the “Daily Express.” He adds: “This is only Calcutta; throughout Bengal there are 1,000,000 others whose plight is as bad or worse. “The situation does not need dramatisation. Tens of thousands of people congregate at the city’s feeding centres, and many never leave the vicinity, sleeping and dying in the streets nearby. I visited today one of the largest centres in a city park, where 1000 women and children squatted, the men being segregated. Huge bins of stew were carried to the various groups and doled out by volunteer helpers. Some mothers greedily took portion of the children's share before passing on the bowl. “Children in a sickly condition and babies in arms are given a pint of milk, but several I watched were too weak to swallow. Every bed in the medical wards of the large Campbell Hospital is full to overcrowded. The medical staff has been working for weeks without rest.

“Calcutta food experts doubt whether the acquisition of 250,000 tons of grain from outside sources will be anywhere near sufficient to feed the population of Bengal till the crops are cut three months hence. The situation meanwhile is deteriorating daily, with area after area listed as recording the complete disappearance of rice. The influx of destitute people into Calcutta seems unabating.”

In a statement on the food position in India, specially in Bengal, made in the House of Commons, the Secretary of State for India, Mr Amery, said that at the beginning of the year the British Government provided the necessary shipping for substantial imports of grain to India to meet the prospects of a serious shortage, which was subsequently relieved by an excellent spring harvest in northern India, states a British Official Wireless message.

“Since the recrudescence of the shortage in an acute form we have made every effort to provide shipping, and considerable quantities of food grains are now arriving or are due to arrive before the end of the year,” he said. “We also have been able to help in the supply of milk and food for the children.

“The problem, as far as help from here is concerned, is entirely one of shipping, and has been judged in the light of all the other urgent needs of the United Nations.”