Why was there a sudden spurt in famines in colonial India since the mid-eighteenth century? Give reasons. (Answer in 150 words)

The increase in colonial famines reflected the interaction of climatic shocks with policies that weakened rural resilience and converted food scarcity into mass mortality.

Structural and immediate causes

• Revenue pressure: rigid and high assessments under Permanent, Ryotwari and Mahalwari systems forced peasants to sell grain or borrow after poor harvests.
• Commercialisation: expansion of indigo, cotton, opium and other cash crops reduced subsistence production and exposed cultivators to price shocks.
• Deindustrialisation and poverty: loss of traditional livelihoods increased dependence on vulnerable agriculture.
• Market extraction: railways and export networks could move grain out of deficit regions; free-trade ideology often discouraged timely state intervention.
• Ecological shocks: monsoon failure, drought, floods and epidemics triggered crop failure, while deforestation and weak irrigation worsened vulnerability.
• Administrative failure: delayed relief, inadequate employment programmes and emphasis on fiscal economy increased mortality.

Conclusion

Famines were therefore not simply natural disasters. Colonial political economy transformed seasonal scarcity into entitlement failure, a conclusion reinforced by the later shift towards irrigation, relief codes and public distribution.

Revenue settlement; commercialisation; export drain; monsoon failure; entitlement failure; relief codes.