CORRESPONDENCE.

THE FAMINE IN BENGAL.

[Flom OPR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]

March 11, 1874.

MERE is no doubt that the official mind has, within the last three months, been in a whirl of activity, sometimes perhaps approaching to confusion. But the activity has been undoubtedly great. In Bengal everything has yielded to the absorbing subject of the Famine. The whole province has flung itself into Behar, in the human shape of its ablest officers collected from the four corners of its enormous length and breadth. Not only this, but the North-West Provinces, the Punjaub, and the Central Provinces have sent us day after day numerous junior civil servants, to take up the active administration of the Relief operations.

The idea is that every village in the distressed parts shall be visited, and after minute inquiries, if necessary, relieved. For this purpose the most trustworthy agency available is needed, and this is sought to be supplied from the junior ranks of the Civil Service. Of course, these minute inquiries take up much time, and the ground over which one officer can work is somewhat circumscribed ; therefore the drain on the junior civilian ranks has been very heavy. Heavy though it has been, it has not sufficed ; recourse has been had to another stamp of European. The Government, in selecting its agency for this work, appears to have thought that it was absolutely necessary to confine itself to Europeans. In its somewhat blind veneration for the virtue of a white face, it appears in many cases to have gone no farther than skin - deep, and to have made no inquiry into the character, abilities, or antecedents of the agents selected, many of whom are little, if anything, removed from the genus "loafer." Why this has been done I cannot imagine. Affecting, as the work does, the very inmost relations of the Hindoo family, it was, above all things, necessary that the agent employed should have some sympathy with the people other than that of himself being in distress ; should be courteous in his de- meanour, and possess such a pledge for respectability and honesty as would remove all uneasiness from those who may be obliged to make him the channel through which the operations of the Govern- ment should reach its ultimate destination,—the mouths of the people. It was also most desirable that the holder of this post should have an intimate acquaintance with the habits of the natives. Putting this and that together, I need hardly point out that many of the agents selected for the administration of relief would be much better anywhere else. One who ought to know something about it, having worked throughout the Orissa famine of 1866-67, tells me that so convinced is he of the superiority of native agency drawn from the Uncovenanted Service for the actual administration of this home relief, that immediately he was posted to famine work he applied for the services of the native gentlemen who had worked under him in Orissa, and bad done their work in a manner beyond all praise. Apart from the actual administration of relief, the Europeans and natives collected in these parts on all sorts of work connected with the Famine operations form a small army.

To begin with, the transport operations are immense, and half the members of the Quartermaster-General's Department have been hurled into Behar as speedily as steam and rail could convey them. They arrange with cart contractors, form bridges of boats, and convey the grain from the river and railway to its destination in the distressed tracts. Considering the state of the roads, the numerous unbridged rivers, the enormous rates de- manded by the cartmen (who, when all this is over, will surely be in a position to retire from active life), the task is a herculean one, but with rare energy and determination all difficulties are being overcome, and the work is being accomplished rapidly and well. Then there are tramways being laid down where roads do not suffice, and new lines of telegraph in the distressed parts of Tirhoot are already at work. The Public Works Department is also vieing with the other public departments in the numbers of its forces it is marching into our territories. They have started a vast system of roads, tanks, and embankments, on which they are superintending the work of a quarter of a million people, many of whom would certainly not be found to put their hand to such labour in an ordinary year. Add to this that the Medical Depart- ment has recently been heavily indented on for all sorts of sub- ordinates, laden with boxes of medical stores, in order that not only the sick of this year whose ailments are attributable to the scarcity may be attended to, but that all ordinary sickness, such as fevers, small-pox, dysentery, and such like, may be at once nipped in the bud. The expenditure on these vast operations, forced as they have been into the space of a few months, is enormous. The roads in all directions throughout the distressed tracts are covered with long trains of carts carrying grain. These cartmen are paid what- ever they like to ask ; double and treble rates are freely offered.

Attracted by these rates from all sides, from far-distant parts, the carts and cartmen are hastening in, like a swarm of flies bent on settling on some luscious dainty. They are, indeed, making a good thing of it, and considering what herds of them there are, the measure of relief thus given must be very large. On an average, every ton of grain that goes into the distressed tracts has to be carted a distance of forty miles. The rate at which the cartmen are now generally paid is 10d. per ton per mile. Cal- culating that 250,000 of the 340,000 tons of grain ordered by the Government pass into these tracts, the balance being held in reserve near the railway or river, we find that the cartmen will divide amongst themselves about £400,000, after leaving a large margin for the profits of the contractors who have taken to sup- plying them. But even thus, so gigantic is the work to be done, that the North-West Provinces have been officially indented on for 20,000 fully equipped carts, with the necessary bullocks and cartmen.

As a specimen of other small incidental charges, I may add that one official alone indented the other day for 60,000 tools for the expected labourers on Government works, and I hear that the chief markets in England are being ransacked for such like requirements on our part.

Taking into account railway charges, cart charges, and estab- lishment engaged on transport duties, it will be found no excess estimate if I say that the cost to the Government of the grain at Calcutta will be doubled before the grain reaches its destination. And if I include the loss in transit through attacks by rats and insects, through leaky bags and pilfering cartmen, I should cer- tainly be very far within the mark. Roughly, then, the Govern- ment will lay down its three millions' sterling worth of grain at a cost of £6,000,000. Of this, by sale to those who can afford to buy, the Government will probably recover £2,000,000, making a net loss of £4,000,000. With the great State aid given in all directions, there will have to be but small, if any, remissions of land revenue, — an outside estimate would be half a million sterling. Add, again, two millions ster- ling for relief works which would not otherwise have been under- taken by the State, and which, though greatly and permanently benefiting the country, will bring no direct return into the coffers of the Government. A rough estimate of the total cost of the famine to the State will thus be six and a half millions sterling.

Of one thing the people at home may be confident,—that the Government here is doing enough. Some are beginning to say that it is doiug too much, and that Sir Richard Temple, in order to make his own position doubly secure, has been rather a reckless squanderer of the public money. But these are gentlemen who, even according to their own showing, are wise after the event.

For myself, I believe the Government not to have done an iota too much. I think what it proposes is sufficient, as it should be, not only to tide over any distress which may supervene before the gathering of the next rice crop, but in case of a partial failure of that crop—and how often in India two bad years come together !—to go far towards meeting the deficiency.

Comparing the state of things now with other years, the general condition, though not bright, does not look very gloomy. All dairy produce, such as milk, butter, clarified butter (ghee), is cheap. The demand for salt and its price are much as usual. Salt is a very good indicator, it being one of the necessaries that are surrendered when real distress begins.

The year of drought 1865-66 was in these parts very similar to the present year, in that in both there was a considerable (though

in this year much greater than in that) failure of the rice crop, and fairly good spring crops. Comparing the prices now current in the distressed parts with what then obtained, I find that common rice is now generally 2 lbs. to 3 lbs. per shilling dearer than it then was, the price now ranging from 8 lbs. to 13 lbs. per shilling. At 8 lbs., or even 10 lbs. per shilling, it cannot indeed belong before distress supervenes, for no matter to what extent the Government may re- munerate the labourers on its works, the bulk of the agricultural class will not leave the fields if they are required there, nor would it it be desirable that they should, and no increase of pay on the part of the State would affect them. it is certain that at present, where prices are 8113s. to 111bs. or even 12 lbs. for a shilling, no extensive private trade can exist, and it is to meet the distress thus looming in the future over the bulk of the poorer classes that ! urge the immediate sale of grain from the Government store-houses.

Other grains are generally about the same price, or a pound per shilling cheaper than they were at this time in 1866. I refer to Indian corn, peas, and pulses, the grains most commonly grown and used in North Behar.

Generally, there is as yet no real famine, and no deaths that are purely and directly attributable to the scarcity. But from some limited areas there comes a very dark tale ; and the worst of it is that these famine-spots burst out as suddenly and unex- pectedly as plague-spots on the body. It is to be hoped that the great vigilance exhibited throughout the official forces and the prompt measures taken may stop the parallel at the spot-stage, and that the spots will not spread into each other with uncheck- able certainty and rapidity. Supool, in Bhaugulpore county (or district, as we here call it), was said to be one of those spots. It certainly was attacked suddenly, but things are now righting themselves, and the plague has been stayed. More recent and more doleful accounts come from Sonthalia, the country of the Sonthals, which lies at the south-east corner of Behar. There the people, habitually poor, and living much on jungle roots and fruits, appear to have long concealed their wants in their mountain wilds. But, though up to the last the people have, with the perfect improvidence of their half-savage race, been exporting their food supply for the relief of their neighbours in Behar, the state of things now looks gloomy. Prices are high, and the grain markets are poorly stocked. Thanks to the two railways which surround and intersect Sonthalia, it is to a certain extent easily accessible, and considerable supplies are to be poured into it immediately. But I much fear that the interior com- munications in the way of roads are of the very rudest and most primitive order.

From the large estate of Durbhanga, in the county of Tirhoot, it is officially reported that in some places " the condition of the people very nearly approaches famine," but " the Lieutenant- Governor believes that the arrangements made and making will arrest the evil." The Lieutenant-Governor is now himself paying a hurried visit to this part, in order to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears. A dangerous hitch, too, occurred there the other day. Seven thousand people, at work on a single Government road close to Durbhanga, were left without wages for four days ; of course the authorities were down very heavily on the offending parties. An official writing from the same parts reports, "The fact is the famine has got a short start of us, but I have no doubt we shall quickly over- take it." Again, a rather doleful story from the same, "I have -during my visits into the interior seen scores of men, women, and 'children engaged in cutting a sort of grass which runs to seed, and extracting the seed for food. They were all more or less suffering, as much from unwholesome food as from want of wholesome diet. Those people I sent to our works. About Hathee, in all directions, there is great distress, and cases of emaciation are not unfrequently suet with, but generally, it must be remembered, among the pauper .class alone until quite recently."

An official at Hutwah, in the county of Sarun, which marches with Chumparun on the north and Tirhoot on the east, reports " no bad cases of starvation except among professional beggars, some of whom stand in need of treatment at dispensaries. Small- pox prevalent ; not a bad type. Many deaths will, however, occur, if it continues among a people already weakened by a deficiency of food."

From the large estate of Ramnuggur, in the county of Chum- parun, the Rajah of which has been severely censured by Sir R. Temple for his neglect to aid his subjects, it is reported that " the greatest distress has for a long time been experienced by all classes -except a small and wealthy minority." Until the Government stepped in, " the cultivators of the better class had little or no grain in store, while the Rajah of Ramnuggur, their natural protector, gave them no relief ; the labouring classes could get but little work, famine prices, or all but famine prices, prevailed in the bazaars, and the poor lived on bad and insufficient food,—on fruits, soots, and everything they could get." Further on he says, "A great part of the description still applies," but relief is making rapid progress and becoming a practical reality, and " a material and perceptible improvement has commenced." In the same locality fever and small-pox have been very general ; " many have -died, and the state of weakness to which those who recover are as a rule reduced renders them incapable of work. A large number of persons have in this way been during the last fortnight reduced to the greatest distress." Cases of arson are beginning to occur. Common rice was selling at 9 lbs. for the shilling.

I have laid before you a picture of the darkest side of the Famine, as it as yet exists. The areas where such distress pre- vails are comparatively limited, and they are being attended to with all the resources the Government can bring to bear.