MAGAZINE SECTION

fol. I. No. 49.

5 Cents

India’s Cities

OR months now, India has been faced with a grave scourge of famine. Thousands die of
| Starvation every day. The countryside is being turned into a desert through forced mi-
ition of the starving people to the towns, while in cities, hundreds of thousand are roam-
) the streets, hungry, destitute, foodless, homeless and helpless in search of a morsel of food

Bich they may never obtain.

.pproximately 100,000 persons

dying of starvation in Ben-
| each week,’ declares the
hidustan Times. “Bengal is just
: of the stricken provinces. The
tation is just as acute, if not
re so, in Madras, Orissa and
nbay provinces. So ghastly is

Situation in Calcutta that it

already been given the name
tthe city of slow death’. Fam-
in the districts of Burdwan
i Miadnapore is described as
+ well nigh indescrib-

‘ecording to a high govern-
at official, “Contai seemed like
ity of the dead. In the village
sited the position was even
tse than Contai town . . . I saw
pses in every village I visit-
| The description resembles a
‘d-made Warsaw ghetto rather
BR a peaceful Indian town. An-
fer Gespatch pictures Bengal,
(ere “husbands have driven
ly wives for lack of food ...
thers have turned deaf ears
the entreaties of hungry Sis-
;. .. Parents and children
ee food with beasts in gutters,
sre famished fathers snatch
ips from their youngster’s
isp and where babies, if not
‘-born survive only a few min-
3 pte
his is not the picture of Nazi-
aged Soviet Union, but of
iceful India, “the brightest
el? of the British Empire and
of the most important bases
he United Nations military op-
HiONS against fascist Japan.
e@

"iE government of India is full
fof excuses for the existing
fine. Famine to it is a natural

‘normal feature of Indian life, -

ch must oceur every few years.
certain places famine is de-
bed as being due to floods and
fothers due to cyclones and
ughts. Hindu-Moslem antagon-
#, Just as in the political field,
Bording to the government is

another cause of starvation. One
section is said to be trying to
Starve the other and vice-versa.
Everything and everybody is to
blame except the bureaucrats
themselves. =

The fundamental cause of the
present famine is economical and
political. The food crises is an
integral part of the political crisis,

which developed after August
1942.
Other contributing war-time

factors are extensive and un-
checked hoarding: profiteering
and speculation by landlords and
merchants; failure of crops in
certain areas; refusal of the ad-
ministration to enlist popular sup-
port of the peasantry to increase
food production; joss of rice im-
ports from Burma; export of food
from India to the Middle East; in-
adequate transportation of grain
from one area to another due to
military priority on the railways;
and failure of the government to
introduce an efficient democratic
system of rationing and price
control.
e

j epee in normal peaceful times
more than 60 percent of the
Indian people live on a semi-
starvation level. The poverty of
the masses can hardly be con-
ceived by the western mind. The
basic causes for this are the un-
balanced economic structure of
the country and the inhuman ex-
ploitation of the workers and
peasants by the feudal landlords
and unscrupulous employers.
Seventy-five percent of the peo-
ple live off the soil. Less than
two percent are employed. in
modern industrial enterprises.
Despite the huge potentialities of
industrial expansion, the develop-
ment of Indian industry is delib-
erately retarded by the state, for
fear of competition with British
manufactured goods, thus forcing
more and more people to flock

to the already over-crowded agri-
cultural occupation.

Another basic cause of the In-
dian food crisis is the antiquated,
outworn, overburdened agrarian
system. Of all the cultivatable
land in India “there is less than
one acre and a quarter per head
for that portion of the population
which is directly supported by
agriculture.’

Oppressive landlordism makes
it even worse. More than 75 per-
cent of this land is. owned by a
handful of landlords while the 70
million peasant families are left
with the remaining 25 percent.
Even these small peasant hold-
ings do not constitute compact
units, but are scattered all over
the villages in tiny fragments.
The tilling of these tiny plots
with primitive methods is utterly
uneconomic, and contributes to
the impoverishment of the peas-
ants. Nothing but the barest ne-
cessities of life are left to the
peasant even in prosperous years
after he has paid triple burden
of exhorbitant government taxa-
tion, oppression and exploitation
of landlords and the indebtedness
of the peasants to the money-
lenders. Most demoralizing is the
plight of the landless agricultural
laborers and the share croppers.
Fifteen million of these people
face starvation in Bengal alone.

HE war has worsened the sit-
uation. The already over-
pressed economy has been dis-
located. The political crisis has
still further aggravated it. Britain
has tried to defend India as her
colony, without the cooperation of
the Indian people. So; also, the
authorities have striven to alle-
viate the famine without enlist-
ing the popular support of the
people.
The fundamental policy of the

By
DARSHAN
SINGH
SANGHA

British government in India has
been to align itself with the re-
actionary, privileged elements
(princes and landlords) in Indian
society. And today when the land-
lords, all over India have hoarded
tremendous stocks of food and
grain, to sell later at higher prices,
the government does not dare to
take action against them, because
these are the very elements upon
which the continued existence of
British rule in India is dependent.
To combat hoarding and profit-
eering, the government must
command the support of the peo-
ple. And this is precisely what
the British government in India
does not have.

Commenting upon this, Profes-
sor Gangulee, ex-member of the
Royal Commission on Indian Ag-
riculture, stated:

“Only a national government of
the people of India can solve the
food problem because the gov-
ernment will have the confidence
of the people. The present gov-
ernment is an alien government
and its administrative machinery

. is absolutely incapable of dealing

with the present crisis.”
)

ee government of India in-
troduced a price control sys-
tem early this year. This led to
extensive hoarding. The police,
while dealing strictly with the
small shopkeeper, did not take
any action against the landlords
and the wholesale dealers. N. R.
Sarkar, ex-member of the Vice-
roy’s Executive Council, who was
assigned the task of price con-
trol and who later resigned, stat-
ed his experience when he was
reported to have said that “while
he was trying his best to perfect
the price control system, he felt
that the government of India,
eonstituted as it was at present,
had not the backing of the coun-
try

Eyen the areas where there is
no famine, the prices have in-
ereased tremendously. The land-
lords and merchants are reaping

huge profits at the expense of the
entire nation. For the poverty-
Stricken masses, even money has
ceased to be a guarantee against
Starvation.

_ This summer the Price of rice
In| Bombay increased 1,200 per-
cent. The price of flour, the staple
diet of the common masses, has
risen by more than 300 percent,
coal by 200 Percent, cloth by 400
percent. Tea went from 100 in
1941 to 504 in December 1942. The
price of foreign drugs has in-=-
creased by 1,600 percent.

It is estimated that all com-
modities now cost 5 to 8 times
What they did at the beginning
of the war. Some essential grains
and Salt, kerosene, oil and sugar
are virtually unobtainable. The
comparative increase in wages
and income of the people has not
compensated for the inflated
prices.

With the administration bank
rupt to solve the food erisis, and
the national leaders behind bars
the Japanese Fifth Column is
frantically busy instigating food
riots among the Starving. De
prived of their respected leader-
ship, some patriots have also
been misled into aiding these ac-
tivities in their ill-founded hope
of bringing a “revolution out of
starvation.” And while the politi-
cal deadlock affected only the
national Patriotic elements, the
famine has directly brought the
entire nation into the national
crisis. The political and famine
erises haye become inseparable
and have merged into an explos-

ive situation.
)

Bec is the most severely

affected area. The starvation
there is unparalleled. This east-
ern Indian province is also the
base of military operations against
the Japanese in Burma. Behind
the front the rear is “eracking up.”
Lord Louis Mountbatten cannot
hope to launch a successful of-
fensive against the enemy until
the political and famine situation
is relieved. The present crisis is
directly endangering victory. The
rear must be stabilized before the
front line victories can be won.

The famine did not develop
overnight. Food shortages and
riots have been common for over
a year now. Patriotic people’s or-
ganizations warned the govern-
ment against the impending crisis
again and again. As far back as
May 1943, the All India Peasant
League (Kisan Sabha) adopted
a popular program to “grow more
food to speed victory.”

Since then steps have been
taken to implement the decision.
The peasantry have in many cases
enthusiastically responded to the
eall of their organizations. In
seme cases even the cooperation
of patriotic landlords has been
enlisted to aid the peasants in
increasing production.

In order to combat hoarding, the
Peasant League has opened up its
Own grain shops to distribute
food to the people at fair prices.
The league has appealed to the
peasants to sell their grain not
to the hoarders but to the Peas-
ant League. In Bengal, the Peas-
ant League has negotiated with
the government to buy the sur-
plus grain, and distribute it to
the starving.

To increase food production on
a grand scale, state assistance is
essential, because the impoyer-
ished peasants do not own the
means to successfully prosecute
the campaign.

For instance, the government
must provide seed grain and also
untilled land to the peasants for
cultivation. So far this.aid has not
been forthcoming but instead
peasant leaders have been prose-
cuted when propagating their
campaigns. Despite obstructions
the Peasant League has achieved
substantial success in this field.
And the battle still goes on.

Contrast this magnificent work
of the peoples’ organizations with
the corruptness of bureaucracy.
Fazal Haq, who was recently
forced to resign as premier of
Bengal, stated that “during his
absence in New Delhi the gov-
ernor of Bengal ordered the re-

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