The Bengal famine of 1943 was an anthropogenic famine in the Bengal province of British India during World War II. An estimated 0.8–3.8 million people died, in the Bengal region, from starvation, malaria and other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions and lack of health care. Millions were impoverished as the crisis overwhelmed large segments of the economy and catastrophically disrupted the social fabric. Eventually, families disintegrated; men sold their small farms and left home to look for work or to join the British Indian Army, and women and children became homeless migrants, often travelling to Calcutta or other large cities in search of organised relief.
From the photo spread in The Statesman on 22 August 1943 showing famine conditions in Calcutta. These photographs made world headlines and spurred government action.
Rice farmers ploughing a rice field with water buffaloes near Gushkara, Bengal, 1944
Satellite view of the Sundarbans
Indian refugees flee Burma along the Prome Road from Rangoon to Mandalay and eventually on to India, January 1942.
Famine had been a recurrent feature of life in the South Asian subcontinent countries of India and Bangladesh, most notoriously under British rule. Famines in India resulted in millions of deaths over the course of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Famines in British India were severe enough to have a substantial impact on the long-term population growth of the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Victims of the Great Famine of 1876–78 in India, pictured in 1877
People waiting for famine relief in Bangalore. From the Illustrated London News, 20 October 1877.
Victims of the Great Famine of 1876–1878
A contemporary print of the Madras famine of 1877 showing the distribution of relief in Bellary, Madras Presidency. From the Illustrated London News, (1877)