Abstract:
This is the second report of the Famine Inquiry Commission
appointed under Ordinance No. X X V I I I of 1-944. We shall begin
by repeating our terms of reference.
To investigate and report to the Central Government upon
the causes of the food shortage and subsequent epidemics in India,
and in particular in Bengal, in the year 1943, and to make recommendations
as to the prevention of- their recurpehce, with special
reference to—
(а) the possibility of improving the diet of the people and
the quality and yield of food crops, and
(б) the possibility of improving the system of administration
in respect of the supply and distribution of food, the provision
of emergent medical relief and the emergent arrangements for
the control of epidemics in famine conditions in those areas apd in
those aspects in which the present system may be found to have
been unsatisfactory. Our first report, entitled “ Report on Bengal ” was published
in May 1945. This was concerned mainly with the history and
causes of the great famine of 1943, but we dealt also with problems
of'food supply and distribution in Bengal in the immediate future,
and with medical relief and the control of epidemics in famine.
In analysing the causes of the famine we had to give considerable
attention to the all-India food situation and food policy during the
critical war years, and in the chapter on food administration in
Bengal in the immediate future we referred freely to administrative
methods followed in other provinces, but Bengal itself was
throughout the main theme of the report.
