Excess mortality during the Bengal famine: A re-evaluation
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1 See, Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal, New Delhi, 1945, especially pp. 108-15. On the inadequate allowance for death under-registration of the FIC, see also footnote 18 below.
2 See W. R. Aykroyd, The Conquest of Famine, London, 1974, p. 77.
3 For criticisms of Chattopadhyaya's figures see A. K. Sen, 'Famine Mortality: A Study of the Bengal Famine of 1943', in E. Hobsbawm, ed., Peasants in History: Essays in Honour of Daniel Thorner, New Delhi, 1981; A. K. Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford, 1982 (especially Appendix D, 'Famine Mortality: A Case Study'); and Paul R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, The Famine of 1943-44, Oxford, 1982.
4 See Sen, 1981, cited in footnote 3, p. 202.
5 For citations of Sen's estimate of 3 million excess deaths see, for example, M. Alamgir, Famine in South Asia, Cambridge, Mass. 1980, p. 85; G. J. Hugo, 'The Demographic Impact of Famine: A Review' in B. Currey and G. Hugo, eds., Famine as a Geographical Phenomenon, Dordrecht, 1984, p. 15; D. Arnold, Famine, Social Crisis and Historical Change, Oxford, 1988, p. 44; and P. Kane, Famine in China, 1959-61, Demographic and Social Implications, London, 1988, p. 20.
6 We focus on Sen's work because it has been widely cited and because he is clear about his assumptions and procedures. Greenough's sometimes-cited estimate of between 3.5 and 3.8 million excess deaths is itself largely based on Sen's calculations; see Greenough, 1982, cited in footnote 3, p. 309.
7See Census of India 1951, Vol. VI Part IB, Vital Statistics West Bengal 1941-1950, Delhi, 1955.
8 See S. P. Jain, 'Computed Birth and Death Rates in India during 1941-50', Annexure III of Appendix II of Census of India, 1951, Volume 1, India, Part I-B-Appendices to the Census Report, 1951, New Delhi, 1955.
9See Census of Pakistan, 1951. Volume 3, East Bengal, Report and Tables, Karachi, p. 30.
10 These data are contained in Annual Report of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India for 1943 and 1944, New Delhi, 1946; Statistical Appendices to Annual Reports of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India for the Period 1940-44, New Delhi, 1947; and Statistical Appendices to Annual Report of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India for the Year 1945, New Delhi, 1948. The provisional numbers of registered births and deaths in undivided Bengal in 1946 are found in Annual Re port of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India for 1946, New Delhi, 1948, pp. 4-5. So far as we can ascertain, these detailed registration data for undivided Bengal have nowhere been used in all that has been written about the famine. However, there is mention of the annual registered crude death rates for 1944 and 1945 in Census of India 1951, Volume VI, West Bengal, Sikkim and Chandernagore, Part IA-Report, Delhi, 1953, p. 331; and Greenough cited in footnote 3 (footnote 7 on p. 301).
11 See Statistical Appendices to Annual Report of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India for the Year 1945, New Delhi, 1948, p. 39.
12 This misled Sen into concluding that there was no change in the proportional distri bution of deaths in the famine years, see Sen, 1981, cited in footnote 3, pp. 211-13.
13 See Census of Pakistan, 1951, cited in footnote 9, p. 30.
14 Note the misprint; the correct evaluation of the equation gives 1,715,000.
15 For example, note the immediately preceding discussion of the registration system and the reference to the 'quinquennial... average'. Quinquennial averages of registered deaths are widely used to give 'normal' numbers of deaths in the Report on Bengal cited in footnote 1.
16 See the Report on Bengal, cited in footnote 1, p. 108. See also Table 5.
17 For example, incorporating 790,000 into the equation leads to 965,000 excess deaths for 1942-44 in East Bengal.
18 For example, S. Sengupta estimated that death registration was 31 per cent deficient and then proceeded to use a correction factor (CF) for death under-registration of 1.31, whereas in fact the associated CF should be 1/(1-0.31)= 1.45; see Census of India 1951, cited in foot note 10, pp. 329-31. It is worth recounting the adjustment made by the Famine Inquiry Commission for death under-registration in 1943. The commission stated that '[a]ccording to figures published by the Bengal Public Health Department, 1,873,749 people died in Bengal in 1943. The average number of deaths reported annually during the previous 5 years, 1938 to 1942, was 1,184,903, so that deaths in 1943 were 688,846 in excess of the quinquennial ave rage'. After considering the weaknesses of the registration system the commission concluded that '...we are of the opinion that the number of deaths in excess of the average in 1943 was of the order of one million...', see Famine Inquiry Commission cited in footnote 1, pp. 108-109. From this it is clear that the commission is saying that registered excess mortality (688,846) has to be subjected to a CF of 1.45 (i.e., 1,000,000/688,846 = 1.45) in order to give a better idea of the true number of excess deaths in 1943, which they believed to be around one million. Hewever it follows that the commission believed that total deaths in 1943 were 2,184,903 (i.e., 1,184,903 plus one million); therefore the commission was of the view that the level of death registration in 1943 was 86 per cent (i.e., 0.86 = 1,873,749/2,184,903) with an associated CF of 1.16 = 1/0.86.
19 For these quotations see Famine Inquiry Commission, cited in footnote 1, p. 109.
20 See the graph given in Famine Inquiry Commission, cited in footnote 1, p 113.
21 For example, in 1939 in Hissar district the administration believed that death registration completeness improved; see Punjab Public Health Department, Report on the Public Health Administration of the Punjab for the Year 1939, Lahore, 1941, p. 8.
22 See Census of India, 1951, cited in footnote 7, p. 3.
23 The sources for these data are the Annual Reports cited in footnote 10. Registered vital events in 1946 are not available by month. To obtain registered births and deaths for the period January-June 1946 it was assumed that the monthly distribution of vital events in West Bengal in 1946 applied in undivided Bengal.
24 For example, the adjusted crude death rate for 1943 under assumption 1 is 40.57 = (1.32 x 1,908,622)/62,107.
25 The famine probably reduced the proportion of the population at young and old ages. Ceteris paribus this would reduce post-famine crude death rates.
26 See the notes to Table 2.
27 For example, the survey data collected by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Calcutta, and used by Greenough, pertain only to 1943. The number of deaths recorded by this survey for the period January to December 1943, and the number of people recorded as alive as of January 1943, may both have been influenced by their method of collection, which was the so-called 'genealogical method', see Greenough cited in footnote 3, p. 306. Whatever else were its merits, this survey does not provide a firm basis from which to evaluate registration completeness.
28 For the reduction in registered births during the main famine years see Table 3.
29 The least-squares regression line derived from the registered IMRs for 1931-42 is IMR = 5871.8 - 2.9441 (YEAR). This gives a predicted IMR for 1945 of 145.6 infant deaths per thousand live births.
30 For example, using the material in Panel A of Table 5, and assuming CFs of 2.2 and 2.0 respectively for births and deaths produces an estimate of excess mortality of 2.8 million.
31 See, Annual Report of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India for 1943 and 1944, New Delhi, 1946, pp. 1-5. Also see Famine Inquiry Commission, cited in foot note 1, p. 144.
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