The famine danger in Orissa

IN a series of three articles published in our issues this week, CF Andrews (a renowned social reformer) has given a graphic account of the havoc which a succession of floods has done in Puri district of Orissa, and has shown that unless suitable measures are taken immediately, there is bound to be a famine of great magnitude in that district. Some idea of the enormity of the impending disaster may be formed from the fact that the affected area is 1,500 square miles with a population of no less than 5,00,000; that a year ago there was in the same area a universal shortage of rain and over a large part of it not even a four-anna crop was realised; and that only five years ago there was an actual famine owing to the same two causes of drought followed by floods. The actual conditions at the present time cannot be better described than in Andrews’ words; and these words, it must be remembered, are based upon personal observation. Writing about the villages near Puri itself, he says: “It was easy to see from the state of the fields that their crops for the present year had all gone. For the most part, the whole countryside was still under water. The villagers had very little to fall back upon during the coming year which would have to be tided over before any harvest could be realised from their fields.” The position in the interior is naturally worse. Of one typical village visited by Andrews, he writes: “The children looked thin and weak, dull and lifeless. Tears and wretchedness were in their eyes. Now and then a woman, in spite of her scanty clothing, would fall prostate at our feet, wailing. The men would rebuke her.”