Hunger And Public Action

by Jean Drèze, Amartya Sen

This study was well-received and widely discussed when it appeared in hardback in 1990. It is devoted to analysis of the enduring problem of hunger in the modern world, and of the role that public action can play in countering it. The book is divided into four parts. The first attempts to provide a coherent perspective on the complex nutritional, economic, social and political issues involved in the causation of hunger and deprivation. The second deals with famine prevention, paying special attention to Africa and India. The third focuses on chronic undernourishment and related deprivations. Parts two and three include a number of case studies of successful public action for the prevention of hunger and famines in various parts of the world. The fourth part of the book draws together the main themes and concerns of the earlier chapters, and provides an integrated view of the role of public action in eliminating hunger.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology, India, History

373 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1899

About the author

Publications
Dreze, Jean "Patterns of Literacy and their Social Context", (originally written 199?), in Veena Das (ed.), 2004, Oxford Handbook of Indian Sociology, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Dreze, Jean, 2002, "On Research and Action", Economic and Political Weekly, March 2, 37 (9). New Delhi.
Dreze, Jean and Haris Gazdar, 1997. "Uttar Pradesh: the Burden of Inertia", in Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, (eds) Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen, (eds), 1997, Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 1989. Hunger and Public Action. Oxford University Press.
Drèze J. and Sen, A. (eds.). 1990. The Political Economy of Hunger. 3 volumes, Oxford University Press.
Drèze, J. 1990. Famine Prevention in India. In Drèze J. and Sen, A. (eds.) The Political Economy of Hunger. vol 2. Oxford University Press.
Stern, N. and Drèze J. 1991. Policy Reform, Shadow Prices and Market Prices. Journal of Public Economics.
Ahmad E, Drèze J, Hills J, Sen A K (eds.) 1991. Social Security in Developing Countries. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Drèze J., 1991. Public Action for Social Security: Foundations and Strategy. In Ahmad E, Drèze J, Hills J, Sen A K (eds.). Social Security in Developing Countries. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Drèze J. and H. Gazdar. 1992. Hunger and Poverty in Iraq, 1991. World Development.
Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 1995. India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity. Oxford University Press.
Drèze J., M. Murthi and A-C. Guio. 1995. Mortality, Fertility and Gender Bias in India. Population and Development Review.
Drèze J. and P.V. Srinivasan. 1997. Widowhood and Poverty in Rural India. Journal of Development Economics.
Drèze J., M. Samson and S. Singh. 1997. The Dam and the Nation: Displacement and Resettlement in the Narmada Valley. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-564004-7.
Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharma, "Palanpur: Population, Society Economy", chapter 1 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dreze, Jean, Peter Lanjouw and Naresh Sharma, "Economic Development in Palanpur, 1957-93", chapter 2 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharam, "Tenancy", chapter 8 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dreze, Jean, Peter Lanjouw and Naresh Sharma, "Credit", chapter 9 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. (eds.) 1997. Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Baland, J-M. Drèze J. and L. Leruth. 1999. Daily Wages and Piece Rates in Agrarian Economies. Journal of Development Economics.
A. De and J Drèze. 1999. Public Report on Basic Education in India. The PROBE report. Oxford University Press. 0195648706
Drèze J. (ed.) 1999. The Economics of Famine. International Library of Critical Writings in Economics. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharma, 1996, "Sharecropping in a North Indian Village", Journal of Development Studies, 33(1):1-40.
Drèze J. and R. Khera. 2000. Crime, Gender and Society in India. Population and Development Review.
Bhatia B, J. Drèze & K. Kelly. 2001. War and Peace in the Gulf: Testimonies of the Gulf Peace Team. London: Spokesman Books. [published on the tenth anniversary of the Team's attempt to stop the Gulf War through non-violent occupation].
Drèze J. and G.G. Kingdon. 2001. School Participation in Rural India. Review of Development Economics 5(1), 1-24.
Drèze J. 2001. Fertility, Education and Development: Evidence from India. Population and Development Review.
Drèze J. and Sen, A

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 2 out of 5]

The famous “hunger in China vs. India” comparison still perpetuates famine myths…

Preamble:
--Let’s consider how historical context is used and abused:

i) Western (liberal/capitalist) mainstream:
--"CHINESE COMMUNIST FAMINES 30 MILLION DEATHS!!!"
--Despite a “free press”, the West is somehow illiterate when it comes to global context (funny how that works: Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies). The default is to assume the worst of China (Red Scare’s communist authoritarian regime with 1+ billion helpless drones) vs. the West (supreme individuals of freedom).
--Thus, there is absent even a basic plausibility check; this is crucial since diving deep to untangle methodology (which I will do) is time-consuming (which propagandists exploit!). Mao’s famines? Well, of course! What do you expect from authoritarianism? Zero context of:
(1) the unimaginable starting point of pre-communist China (“Century of Humiliation” by Western/Japanese imperialism, with a life-expectancy in the 30’s, a vast feudal-agrarian population, civil war, losing the 2nd most lives in WWII, and a complete trade embargo by the post-WWII superpower US from 1949-1972) and
(2) the triumphs of Communist social policies to overcome this, ironically ending China’s long history of famines and increasing life expectancy by 25 years (40 to 65) in 30 years (1949 to 1979), all before 1979’s market liberalization (so you cannot say “oh, it’s because they eventually became capitalist”).

ii) Global South (liberal/capitalist) academics:
--"Hmmm, if we contextualize those big scary numbers by comparing China vs. India, then India actually comes out worse over the long-term. Hmmm, seems like China’s planning for social needs (radical land reform/public esp. rural health/food security rationing/cooperatives/literacy campaigns/women’s rights/welfare etc.) really benefited social needs, compared to just letting private wealth dictate social needs."
…Shocking. But it is indeed shocking when you are indoctrinated by the Red Scare.
--This book (Drèze/Sen) symbolizes this second group, featuring the future “Nobel” Economics prize winner Amartya Sen.
--The problem is the Western propagandists’ Mao famine numbers are still accepted, so Drèze/Sen have to next explain how China’s superior social planning failed so abysmally for the 3 years of the Great Leap Forward; the conclusion they conjure is China’s lack of press freedom delayed relief, a seemingly logical conclusion built on false assumptions.
--According to Drèze/Sen:

While the failure of the Great Leap Forward came to be widely recognized after the initial euphoria, the existence of the famine oddly escaped open scrutiny and even public recognition, until very recently. [Note: the context of Western propaganda is almost revealed here, i.e. it’s not a long-standing hegemonic consensus, yet somehow avoiding suspicion because clearly Western academia is objective and free.] This is particularly interesting given the monumental scale of the famine—arguably the largest in terms of total excess mortality in recorded history. […] Estimates of extra mortality vary from 16.5 million to 29.5 million [accepts Western numbers]. These figures are extraordinarily large. For example, the excess mortality in the last Indian famine, viz. the so-called Great Bengal famine of 1943 (occurring four years before independence), is estimated to be about 3 million. In the scale of 'extra deaths' the Chinese famine was, thus, about five to ten times as large as the largest famine in India in this century. [Emphases added]

iii) Global South radical academics:
--We need to rebuild the context where we do not (1) religiously assume the worst of foreign countries/social movements and (2) get triggered by big numbers, ex. how many people in the world die of smoking each year? 8+ million. How many die each year due to hunger/unclean water/vaccine-preventable diseases (pre-COVID)? We're nearing 20 million. Over 3 years (Great Leap Forward's duration), that would be 60 million. See, I can also make garbage statistics, but my point here is merely that the world is a big place.
--Thus, my review will start with debunking the foundational claim, by reviewing Utsa Patnaik’s article “Revisiting Alleged 30 Million Famine Deaths during China’s Great Leap”.

Highlights (from Utsa’s articles, including the quotes):

1) How to reconstruct history:
…What stats and methodologies should we critically start with?
i) Death rates:
--If the focus is on famine deaths, it makes sense to start with the official death rates and critically examine them.
--There are reasons why propagandists avoid this obvious step: to obscure context. Death rates reveal how successful communist China’s social policies were, where 1953’s 20 per thousand was reduced to 1958’s 12 per thousand (“remarkably low” for that time; India would require 25+ more years to reach this).
--If we use the 1958 low-point as a benchmark for the following Great Leap Forward “famine” years (1959-61), then there would be 11.5 million excess deaths, which Utsa reminds us is the “maximal estimate” of possible “famine deaths”. To Westerners, millions still sounds appalling, but relative to China/India’s history/population size, propagandists require a number several times larger. Utsa, an expert on India’s famines, is not someone you can scare with big numbers removed from context. (If this article was instead a book, there should be a nice section defining “famines”).
--If we continue with the official death rates:
-1959: 14.6 per thousand
-1960: 25.4 per thousand
-1961: 14.2 per thousand
-1962: 10 per thousand
--1960’s death rate means 8 million excess deaths compared to 1958’s low-point benchmark. While 25.4 per thousand is clearly an outlier for communist China, India that year had 24.8 per thousand, which was considered normal for India during the (famine-free) time (and just fine for capitalism, apparently)!

ii) Food-grain production and consumption:
--To check the validity of the official death rates, we can next consider food-grain. Total production reveal 3 years of bad harvests:
-1958: 200 million tons (exceptional year)
-1959: 170 million tons
-1960: 143.5 million tons
-1961: 147 million tons
--1960 decline was larger than India’s in their mid-1960s drought/food crises (note: India still did not have generalized famines). Propagandists blame the lowered outputs to China’s Great Leap Forward communes. Firstly, this omits China’s history of famines (droughts/floods/pests/imperialism/feudalism) and revolutionary struggles to build to 1958’s levels.
…Secondly, these numbers are total production. China has much better distribution of food-grain (thus overall consumption) thanks to egalitarian communist policies (recognized by Drèze/Sen). This is crucial during downturns in total production to prevent hording/price gouging/profiteering etc. while those without access (money) starve. Also avoided is exporting, infamous during colonial India’s famines: food-grain was exported out via railways while Indians starved next to the tracks, the same lauded railways considered as Britain’s gift to its colonial subjects: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. Even during the worst total production year, China’s social policies meant average food-grain per capita was still much higher than India!
…Indeed, Utsa notes the successes in China’s social planning for famine prevention during the supposed “famine” years (ex. building 46,000 reservoirs to manage droughts) on top of the aforementioned egalitarian food rationing system. This begs the question: what famine?

2) How to construct propaganda:
…“They have unwittingly confirmed the principle attributed to Goebbels — that a lie has to be a really big lie and be endlessly repeated; then it is bound to be believed.”
i) Erase historical context:
--Somehow, no one (in or outside China) knew about the 30 million famine deaths of the Great Leap Forward until over 2 decades later, when 2 North American demographers fiddled around and came up with 30 million:
-1982: A.J. Coale’s Rapid Population Change in China, 1952-1982
-1987: Judith Banister’s China’s Changing Population
-- Drèze/Sen then popularized these numbers in this book by building their theory of democratic (esp. press) freedom in famine prevention to explain how India avoided “famines” despite China’s otherwise superior social policies (which is acknowledged). Compare the earlier Drèze/Sen quote barely raising suspicions with Utsa’s critical framing:

Thirty million […] is not a small figure. When one million people died in Britain’s colony, Ireland, in 1846-47, the world knew about it. When three million people died in the 1943-44 Bengal famine, the fact that a famine occurred was known. Yet 30 million people are supposed to have died in China without anyone knowing at that time that a famine took place. The reason no one knew about it is simple, for a massive famine did not take place at all. […] A person has to be very foolhardy indeed to say that 30 million people died in a famine without anyone including the foreign diplomats in China and the China-watchers abroad having the slightest inkling of it. And those who credulously believe this claim and uncritically repeat it show an even greater folly than the originators of the claim. [Emphasis added]

ii) Extrapolate wildly: population deficit:
--Death rates are too close to “famine deaths”, so let’s play with stats further away so we can infer with creative manipulation. The devil is in the details…
--Using the 1953-64 census, the high population increase rate up to 1958 is projected over 1959-61, revealing 27 million missing (deficit) from the actual census. Slap on “famine deaths”, done.
--Now, if we look at the birth rates (decreasing from 1958’s 29 to 1961’s 18 per thousand), we realize 18 million of these “famine deaths” were never even born. “The Chinese are a highly talented people, but they have not learnt the art of dying without being born.”
…Was the lowered birth rates from starvation? We already reviewed the food-grain distribution. A much stronger explanation is the mass mobilization required for the Great Leap Forward, which disrupted social routines.

iii) Extrapolate wildly: conjuring births and deaths:
--Now, to dismiss the official birth rates in order to claim that many more people were actually born and then died of famine deaths, the propagandists use a fertility survey (asking for births/deaths since 1950’s) in the 1982 census despite its relatively small sample size (0.1% of population) and distant recall issue (for events 20+ years ago). The need for using this census is for its very high total fertility rate of 43-44 per thousand, which is then extrapolated over 1953-1964 (to contradict the 1953 census’ 37 per thousand, despite this census having a much larger sample, 5% of population, and designed to collect births/deaths). This results in 50 million extra births (for the purpose of succumbing to famine deaths), neatly buttressed by the official census totals (despite rejecting the official birth/death rates).
--Next, a linear time trend is used for the impressive falling death rate from the 1950’s, to project over the Great Leap Forward to reveal more unaccounted deaths. Of course, improving death rates cannot possibly be linear, since it must flatten out as it cannot approach zero: “not even the inimitable Chinese people could hope to become immortal.”
--The totals are now 60 million excess deaths between 1953-64. The propagandists arbitrarily attribute the highest portions of deaths to the Great Leap Forward years (1959-61) because numbers are meant to be freely manipulated, with Coale conjuring a 1960 peak death rate of 38.8 per thousand and Bannister a whooping 44.6 per thousand, totaling to the flaunted 30 million famine deaths for the Great Leap Forward (which rock-star “communist” Zizek apparently parrots in introduction to Verso’s publication of Mao’s On Practice and Contradiction).

…See comments below for rest of the review (highlights from Drèze/Sen’s book)…

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

contains the famous argument comparing post-revolutionary china with post-independence india regarding excess mortality.

[Bryce Cai · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Pref:) Sen's personal experiences with famine in India as a child appear to have led him to this topic of study. Since then, he has devoted his life to its study and prevention (WIDER, UN). Usually author credentials are not of huge interest to me, but this particular case is quite admirable.

Unlike a few of his other books, it's very data driven - little discussion of ethics, morality, or philosophy appear here. It's a great but not nearly often enough recommended analysis of famines but also very importantly, metrics of life (life expectancy, mortality, malnutrition, healthcare). Sen breaks from the usual mainstream economist analyses and catches up with what the NIH has known for a couple of decades. Much of the book is devoted to explaining various terminology, as well as debunking certain misconceptions in both the public and academic spheres, the main one being that famines are mostly a failure of scarcity and not distribution (he asserts the opposite). There's a few historical examples, primarily concerning India, Africa, parts of South America, and China. The comparison between Chinese and Indian policy is of particular interest, since it differs sharply from common perspectives. (I was pleasantly surprised by a mention of barefoot doctors).

Overall, a very well written book, suitable for academics and the general public alike.

[Max Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rich with historical examples and extensive data, Hunger and Public Action is an extraordinarily well argued piece on famine prevention. Dreze and Sen leave no questions unaddressed, never hesitate to highlight the limits of their own knowledge, and frequently clarify that any course of action, no matter how promising, must only be opted for on a case-by-case basis.

The case studies here were ridiculously thorough. The authors often described in vivid detail the institutions they studied. For example, when discussing the successes and failures of Kenya's food distribution system during the famine in the early 1980s, several pages are spent not only on descriptions of market activity in individual villages, but also on how individual merchants decided to bring their food to nearby regions, and furthermore, how those merchants obtained the information on which they based those market decisions in real time.

Intertemporal and interregional comparisons within single countries, as well as more traditional between-country comparisons, are used throughout. The writing is consistently clear and engaging. This is a truly epic work of comparative economic policy.

[Leonardo]

Citado en el artículo de Alkire en Capabilities and Happiness.

[Juliana Philippa]

Just some initial thoughts: fascinating how what prevented China from being able to rapidly respond/deal with the famine was its lack of democracy (in contrast with India), but what saves it from endemic hunger is the very political system it has in democracy's place: communism. And that India, though it has had no famine since Independence, it's democracy (political opposition and free press aspects) haven't saved it from endemic hunger.