Famine Case
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Understanding the numerous causes of famine and its affects has always been very complex in nature .There have been numerous critical and extensive debates on various views given by scholars and researchers. In the past, the root cause of famines was attributed to natural disasters that usually led to crop failure resulting in food availability decline (Devereux, 2000) .Now in the 21st century there are various human economic relations, social structures and political actions that interrelate to restrict access to food and deny their basic right to a certain section of the society in a country which triggers famine (Tauger, 2003).
Amartya Sen defines Famine as “a particularly virulent manifestation of starvation causing widespread death”. (Sen, 1981 in Rangasami 1985:1747) By means of the entitlement approach that he formulated focused on effective demand failure as an indicator of famine. Sen then argued that “entitlement collapse” restrained a person from attaining food which had led to starvation (Sen, 1981). The first section of the essay will explain what the exchange entitlement is all about and how useful it is in analysing famine. The next section will explore the critical drawbacks of the theory which will convey the various facets of famine that have been destroying the world even today.
EXCHANGE ENTITLEMENT THEORY
Most of the deadly famines that have occurred were usually not due to the decrease in food availability but were indeed a function of the entitlement set a person held. Starvation was a process which certainly started when there was a change in the ownership patterns and exchange entitlements of commodities. A person can obtain adequate food through what he was entitled to obtain by trading what he possessed, through producing commodities by his own resources , by his own labour power and lastly through transfer entitlement which he obtains willingly from another person. When a person fails to obtain food by the above means it is said that the person was plunged into starvation (Sen, 1981).
Amartya Sen claims that shortage of food in Bengal in the year 1943 was not the reason behind starvation and the death of millions of people. Indeed it was due to people not having command over food to sustain in exchange of their labour power at market wages in agricultural activities. The increase in prices of food commodities due to a general decrease in food supply disrupted their entitlement set which could not keep pace with their wages that led to starvation and destitution (Sen, 1981; Tauger, 2003)
Scholars often argue against Sen saying that while his approach considers the economic dimension on famines, it completely neglects the other approaches that may have significance in explaining the causes of famines. Some of these approaches include those that define and explain the causes of famine such as natural, social and political issues that are now a major cause for concern in most famines that have occurred in the past few years (Rangasami, 1985; Devereux, 2000).
Amrita Rangasami (1985) debates that famine as mentioned by Sen is not just a starvation process which is biological in nature. It is a socio-political economic condition that extracts their assets mainly their labour power with in a country that causes further death during famine. Starvation is a long process that is marked with different phases which she portrays dearth as the first phase where the victims are thrown into poverty, famishment being the second phase in which people show a rising desperation for food and treatment and mortality as the final phase. She states that mortality could be halted with state intervention by considering the right policies during the start of the first phase itself because famine today is considered as an entire process and not just the study of the final mortality phase.
SOCIAL DISRUPTION CAUSES FAMINE MORTALITY TO RISE
Considering famines that are a result of a social process, one might note that most contemporary famines demonstrate this trend. It is often a health and epidemiological crisis that highlights the importance and necessity of non-market institutions. Unlike the entitlement theory, this approach takes a more holistic view on famines, by including non-market entities. Stephen Devereux (2000) evaluates the causes behind such complex emergencies. It is argued that famine mortality is also due to the increase in the number of displaced people in search of shelter and food. People who seek shelter at refugee camps usually arrive with very low immunity levels causing them to be susceptible to many diseases due to the unhygienic and unhealthy conditions around them. Outside the perspective given by Sen, famine is caused due to the hunger related disease which is mainly because of under nutrition and infections during that situation. It is known as the health crisis model where death is not the result of just starvation but it is also due to communicable diseases such as diarrhoea etc. Major food crisis problems in many drought and famine prone countries are usually accompanied by epidemics of cholera, malaria, measles etc. These factors raise the risk of spreadable diseases among displaced people which causes death. This is quite different from the food crisis model given by Sen. Famines are often varied in nature, but those which are triggered by epidemics do not fall in line with the entitlement theory. While Sen proposes that lack of food or poverty at the individual level leads to famine, it is often the case that disease and displacement caused by the social process that result in famine (DEVEREUX, 2000, 2001).
When we study the case of famine mortality that occurred in the year 1985 in Darfur which is situated in the western most region of Sudan we can see that drought plus social disruption spread communicable diseases causing a severe health crisis. People within the community resorted to violent activities to avoid starvation. Death rate was rising as people migrated to different regions in search of food and water. Desperation was at an extreme, with people labouring for money, selling their livestock and eating wild foods. Darfur experienced destitution from the end of 1984 until the rains of 1985. The conclusion is inevitable, Social disruption itself had caused death while starvation was never considered as the primary cause of the many deaths. Bureaucracy and paperwork often is the reason why death is attributed to just one cause such as disease instead of bringing the underlying cause such as starvation to light. The deaths caused by the famine in Darfur 1985 were an example of disease driven mortality rather than that caused by starvation (De Waal, 1989).
POLITICAL FACTORS CAUSING FAMINE
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