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Suggested additional reference

A good article this one; I don't want to mess with it -- suggested additional reference: A BBC radio program, in BBCs series "the things we forgot to remember"

To listen http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html

And to read a synopsis http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/thebengalfamine.html Kits2 (talk) 03:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

How did the famine end?

This might sound a bit dense but if the famine was caused by a rise in food prices then how did these prices fall back to normal?

simple massive poast war food production —Preceding unsigned comment added by J intela (talk • contribs) 10:38, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

A better reference

I have replaced the radio interview transcript cited in the intro with a review of Greenough's book, and changed the claim of 4 million deaths to the 3 million this source supports. Unfortunately I have no access to the book itself, so if that contradicts me then I apologise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.153.205 (talk) 12:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

A New Book (2010)

Madhushree Mukherjee has written a fascinating, extremely well-researched, eminently accessible and readable book on this subject : "Churchill's Secret War : The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II", Basic Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-465-00201-6. Will the authors of this main article please please add this book in a meaningful way to this page? Her book is the only one on the subject I have read, so I don't feel qualified to write about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tofindya (talk • contribs) 14:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Deaths

"The Bengal famine of 1943 is one among several famines that occurred in British-administered Bengal. It is estimated that around 3 million people died from starvation and malnutrition during the period[1] making the death toll higher than the two world wars, the entire independence movement and the massive carnage that followed Partition of India.[2]"

I can't make heads or tails of this. Global military casaulties in WWII alone were somewhere upwards of 20 million, roughly 10x the number given, so as written this is flatly wrong. What is this trying to say? That '3 million Bengalis died in the famine, more Bengalis than were drafted into & died in WWI/II or during during the independence movement and the Partition'? --Gwern (contribs) 13:52 7 November 2010 (GMT)

The number refers to Indians. It's now been clarified. Zuggernaut (talk) 00:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Churchill book reviewed Sept 10, 2010 Madhusree Mukerjee

Churchill's secret war reviewed in Time magazine Nov 29, 2010, by Shashi Tharoor. I just received this book and read the review in time. It seem well sourced and includes a lot of documents released. In it first few pages it is shocking, too see what Britain did not do and what they could have done. As for the British POV stating a bias view of the treatment of India while under British rule, you really need to read this book and come to terms with your countries past. jacob805 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.190.229.36 (talk) 16:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Unreliable sources

I am tempted to place an Unreliable sources template at the head of this article. There are now four separate assertions of Churchill's "racism" being a factor in the famine, all based indirectly on "Churchill's Secret War" by Madhusree Mukherjee, but not citing the book correctly, with page numbers. Instead, these claims all rely on tertiary sources, mainly one-page book reviews in various on-line publications. I don't care who wrote these reviews; they can at best merely skim the topic of the book, never mind the underlying accounts and sources. This is lazy scholarship. I have ordered the book from the local library, but given the season, I don't expect it for several weeks. A subject as contentious as this should have better sources than the results of a Google search. HLGallon (talk) 18:42, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Indeed one does not have to read the book to understand that the author has no special evidence for their views (papers relating to Churchill have not been made available only to this author). It is therefore reasonable to assume the author is merely offering their opinion of a complex situation: Churchill took many brutal decisions during World War II, and those writing fifty years later can only guess whether a particular act was motivated by a desire to defeat Nazism, or by something else such as racism. Johnuniq (talk) 04:21, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, I have removed it as its one persons opinion not a general consensus in the literature. I have also removed the other quote which comes from a book review. I think that might be legitimate, but it needs to be sourced to a book, not a review (where it is not even a quote). --Snowded TALK 04:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Diseased Rice

I have reverted from Pentaholmes version which said "outbreak of the disease caused almost complete destruction of the rice crop." This is obviously at odds with the figures provided by the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. Pentaholmes has cited a 1973 article in an obscure journal which is obviously not easily available. He or she should provide specific passages from that article which would back the claim of "almost complete destruction".

  • The data provided by Sen is the data with no source, Padmanabhan data was actually collected in the field during the 1940s. Where did Sen get his data, and as the more recent analysis of Sens' data points out, Sen's entitlement approach overlooks the problems of food shortage. I can email you the papers if you can email me.--nixie 22:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Amartya Sen's data came from government official records. Do you really believe that a Nobel Laureate would base work which he considers important on "data with no source"? You are welcome to include criticisms of Amartya Sen's approach. However you should remove confusing and factually wrong information about "rice disease". You seem to be doing in stages, I see the claim "complete destruction of the rice crop" has been removed. You should also remove statements like "15 to 90% crop loss in some areas" if you cannot specify what exactly "some areas" means. And your statement "Padmanabhan's data shows that the rice harvest in 1942 was about one third the size of that in 1941." is obviously wrong if it refers to the total harvest in 1942. If it does not refer to the total harvest then you should specify which particular district (or region) the statement refers to. Besides the issue is harvest in 1943, so it is not clear why you refer to a low harvest in 1942. When these corrections have been made I doubt "rice disease" will be important enough to merit being at the top of the article.
As for emailing you, I could not find your email address on your User page. Also you have not responded to any of the messages I had left on your discussion page. Please email me the papers, my address is jayanta (underscore) sen (at) yahoo (com).
Jayanta Sen 20:07, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
If Amartya Sen says he got it from "Official Government" records isn't that good enough? After all the man is a Nobel Laureate, if he lied I am sure that would have been amply pointed out. And your edits are getting more confusing with time. A reader has no idea what "Bankura and Chinsurah" are. Are these regions significant, what is their production compared to total production? The topic is "Bengal Famine", not "Bankura and Chinsurah Famine". Is the shortfall more towards 15% or towards 90%? The more I press, the more the weakness of your data becomes apparent. It has gone from "complete destruction of the rice crop" to "15 to 90% shortfall" to "15 to 90% shortfall in Bankura and Chinsurah". I think it is becoming obvious that the mention of "rice disease" should be dumped. Also I haven't received any papers from you by email. Jayanta Sen 21:58, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Look I'm not out to discuise some truth here, I am providing infomration on one factor that several sources think contributed to the famine. I think that Sen's data, who cares if he won the nobel prize other academics disagree with his analysis, should be correctly sourced and his actual hypothesis/interpretation described so that the reader can make up his or her own mind.--nixie 22:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
You keep doubting Amartya Sen's data. Here is what Kenneth Arrow (another Nobel Laureate and regarded by many as the greatest economist ever) has to say about Sen's work: "the first of which Sen analyzes in the greatest detail. The 1943 crop of rice and other foods was somewhat low, especially in relation to the extraordinarily large harvest of 1942, but it was distinctly higher than the crop of 1941, which was not a famine year. Sen finds that the per capita availability of food supply was 9 percent higher in 1943 than in 1941 and only about 10 percent less than the average of the five preceding years." http://www.finance.commerce.ubc.ca/~bhatta/BookReview/arrow_on_sen's_poverty_and_famine.html Jayanta Sen 22:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
1. That still doesn't show where Sen got his data
2. Sen's way of interpreting his data is not entirely straight foward, and that should be exaplined in the article.--nixie 22:15, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the papers. The second paper actually details where Amartya Sen got his data from: Famine Inquiry Commission that the [British controlled Indian] government set up after the famine.
Reading the first paper I conclude it is quite worthless in this discussion. You should note two things about this paper: 1) It has data only for yeild per acre (This is useless unless we know what fraction of total acreage resided in these regions) 2) It is for 1942 (which cannot be used to contradict Amartya Sen's argument that the 1943 harvest was not unusually low)
The second paper by Mark Tauger does two things 1) It makes arugments similar to yours based on Padmanabhan's paper. The problems with this remain as listed above 2) It nitpicks the methodology adopted by the Famine Inquiry Commission, but doesn't provide an alternative source for total (not specific regions like Bankura and Chinsurah) production. I would say that given the absence of alternative sources, one should proceed with government supplied statistics (especially as any bias in these a British-government controlled Indian government statistics would be against Amartya Sen's hypothesis). Jayanta Sen 22:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

SOURCES Sen is not a source, and cannot be, any more than you can be, writing nearly 60 years after the famine. He does not claim any special access to 'secret Government information'. Indeed, contemporary information makes it clear that the Governments were totally ignorant on this and anything else related to level of rice production. They recognized this in report after report, and in statements by the Director of Agriculture. It would be dishonest to quote these as though they were fact, or even a good guess.

We believe that the famine did happen because a lot of people observed bits of it and reported it at the time. We believe that the disease outbreak had a devastating effect because a lot of people observed bits of it and reported it at the time. It would be absurd to claim that there was no famine because no one saw more than a tiny bit of it. It would be equally absurd to claim that there was no disease outbreak because one of the many observers, Padmanabhan, only observed it in two districts.The importance of Padmanabhan's paper is that it gives a scientific explanation of what others observed, showing that the disease was caused by Helminthosporium orzae and that it could have devastating effects. It is possible of course that the disease observed by other people in other areas was caused by another organism, but this is extremely unlikely. AidWorker (talk) 08:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Uh... Sen?

Why is Sen relegated to some after-thought footnote of a section disparagingly called "revisionists", half of which consists of criticisms of his work? Seriously, like it or not, his analysis of the famine - part of what he got the Nobel prize for - is the key work in this area. I looked at the discussion about this above and it pretty much consists of some folks' original research and personal, though deeply held, feelings as to why Sen was wrong. Instead the whole article is based on 1940's or at best 1970's sources, with some key, and POV, claims, like "The proximate cause of the famine was a reduction in supply, with some increase in demand. " "fake-sourced" (that particular claim has no source, but the sentence right after it does, making it seem like the claim itself is sourced).

Slapping a POV tag on this until it's addressed. Volunteer Marek  04:54, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


PRIMARY SOURCES are what matters. There is no shortage of secondary sources that have misquoted or miscalculated, or indeed invented information to prove a pet theory. Any sources from the 1940s carry vastly more weight than any statement by anyone writing fifty years later. (A google search will show that Padmanabhan was writing on this in the 1940s and 1950s. i.e. his conclusions are based on scientific research of the actual crop.). This is what we mean by rigour, and referencing and evidence. You will see at the foot of this page Wikipedia's statement, 'Encyclopedic content must be verifiable'.

Statements by a commentator cannot be considered as evidence. They are, at best, an interpretation of the evidence in the primary sources, or a review of the evidence which helps us find the primary sources.

If there is any disagreement between two commentators we must go back to the primary sources to see who is right. Again, that is rigour. Sen claims his conclusions are based on primary sources (essentially the report of the Famine Inquiry Commission), so he stands or falls on whether his work accurately reports what is in his primary sources. Bowbrick claimed that Sen misstated what was in his sources in more than 30 instances, and neither Sen nor anyone else has challenged this. The evidence and the discussion is on the internet, and it should not take you a day to check who is right.

AidWorker (talk) 15:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

That is entirely contrary to Wikipedia policy on sourcing - we do not rely on our own interpretations of primary sources. As for discussions on 'the internet', we prefer to rely on published material from appropriate sources - which in this case would seem to be peer-reviewed academic articles and the like. Regarding Bowbrick, I can't seem to find any details of his book - who is the publisher? What is the ISBN? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:15, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
As Andy says, that's not how an encyclopedia is written. We're not here to write research papers but to record the work of others - i.e. secondary sources. In some instances a secondary source will get some very basic fact wrong but usually then there are other secondary sources which point this out. Volunteer Marek  20:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Not true. See The Importance of Evidence below, which uses Wikepedia and academic standards.

AndyTheGrump's objection to my statement that the evidence is on the internet is curious: Today most of the primary sources including journal articles are readily available on the internet, though they were extraordinarily difficult to get hold of in the 1980s and 1990s. Checking Sen's facts is no longer a three month job. There is no longer any excuse for not checking, and citing, the sources when there is a disagreement on facts.
Volunteer Marek's statement that if a secondary source gets some basic fact wrong 'usually there are other secondary sources which point this out.' is unfortunately seldom true - no academic journal would publish such a comment on a book for instance, and academic journals are reluctant to publish critical comments on articles they have published - that would affect their reputation, which is of financial importance to them. And academic politics mean that exposing such misstatements can destroy one's career. Anyway this response from Volunteer Marek cannot be taken seriously as he himself has removed the citations on misstatements by Sen - three refereed journal articles (by Bowbrick and Tauger) and an updating of Bowbrick's departmental report published by the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Oxford University (the appropriate place to publish a monograph of this length and content). Clearly if there are serious criticisms of any one commentator, they must be mentioned and cited next to any mention of that commentator, if Wikipedia is to mean anything at all.

AidWorker (talk) 11:44, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

revised false statement that USA refused to send aid

The citation was not valid and this statement was not factual. I changed to read correctly that the USA and Canada both offered food aid for India but this was refused by the British government. This is easily referenced and is a known fact. Time magazine Nov 29 2010. jacob805 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob805 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Here is a quote from the magazine edition published Nov 29, 2010 : As Mukerjee's accounts demonstrate, some of India's grain was also exported to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to meet needs there, even though the island wasn't experiencing the same hardship; Australian wheat sailed past Indian cities (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets) to depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans; and offers of American and Canadian food aid were turned down. India was not permitted to use its own sterling reserves, or indeed its own ships, to import food. And because the British government paid inflated prices in the open market to ensure supplies, grain became unaffordable for ordinary Indians. Lord Wavell, appointed Viceroy of India that fateful year, considered the Churchill government's attitude to India "negligent, hostile and contemptuous." Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html#ixzz16qnxTgzS

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html Jacob805 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob805 (talk • contribs) 09:30, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I have placed "clarification needed" tags by two of these references. They may be the wrong tags, but the alternative appears to be "failed verification", which is a bit strong. While I don't doubt anyone's integrity, if we are using Ms. Mukherjee as a source, then the original work, with page numbers, ought to be quoted. A third party publication including a review by a second author of the works of the first author is twice removed from the original work, with plenty of room for misunderstanding or obscuration through editorialising. Reviews like this are tertiary sources and can be taken as a reliable source only when proving that the original author (Ms. Mukherjee, in the case) wrote the work in question. They cannot be absolutely relied upon to confirm the work's content or opinions.HLGallon (talk) 04:05, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


HLGallon, I disagree, it is a published source including articles related to the same subject. It is referenced and can be reviewed. I think your claim of a false verification is on not founded. The author is a member of India Parliament and pen the article based upon fact.

The original text was claiming that the USA refused to send aid India. It was not source or referenced and you did ask for one. I change to what is known as the truth and now question the reference and source. Please explain, as I am now questioning your motive. jacob805 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob805 (talk • contribs) 05:38, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you question my motive indeed? Well, I find your comment offensive. I have already stated that I am not questioning anybody's integrity. You will note that I have not challenged nor reverted the text in question, nor do I challenge any of the facts in the current version. I have made a request that the proper secondary source, which is evidently available and published, be used to support it rather than tertiary sources, especially in an article so prone to POV assertions for one side or the other. The relevant Wikipedia rule (or guideline at least) is:

Tertiary sources such as compendia, encyclopedias, textbooks, and other summarizing sources may be used to give overviews or summaries, but should not be used in place of secondary sources for detailed discussion. (Wikipedia:RS#Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.)

(The italics in the quote above are mine, for emphasis.) As I have stated; if the facts and opinions relied on are those of Madhusree Mukerjee in the book "Churchill's Secret War", then the book itself should be referenced, with page numbers, in the article. No potted summary, no matter by whom, will be as authoritative (especially as the summary may itself be subject to the whim of editors and sub-editors trimming or filling text to fit space). By all means make personal attacks on me. This does not change Wikipedia guidelines. I will note by the way that I have made several additions to the article critical of the British authorities in India, citing Bayly and Harper's "Forgotten Armies" as a source, though some of these additions have later been replaced or overwritten. I have used the book as reference, rather than the many large numbers of reviews available on-line or in literary views in newspapers. HLGallon (talk) 13:36, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

HLGallon, you are still avoiding the question. when this page stated that the USA refused to send aid. You were fine with it. You didn't ask for first or secondary sources. I changed it based upon a book which is widely available and a times article which anyone can reference easily using the internet. I will research the original contributor to this article and find out where he or she received there information that the US refused to give aid.

In looking to where the original text came from, it appears that it was enter in November 2007 by LED125, HLGallon you were already contributing to this page. His reference use was a joke. Some sort of web page that contained what it look an e-mail. when you read it doesn't even state the Roosevelt or USA denied aid. You at that time, never asked for a reference to that material, please explain why? Thank you ans I look forward to your reply

PS, As for a personal attack, this is not a personal attack. I am questioning your motive. As in reviewing the history of this page, you made no attempt to question the change back in 2007. This is proven in the history of the page. I made a reference that is easily verified. When LED125 and unsigned source enter a text that stated that USA refused to send aid, you did not question it. I make a change to the proven fact and now its you need to 2-3 sources referenced. Questioning your motive is not a personal attack, it is question, whether or not you can answer it is another. jacob805

When you question my motive, I consider you are making a personal attack. In 2007, I lacked the sources to question the assertion that the United States refused to send aid. (The work with which I am most familiar, Bayly's and Harper's "Forgotten Armies", deals mainly with the local events and personalities in India, and skims the British Cabinet's actions.) Certainly the paragraph ought to have been better researched and cited, but I contribute to a large number of Wikipedia articles, and do not have the time to exhaustively research any one subject. Madhusree Mukerjee's "Churchill's Secret War" was published only this year and is irrelevant to anything I may have done or not done three years ago.HLGallon (talk) 15:25, 5 December 2010 (UTC)


Hello, I am the person who added the statement that the US refused to send aid. At the time all I relied uon is a tertiary source, but I have been able to confirm it with primary source documents that are available online. United States Department of State / Foreign relations of the United States diplomatic papers, 1944. The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, the Far East (1944), India, pp. 271ff. The collection can be viewed online: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=turn&id=FRUS.FRUS1944v05&entity=FRUS.FRUS1944v05.p0286&q1=famine

Regards-LED125 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.59.136 (talk) 13:59, 24 December 2010 (UTC)


LED125 Sorry for the late reply, they orignal text you wrote, after reading your citation, was written out of context, you leave out an important fact, June 1, 1944 was the presidents reply. The famin was all but over at the end of that year, askingf the USA for food in April 1944 wsas oo late, over 2-3 rds had already died jacob805 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob805 (talk • contribs) 09:17, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

THE IMPORTANCE OF EVIDENCE

The Bengal Famine has been examined in great detail because it is probably the best documented of all famines. There is certainly vastly more evidence than one could get for an African famine today. This is one reason why people will want to read the research on it.

There is excellent contemporary documentation: this is to be preferred to secondary sources and commentaries which give ‘facts’ which do not square with those in primary sources. The highly critical report of the Famine Inquiry Commission and the evidence presented to it gives a breadth and depth of information almost never available elsewhere. [Famine Inquiry Commission Final Report, 1945b; Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal, 1945, Famine Inquiry Commission. Evidence to the Commission was not published but exists in the Indian National Archives. Two of the 26 British-born administrators in Bengal at the time have produced substantial, closely argued and evidenced reports, highly critical of the Government. L.G.Pinnell, who was in charge of food supply in Bengal during the famine and who introduced the rationing system left an archive including original correspondence, his department's official submissions to the Famine Inquiry Commission, and his own memoir of the event. H.B.L.Braund was the Indian Government’s Regional Food Commissioner in Bengal in 1943. Knight, Henry (1954) gave a civil servant’s view of the situation in the rest of India. Aykroyd, (1974) was a member of the Commission.]There were reports by academics, researchers and statisticians including the great Mahalanobis. [Department of Anthropology, Calcutta University, 1944; Desai (1953); Rajan (1944); Ghosh (1944); Mahalanobis (1946); Mahalanobis, Mukkerjee, and Ghosh (1946); Masefield (1963); Padmanabhan (1973); Palekar (1962).] Government reports provide useful background information. [Bengal Administration, (1897); Frere (1874); Government of India (1942); Hunter (1873.)]T here is government to government correspondence. [Mansergh, (1971); Mansergh (1973); Moon (1973). Mukerjee (2011) gives extensive references to cabinet papers, etc. held in Britain, showing what Churchill decided and why.]There is a wealth of memoirs, many of them highly political. [e.g. Bedi (1944?); Stevens (1966), Ghosh (1944).] Dewey (1978) reviews the extensive literature on the agricultural statistics available.

This information is of key importance in establishing the credibility of the research on the famine. Work on most other famines is guesswork, informed by political views. The reason students and scholars look at Wikipedia is because it shows the basic literature that must be looked at when one is starting a study, not to get instant answers. It is of great concern that someone deleted the paragraph and the citations on this.

Serious researchers have spent years of their lives identifying the evidence and checking whether it is compatible with other evidence and, if not, why not. Tauger, Bowbrick and Dewey spring to mind, and probably Mukerjee and Bayly and Harper, though I have not yet checked their citations against their sources. Mahalanobis (Someone has deleted the link to his Wikipedia page) Panse and Sukatme, whose work on crop sampling remains the standard used by agricultural statisticians around the world, did important research on the results of the famine and the relationship between actual crop size and that reported by the Ministry of Agriculture. The Famine Inquiry Commission report, which was damning about the actions of the governments involved: the man who did most to push the governments to do anything, Stevens, said “The Famine Commission’s report is as complete, painstaking and balanced an account of what happened and why, as will ever be achievable.” (Stevens, 1966).The evidence set out here is from their extensive research over the years, and the primary sources are properly cited – Wikipedia, and academic research, requires that wherever possible the primary source should be given and checked: only if the author has not been able to check the source should the citation be from the secondary source, and the citation should mention this. That is to say it is VERIFIABLE, as Wikipedia insists it must be.

Equally important is that there are some things we do not know, and can never know now, though everybody would like to know them, the actual rice production over the years, and the difference between rice production in one year and the next for instance. I have given the primary sources cited by the serious researchers.

Where there is any controversy on the famine, it is on matters of fact. It is almost never on disagreements on the interpretation of facts agreed by both parties. Many of the commentators misquote the evidence or omit inconvenient evidence. This means that this article must concentrate on VERIFIABLE evidence using PRIMARY SOURCES. It must cover the range of issues identified by various commentators, not on one issue raised by one person. I have been at pains to do so.

It is a matter of concern that people who believe in one interpretation, often after a hurried reading of one commentator, delete evidence and primary sources that do not support their pet theory. This appears to have happened in the past, and is happening again.

It is a matter of concern that people who believe in one interpretation should feel it appropriate to delete the views of commentators who do not agree with it and provide evidence from primary sources to support their contention.

It is a matter of concern that some one should label the page ‘The neutrality of this page is contentious’ because it does not argue only the theory of one researcher, who by no means all serious researchers agree with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AidWorker (talk • contribs) 10:58, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, I think you're confusing writing a research paper with writing an encyclopedia. The two are different endeavors. Please read WP:V and WP:OR, in particular the section on WP:PRIMARY. Volunteer Marek  11:21, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

On the links you give Wikipedia demands that ‘All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where applicable. Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Source material must have been published (made available to the public in some form); unpublished materials are not considered reliable. Sources should directly support the material presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made. The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments; as a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source.’

I have followed these guidelines. The only two sources I have given that are ‘primary’ in the sense used by Wikipedia are Braund and Pinnell, and I have backed them up with what Wikipedia calls ‘secondary sources’. Other than these, what I have called ‘primary sources’ are publications written by people who would have interviewed people who saw what was going on, and statistical and scientific papers published by people who did research directly related to famine conditions. These are what Wikipedia would call ‘Secondary Sources’.

I have indeed cited sources given for the facts that are most commonly challenged in the academic literature as Wikipedia requires. They consist of Government reports including the Famine Inquiry Commission report (Nobody would deny that these are the only as well as the most appropriate sources for much of the information) and published academic papers, by such greats as Mahalanobis and Panse as well as secondary work by Tauger, Bowbrick, Mukerjee, Bayly and Harper, and Sen and a chapter in a book by Dewey, a prolific and respected historian of India. Where I have been able to find the sources they cite, I have checked them and put them in, as Wikipedia guidelines demand. Priority is of course given to sources who have first hand knowledge, or at least have interviewed those who have. I have NOT quoted A citing B citing C citing D in the hope that D had actually checked the sources. I have NOT quoted anyone who has clearly not read and checked the sources.

It remains a matter of concern that you removed a fully referenced citation saying that some people had challenged Sen’s facts. If this sort of thing happens Wikipedia loses its credibility. AidWorker (talk) 12:39, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Braund, Mahalanobis and the Commission are all primary sources. And what matters is not how many primary vs. secondary sources are in the article but how many times each kind is used. The other sources are fine.

However, since Sen is famous for his studies of this famine, whether you personally agree with him or not, the section on his work needs to be expanded.

And I haven't removed anything from this article. Volunteer Marek  13:42, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Someone certainly did remove it. Which is why Sen is not there. What was there previously was not scholarly, evidenced, researched - the result of repeated edits by undergraduates apparently.

It is quite extraordinary that you should want to remove the Report of the Famine Inquiry Commission. Everyone, but everyone, uses it as the main document. It carries infinitely more weight than any tertiary commentary. The whole literature may be considered footnotes to the Report of the Famine Inquiry Commission. Sen, for example, bases virtually everything he writes on it. An encyclopedia article which did not give it full prominence would be a bad joke.

Mahalanobis is not a primary source under the Wikipedia definition.

It is a matter of concern that this article is tagged with the statement 'This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources.' Only two out of the fifty sources are primary sources under Wikipedia's definition: 'Primary sources are very close to an event, often accounts written by people who are directly involved, offering an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. An account of a traffic accident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the accident; similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment. Historical documents such as diaries are primary sources." (a definition of primary source which is not that used in Agricultural Economics for instance)'. The two, detailed, referenced, reports by insiders are extremely important and are acceptable under these guidelines: they are by no means 'the report of a traffic accident' or 'My experience of the Blitz' anecdotes which Wikipedia wants to avoid. It would be absurd to suggest that the sources are 'affiliated to the subject'. Someone has applied their own idiosyncratic interpretation of 'primary' which would exclude all statistical analysis of raw data, all government reports including the Famine Inquiry Commission and work like that of Mukerjee, Dewey and Bayley, on the grounds that they were too close to the raw data. This is absurd

It is also a matter of concern that someone has tagged the article 'The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (September 2011)' All the issues set out were in the report of the Famine Inquiry Commission report, except that of Churchill's response (and Mukerjee is cited in the article), though the issues covered by Bayly and Harper were skimmed over in 1945, as were the regional supply issues discussed by Tauger. Most have been mentioned in any serious discussion of the famine, and most are mentioned by Sen. Different commentators have concentrated on different aspects, of course, but it would be dishonest and biassed to remove any of these sections because one commentator has ignored one of these issues. All are fully referenced. On most of the issues there is so much evidence that it is most improbable that any further evidence could do much to change what is believed. In other words it is a balanced account raising the full range of issues raised by researchers in subsequent years. AidWorker (talk) 10:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Again, you need to read the links I provided above. Primary sources should be avoided. Also I noticed you removed the Primary tag under the pretense that discussion on talk agreed with this. There was no such agreement. Volunteer Marek  21:27, 31 October 2011

(UTC)


Wikipedia has its own definitions of primary, and secondary, which are not those used in my discipline, economics, or in some others. Accordingly the ones I have referred to as ‘primary’ are what Wikipedia refers to as ‘secondary’ and which we agree are of key importance where, as here, it is the facts that are in dispute. Wikipedia says, for instance: ‘primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia’ Secondary sources ‘rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them. For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research.’ Volunteer Marek does not agree with Wikipedia on this, but keeps pushing his own ideas. How on earth can he justify removing The Famine Inquiry Commission or Mahalanobis on this: both rely on the primary sources; both analyse the material, making analytic or evaluative claims on them; Mahalanobis provides a useful analysis of the reliability of the sources of information. Indeed Volunteer Marek is arguing for giving pride of place to tertiary sources, people quoting people who quoted other people.

Someone tagged this page as being ‘The neutrality of this page is contentious’ because it did not give maximum prominence to one academic. The purpose of this page is to give the facts on the Bengal Famine of 1943, not to indulge in the cult of personality or to glorify certain individuals writing 30 to 70 years after the famine. The person putting the tag on has admitted not being acquainted with the literature. For the record the fact that people of certain occupation groups lost purchasing power during a famine and starved was not developed by Sen: it was well known and analysed in 1874 (Frere, Hunter), as was the possibility of export causing a famine. The idea that a famine could occur without a reduced production and supply was popular in the Orissa famine of 1886, and caused a failure to handle it properly and an increased death rate, with the result that the Inquiry Commission and subsequently the Bengal Famine Code specified that such pet theories should never influence policy, unless there was overwhelming evidence that there was no shortage. Nevertheless these pet theories (Sen’s explanation) were popular and influenced policy in 1943. They were analysed rigorously and in relation to all the evidence at the time – and extraordinary efforts were made to get new evidence. Sen’s original contribution was to show that, if one assumed away enough of the evidence, it was possible, just possible, to argue that, perhaps, there was no food shortage in Bengal in 1943. But it has been suggested that on a large range of issues what he claims is contradicted by the evidence in the sources he uses. Accordingly the tag should be removed. AidWorker (talk) 10:53, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


It is deeply disturbing that someone is trying to justify the removal of verifiable evidence from reliable sources, recognized by the serious scholars, and to justify replacing it with statements that cannot even be considered from tertiary sources, they are so far from what Wikipedia considers primary sources. We are dealing with famines, and some readers will, at some stage, be making decisions about famine situations. Accordingly, the ethical criteria demanded of those of us who deal with such situations apply. It is unethical to fake evidence, whether by suppressing evidence, changing evidence or inventing evidence: this can kill a lot of people, possibly millions. It is unethical to accept evidence or analysis because it is presented by a powerful or famous person or organization: this is so dangerous that it is normal to give it extra scrutiny. It is unethical to push one’s pet theories, whether informed by economics, politics or religion: one is expected to include the evidence in a coherent and complete analysis in that large body of theory and practice called agricultural marketing economics. It is unethical to suppress criticism of evidence or analysis. AidWorker (talk) 14:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

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