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Friday, May 31, 2024

Crisis in Zambia ~ how India suffered in famines during British raj !!

Zambia,  is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa.  It is bordered by  Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania,    Malawi,  Mozambique,  Zimbabwe , Namibia, Angola and Botswana.  The country’s capital is Lusaka.  The history of Zambia experienced many stages from colonisation to independence from Britain on 24 October 1964. Northern Rhodesia became a British sphere of influence in the present-day region of Zambia in 1888, and was officially proclaimed a British protectorate in 1924.   In 1960, the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, declared that the age of colonial rule in Africa was ending. Finally, in December 1963, the federation was dissolved, and the Republic of Zambia was formed out of Northern Rhodesia on 23 October 1964

Zambia is closer to ending almost four years in default on its sovereign debt after nearly all holders of the southern African nation’s US dollar bonds voted to approve a long-delayed restructuring plan. Holders of more than 90 per cent of the nearly $4bn in bonds had already backed the plan by last week ahead of a May 30 deadline, Zambia’s finance ministry said on Tuesday. The support means Africa’s second-biggest copper producer is on track to implement a restructuring of the debt next month, after its 2020 bond default highlighted growing problems with the international architecture for resolving debt crises in poor countries. President Hakainde Hichilema’s government finalised a deal on the bonds only in March after overcoming objections by China, Zambia’s largest creditor, that an initial agreement appeared to favour bondholders over other lenders.  

While this could provide some relief on financial side, severe drought is threatening hunger for millions of Zambians,   cutting off electricity for long periods and destroying the country’s social fabric and economy, the environment minister has warned, in a harbinger of what is in store for the region as the climate crisis worsens. A spokesperson is quoted as saying that   the “crippling drought” his country was experiencing hammered home the message that developing countries were facing catastrophe from the climate crisis, even as richer countries failed to muster financial help for the most afflicted.

“What has happened this year is that we received well below the normal rainfall. This has been a crippling drought,” he said. “We’ve had a huge crop failure. A lot of people who depend on maize, who depend on agriculture for their very survival, face starvation and hunger.” The rains failed in February, when maize, the country’s staple crop, reaches the “tasselling” stage, when the grains start to fill. A lack of rainfall at that time means there is little prospect of saving most of the crop. People are reaching the end of their food stores, and importing from other countries in the region has become much harder as they too are feeling the impacts of the drought. Food supplies have come from South Africa and Tanzania, but these are uncertain in the months to come.

In normal years, Zambia has a food surplus that it exports to neighbouring countries, including Malawi, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). About 95% of the country’s power comes from hydroelectricity, the capacity of which has been halved, leading to frequent power cuts of eight hours’ duration and more. The drought came after a series of floods that had already damaged infrastructure in the country.

Zambia’s president, Hakainde Hichilema, has declared a national disaster and put in place strict measures on the use of water. The country is also looking to diversify away from maize, to growing more cassava and sorghum, and crops more resistant to drought.

In early June, countries from around the world will meet in Bonn under the auspices of the UN for the first stage of months of negotiations on a new financial framework for tackling the climate crisis. This will culminate in the UN summit Cop29 in Azerbaijan in November, at which nations are supposed to set out a “new collective quantified goal” for providing hundreds of billions of dollars in climate finance each year to the developing world. However, the talks are mired in difficulty. Many countries are in the throes of election campaigns, including the US, the world’s biggest economy, and the EU, where politicians are concerned of a possible backlash against climate action. There is no agreement over how climate finance should be provided, where it should come from and who should receive it.

He said the countries that benefited first from industrialisation owed a responsibility to the poorest. “The climate has changed because the developed world has been buying so much fossil fuel for their development,” he said. “These are the fossil fuels which have been burned which have made the climate change.”

India has faced many a droughts and famines especially during colonial rule when the Colonial Kings simply looted not caring for the people allowing starvation and death of thousands – yet our History we read about merciful Viceroys and how Nation got freedom without shedding blood !!



Just to cite couple of examples -  Great Famine of 1876–1878 was a famine that swept parts of  India under Crown rule.  It began in 1876 after an intense drought resulting in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau. It affected south and southwestern India (the British presidencies of Madras and Bombay, and the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad) for a period of two years. In its second year famine also spread northward to some regions of the Central Provinces and the North-Western Provinces, and to a small area in the Punjab. The famine ultimately covered an area of 670,000 square kilometres (257,000 sq mi) and caused distress to a population totalling 58,500,000. The death toll from this famine is estimated to be in the range of 5.5 to 10.3 million people.

The famine occurred at a time when the colonial government was attempting to reduce expenses on welfare. Earlier, in the Bihar famine of 1873–74, severe mortality had been avoided by importing rice from Burma. The Government of Bengal and its Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Richard Temple, were criticised for excessive expenditure on charitable relief. Sensitive to any renewed accusations of excess in 1876, Temple, who was now Famine Commissioner for the Government of India, insisted not only on a policy of laissez faire with respect to the trade in grain, but also on stricter standards of qualification for relief and on more meagre relief rations. Two kinds of relief were offered: "relief works" for able-bodied men, women, and working children, and gratuitous (or charitable) relief for small children, the elderly, and the indigent.

The Great Famine had a lasting political impact on events in India. Among the British administrators in India who were unsettled by the official reactions to the famine and, in particular by the stifling of the official debate about the best form of famine relief, were William Wedderburn and A. O. Hume. Less than a decade later, they would found the Indian National Congress and, in turn, influence a generation of Indian nationalists. Among the latter were Dadabhai Naoroji and Romesh Chunder Dutt for whom the Great Famine would become a cornerstone of the economic critique of the British Raj.

Well,  any History not properly written and not read factually will  corrupt the minds of the people of the Nation.

With regards – S Sampathkumar
30.5.2024
Pic credit : https://scalar.lehigh.edu/kiplings/famine

  

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