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PARTISAN REVIEW
that community has actually been achieved . That message seems to
me quite wrong. In societies like ours, redistributive policies are
morally necessary precisely because we cannot depend on sympathy
or spontaneous affection. Community may be a goal worth pursu–
ing. But until we reach it, justice should remain the first virtue of
social insti tu tions .
ROBERT AMDUR
RELATIVE DEPRIVATION?
POVERTY AND FAMINES:
AN ESSAY ON ENTITLEMENT AND DEPRIVATION.
By Amartya Sen.
Oxford University Press. $17.95
In the Great Bengal Famine of
1943-44,
at least a million
and a half people died of starvation and starvation-related diseases .
Amartya Sen, after reviewing the evidence, concludes that the num–
ber of deaths was more like three million.
The mind boggles, and a train of thought suggests itself. In a
poor country like wartime India a large part of the population must
be living on the razor edge of subsistence. Any substantial failure of
the basic food crop - rice in this instance - can tip large numbers of
the poorest people into starvation beyond the capacity of any but the
most massive relief effort to forestall. No such effort could have been
made in
1943- 44.
The famine was inevitable because there was not
enough food.
Yet Sen argues against this account. He shows that the very
premise of the food availability story lacks foundation :
While 1943 was not a very good year in terms of crop avail–
ability , it was not by any means a disastrous year either. The
current supply for 1943 was only about five percent lower than
the average of the preceding five years .
It
was, in fact, thirteen
percent
higher
than in 1941 , and there was , of course , no famine
in 1941.
