Bengal's famine

Sir, - I am amused to read Mr. R.H. Putran's letter about the 1943 Bengal Famine (Oct. 2). He attributes the famine to, among others, ``failure of crops instigated by East Bengali Communists in an attempt to sabotage the British war effort which the Communists called the People's War.'' He says that neither ``Ms. Shiva nor Prof. Amartya Sen was born then and all they have to say is based purely on hearsay and their ideology.'' I am one year older than Mr. Putran and lived in Khulna, now in Bangladesh. I have also seen hungry people dying in Calcutta streets. One need not be an adult in 1943 to know the causes of the famine. They are well-documented in the first report of the Famine Inquiry Commission (Sir John Woodhead Commission) published in May 1945.

A.K. Dasgupta,

Hyderabad

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