Great Famine of 1876-78 in India

A failure of the monsoon in 1876 and 1877, linked to a strong El Nino, brings a great famine to southern and western India. It strikes the Madras and Bombay presidencies, the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad, and parts of central India. Estimates of the dead run from about 5 million to well above 8 million, with some scholars putting the total for 1876 to 1878 at up to 10 million.²³⁴

Britain had ruled India directly since 1858, and the viceroy, Lord Lytton, held to free-trade principles: the state should not interfere in the grain market or give relief that would 'demoralize' the poor. Grain exports continued, with rail lines carrying wheat to the ports during the shortage. Relief was limited to work camps, where wages were set at barely subsistence levels, and a relief wage cut in 1877 under Sir Richard Temple was condemned as too harsh. In January 1877 Lytton held the grand Delhi Durbar proclaiming Queen Victoria Empress of India while people starved in the south.¹⁴

The scale of the disaster led to a Famine Commission in 1880, which produced the Indian Famine Code, setting out when and how the state must provide relief. Later famines in the 1890s were still severe, but the code and the extension of railways helped reduce deaths in some. The 1876 famine became central to Indian nationalists such as Dadabhai Naoroji and R. C. Dutt, who argued that British taxation and policy drained India's wealth and were responsible for its vulnerability.¹⁵