Abstract
India’s population began to grow rapidly from the 1920s, as death rates fell quickly, children survived early-life diseases better, and epidemics were brought under control. Innovations in medical research and communications played a significant role in ending famines. These were, partly, an indirect benefit of openness. But mortality decline was not good news for all. Mortality decline meant that more young women had to mind more children at home. Early marriage prevented many women from taking up new wage-earning opportunities. Growing family size made their economic value smaller and lives at home harder than before.
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Further Reading
A.K. Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘Revisiting the Bengal Famine of 1943–4,’ History Ireland, 18(4), 2010, 36–39.
M.B. McAlpin, Subject to Famine: Food Crisis and Economic Change in Western India, 1860–1920, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
M.U. Mushtaq, ‘Public Health in British India: A Brief Account of the History of Medical Services and Disease Prevention in Colonial India,’ Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 34(1), 2009, 6–14.
Tim Dyson, Population History of India, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2018.
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Roy, T. (2019). End of Famine. In: How British Rule Changed India’s Economy. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17708-9_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17708-9_6
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