Hungry Bengal

Hungry Bengal
Author: Janam Mukherjee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190209887

Examines the interconnected events including World War II, India's struggle for independence, and a period of acute scarcity that lead to mass starvation in colonial Bengal.

Ancient Rights and Future Comfort

Ancient Rights and Future Comfort
Author: Peter G. Robb
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 1997
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780700706259

This book analyses the character of British rule in nineteenth-century India, by focusing on the underlying ideas and the practical repercussions of agrarian policy. It argues that the great rent law debate and the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 helped constitute a revolution in the effective aims of government and in the colonial ability to interfere in India, but that they did so alongside a continuing weakness of understanding and in effective local control. In particular, the book considers the importance of notions of historical rights and economic progress to the false categorisations made of agrarian structure. It shows that the Tenancy Act helped to widen social disparities in rural Bihar, and to create political interests on the land.