216 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vou. VIII. 
India, thirty-six inches; Rajputana, twenty inches; Berar, thirty-one 
inches; Bombay, forty inches. Thus we see that in most cases the real 
lack is not rain, it is storage. Says Major Philip B. Phipson (and few 
persons can speak with fuller knowledge): ‘‘The water supply of India 
is ample for all requirements, it only requiring to be diverted from her 
rivers, stored up from her rain-fall, and distributed over her fields, to 
secure such an abundance as shall leave no single human being wanting 
es 
PLENTY OF Foop EvEN IN FAMINE YEARS. 
But even under present conditions, with irrigation as imperfectly 
developed as it is now, and with so large a part of the water that falls 
wasted, India is one of the greatest of food-producing lands. No matter 
how severe the drought may be in some parts, there is never a time when 
India as a whole does not contain food enough for all her people. Indeed, 
in her worst famine years she exports food. In her worst famine years 
there is plenty of food to be obtained, and in the famine areas them- 
selves, and generally at moderate prices, for those who have money to buy 
with. This the Famine Commissioners themselves have told us. To show ° 
that the starvation of the people is caused not by lack of food in the land, 
but by their own poverty, I need only point to the fact that a large part of 
the life-saving work carried on by the government in connection with the 
recent Indian famines, has taken the form, not of furnishing food (there 
was no need for that), but of supplying the starving people with a little 
money (a penny or so a day to each) wherewith to purchase the food, 
which was all the while offered in abundance by the dealers. Thus it 
becomes evident that if we would discover the causes of the periodic star- 
vation of such vast numbers of the Indian people, we must look deeper 
than the mere failure of the rains. 
THE THEORY OF OVER—POPULATION. 
Are the famines of India produced by over-population? 
A very little study of the facts furnishes an answer to this question. 
The population of India is not so dense as in a number of the States of 
Europe, which are prosperous, which have no difficulty in supporting 
their people, and in which famines are never dreamed of. Nor is the 
birth rate high in India. It is less than in England, and much less than 
in Germany and several other Continental countries. Indeed, it is seventy- 
five per 1,000 lower than the average birth-rate of all Europe. India is 
not over-populated. As already pointed out, even under present condi- 
* ‘Indian Poverty and Indian Famines,”’ p. 52. Republished from the Asiatic Quarterly by 
Wm. Hutchinson & Co., London, 1903 
