Faudzil @ Ajak

Faudzil @ Ajak
Always think how to do things differently. - Faudzil Harun@Ajak
Showing posts with label COUNTRIES - INDIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COUNTRIES - INDIA. Show all posts

30 December 2014

SHOCKING - Two hospital workers spend FOUR HOURS pinned to MRI machine by metal oxygen tank that was catapulted across room when device's giant magnet was turned on




Two hospital workers spend FOUR HOURS pinned to MRI machine by metal oxygen tank that was catapulted across room when device's giant magnet was turned on


  • Pair were working at the Tata Memorial Hospital in New Delhi, India
  • Porter Sunil Jadhav, 28, carried the large oxygen tank into scan room
  • He and technician Swami Ramaiah, 35, became pinned to instrument
  • Hospital chiefs launched an investigation over last month's incident

Two hospital workers spent four hours pinned between a highly magnetic MRI machine and 
a metal oxygen tank.

The 4ft tank was pulled across the room by the machine's magnetic field at Tata Memorial Hospital in New Delhi, India, leaving porter Sunil Jadhav and technician Swami Ramaiah seriously injured.

Hospital authorities launched an investigation into the incident, which was reportedly exacerbated when staff found they were unable to demagnetise the machine.

Painful: Two hospital staff (pictured) were pinned between an MRI scanner and an oxygen tank in New Delhi 
Painful: Two hospital staff (pictured) were pinned between an MRI scanner and an oxygen tank in New Delhi 

Fracture: Sunil Jadhav, 28, reportedly misunderstood instructions to fetch an oxygen mask for the doctor
Fracture: Sunil Jadhav, 28, reportedly misunderstood instructions to fetch an oxygen mask for the doctor

The incident last month was triggered while a patient was being wheeled in for a routine scan 
in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine.

The 28-year-old porter was asked to fetch an oxygen mask but thought he was being asked 
to fetch a whole tank, the Mumbai Mirror reported.

It was drawn across the room, pinning him and the technician to the machine and fracturing 
his elbow.

The technician, 35, suffered damage to his lower abdomen described in one report as a punctured bladder and severe bleeding.

Normally the incident could have been over within seconds, but the machine's emergency 
shut-off switch failed to work, hospital authorities said.

That meant the men were trapped for four hours, during which both fell unconscious and were treated for their injuries while still pinned to the machine. 

Treatment: Technician Swami Ramaiah, 35, remained in hospital after suffering a punctured bladder
Treatment: Technician Swami Ramaiah, 35, remained in hospital after suffering a punctured bladder

A team of rescuers was called and at one point 20 people tried to pull the cylinder out with a rope they had attached to the end, according to local reports. 

Eventually, they were rescued after a technician from manufacturer General Electric managed to deactivate the magnetic field, a hospital spokesman said.

Hospital deputy director Dr Sudeep Gupta said in a press statement: 'We are taking up the issue of the equipment malfunction with General Electric in an appropriate manner.

'One of the men has suffered a fracture in elbow and has been operated on. The other suffered muscular injury to the lower limbs and will take a few weeks to recover.'

MRI scanners use powerful magnetic fields to manipulate protons in the water molecules which make up much of the human body.

Radio-frequency waves are then directed at the patient to determine the position of the protons and how they have 'lined up' under the magnetic field, building up a detailed picture of different types of tissue in the body.

The magnetic fields needed are so strong that MRI scanners always bear explicit warnings that they should not be kept near any metal objects, even paperclips.

MRI scanners tend to have a magnetic strength of between 1.5 and 3 Tesla - compared to just 0.005 Tesla for a fridge magnet. 


Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2890088/Two-hospital-workers-spend-FOUR-HOURS-pinned-MRI-machine-metal-oxygen-tank-catapulted-room-device-s-giant-magnet-turned-on.html#ixzz3NJJmj39M 

27 December 2014

INDIA - A new vision of India, 100 per cent Hindu ― Chandrahas Choudhury




Last updated Saturday, December 27, 2014 10:36am

OPINION

A new vision of India, 100 per cent Hindu ― Chandrahas Choudhury

PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 27, 2014 08:27 AM

DECEMBER 27 ― This month, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, India’s powerful, male-only Hindu nationalist outfit, finally played a card it has long held in its hand. It announced an intensive conversion programme to recover its “lost property” in India, feeding the dream of its cadre and allied organisations of an India that is nothing less than “100 per cent Hindu.”
The RSS has visibly grown in power and ambition in the seven months since the arrival of a new government ― unsurprisingly, as it counts among its past members the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, as well as many old and new chief ministers in the states. With this carefully calculated provocation under a regime sympathetic to its ideology, the nongovernmental organization is seeking victories in many arenas.
In the realm of law, the RSS wants the passage of a stringent nationwide bill that would ban religious conversions. In the public sphere, it has arrogated the right to pronounce not just on the future of minorities in India but that of India’s Hindu majority as well. In the war of the religions, it seeks to spread the news that there is now a Hindu fundamentalism eager to goad and trump well-established Christian and Islamic fundamentals in India and around the world. And among its own vast cadre, it has generated the sense that it, much more than the government of the day or the diverse institutions of civil society and business, holds the keys to India's future.
But let’s consider conversion as a recurring question in Indian history, one that reveals the tensions between a religious society and a secular state, between conservative and liberal adherents of a religion, between majorities and minorities in a multicultural milieu, and between religions that have a history of proselytising and those that don’t.
The RSS’s new emphasis on conversion actually represents an about-face for the organisation, which has for decades condemned missionary activity by Muslims and Christians in India. In so doing, the RSS often points out that Hinduism suffers because it has historically never been a proselytizing religion (its identity is partly based on being born into a pre-existing caste order). Therefore, if religion were to become a sort of free market in a multifaith country such as India, Hinduism could only stand to lose followers, not gain any.
As a Hindu, I have some sympathy with this viewpoint. Missionary activity has always seemed to me unacceptably crude and arrogant, not only in its conviction that there is a single truth that must be propagated, but also in its contempt for two of the forces that most strongly influence religious belief: the accident of birth in a certain religion, which is then followed by many years of socialization into its worldview.
To be sure, I respect an individual’s freedom not only to practice his or her faith but also to change it, as allowed in India by the constitution. But shouldn't this follow from a person’s own dissatisfaction or personal struggle, not as an outcome of the outreach work or material inducements of an organized religion? I even find myself in sympathy with Mahatma Gandhi’s unusual idea that it’s best that a person rule out the option of changing his religion and instead live through his or her quarrels with it (as Gandhi very vividly did).
So if the RSS’s new and crude campaign were aimed at simply drawing attention to the absence of a level playing field in India on the issue of conversion, as well as to generate the necessary debate leading to the passage of such a bill, I could see the point of it. But in truth, even if such a bill were passed, the RSS would insist that it would nevertheless not be bound by the bill's terms. That’s because the present aggressive campaign of the RSS is, in its own eyes, not about conversion but about reversion: the return, after many generations, of Christians and Muslims whose forefathers were once Hindu but were converted during India’s centuries under Islamic and colonial rule.
What the RSS seeks, then, is a new disequilibrium in which no other religious organization would have the right to convert people. No wonder it salivates at the prospect of a future India in which, by generating a consensus against the missionary activity of other religions, it can engineer a society that’s 100 per cent Hindu.
And we shouldn’t lose sight of the even more slippery and sinister part of the RSS’s sinister agenda: the simultaneous conversion of a few hundred million people from Hinduism to Hindutva, the rancorous, intellectually and morally impoverished version of Hinduism that the RSS propagates.
This is a dour doctrine that ― like other religious fundamentals ― makes no distinction between myth and history, science and religious belief, and often comes close to caricature. It believes that Hinduism is a thought system perfect from its very origins, that all the problems of modernity and history were foreseen by Hindu sages 2,000 years ago, that all modern scientific achievement was prefigured in Hindu thought, that Indians of all faiths are “culturally Hindu,” that India’s four-fifths Hindu majority is under threat from minorities, and that all Hindus should fall in line with a singular interpretation of Hindu tradition controlled by a central authority. That body would be ― surprise, surprise ― the RSS.
What's the view of the Modi government on all of this? In the firestorm that has erupted around the conversion issue, one man’s refusal to comment has come to seem as meaningful as any argument: Prime Minister Modi, who in recent months has taken his message of development and an economically resurgent India to many parts of the world, has remained shamefully silent. (As usual, his friends in the media have found inventive ways of coming to his defense.)
Perhaps this nongesture reflects Modi’s divided allegiance between the oaths and responsibilities of his present post and the convictions and prejudices of his often murky past. But there's no getting past the truth that the evasion by this allegedly firm and decisive leader ― the holder of the largest majority in India’s parliament in three decades ― of the conversion debate holds profound implications for the freedom and future of all of India’s 1.2 billion people. ― Bloomberg View
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist. 

Source: 
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/opinion/bloomberg/article/a-new-vision-of-india-100-per-cent-hindu-chandrahas-choudhury



25 December 2014

SHOCKING - Ten-year-old boy mutilated and sacrificed in witchcraft ceremony by Indian worker who thought he could use magic to make his wife pregnant




Ten-year-old boy mutilated and sacrificed in witchcraft ceremony by Indian worker who thought he could use magic to make his wife pregnant 


  • Victim, identified as Pranshu, was found murdered in a sugarcane field 
  • Police reportedly said he had been mutilated in a witchcraft ceremony
  • The murder happened in Pilibhit in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh 
  • Neighbour allegedly said he killed him to help his wife become pregnant

A 10-year-old boy was mutilated and sacrificed in a witchcraft ceremony, police have reportedly said.

An Indian worker is alleged to have told officers that he murder the boy, identified as Pranshu, 
a third year standard student, in a bid to help his wife become pregnant, the Times of India said.

The body of the child was found by his father in a sugarcane field in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh with mutilated ears and heels two days after he went missing.

The boy was mutilated and sacrificed in the witchcraft ceremony that took place approximately in Pilibhit in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh
The boy was mutilated and sacrificed in the witchcraft ceremony that took place approximately in Pilibhit in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh


When the grim discovery was made in the village of Rooppur Kamalu, in Pilibhit, on November 23, it was initially thought he had been attacked by animals.

Officers only launched an investigation after the post mortem examination revealed the boy had been murdered.

Pranshu had been reported missing by his family on November 21. 

A local man, named only as Durgesh, who was said to have been a neighbour of the victim, was later arrested, the Times of India reported.

The wife of the arrested man is due to be quizzed by officers, it has been said.

The scene of the murder in Pilibhit is approximately 300km away from Dehli, which is pictured above
The scene of the murder in Pilibhit is approximately 300km away from Dehli, which is pictured above


Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2886237/Ten-year-old-boy-mutilated-sacrificed-witchcraft-ceremony-Indian-worker-thought-use-magic-make-wife-pregnant.html#ixzz3MtQhB0Vb 


18 November 2014

INDIA - Why do Indian women go to sterilisation camps?




11 November 2014 Last updated at 15:02

Why do Indian women go to sterilisation camps?


Eleven women died after undergoing sterilisation surgery at a health camp 
organised by the government in Chhattisgarh


Eleven Indian women have died after undergoing sterilisation surgery at a health camp organised by the government in the central state of Chhattisgarh.
The tubectomy operations were carried out on 83 women in just six hours. Officials have denied negligence, but questions are being asked whether India's population control policy has serious flaws.
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A billboard on India's populationIndia's population is growing every minute
Is India obsessed with family planning?
India is the world's second most populated country with 1.27 billion people and it is predicted that the country will overtake China by 2030 to take the top slot.
In 1947, when India became a free country, its population was a mere 345 million. That means in the past 67 years it has added more than 900 million people.
Although India's birth rate has fallen in recent decades, the rapid increase in population is attributed to falling death rates and people living longer.
Concerned over the growing numbers, authorities have been trying to convince Indians to have smaller families.
Graph showing actual and projected populations of China, India, Nigeria and the USA 1950-2100
India was the first country in the world to introduce a national family planning programme in the mid-1970s when it launched a mass campaign to sterilise men.
According to estimates, more than six million men underwent vasectomies in just a year, until the campaign was abandoned after massive public anger.
Delhi-based gynaecologist and health activist Dr Puneet Bedi says family planning has become "an obsession" with India.
"We blame all our problems on population control, so we do these sterilisation camps. But because our public health services are poor, safety measures get bypassed."
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Do men and women face equal pressure over family planning?
Indian womenIt is estimated that 37% of Indian married women are sterilised
Sterilising a man through vasectomy is a much simpler procedure, but the number of Indian men compared to women who opt for sterilisation is very low.
In a largely male-dominated patriarchal society where male sterilisation is still not accepted socially, with many saying it impacts a man's virility, the family planning programme has traditionally focused on women.

It is estimated that 37% of all married women in India are sterilised. In 2011-12 alone, the government said 4.6 million women had undergone a tubectomy.

State governments regularly organise mass sterilisation camps where doctors perform serial tubectomies on dozens of women from poor families.
The women are often promised a monetary incentive if they undergo the procedure. Health workers, who convinced a woman to undergo a tubectomy, are also sometimes rewarded.
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What does the law say?
A family planning campaign in IndiaIndia has been long trying to convince people to have smaller families
Unlike in China, India does not have an official one-child policy but it has long used a policy of reward and punishment to control population.
Over the years, the national - and state - governments have rewarded employees who have chosen sterilisation with more money or promotions.
And those refusing to undergo sterilisation or who had more than a certain number of children faced restrictions.
Paying people a cash incentive for sterilisation is against the law in many countries, but in India, state governments continue to legally pay some to undergo vasectomies and tubectomies.
Sometimes, campaigners say, the incentives are taken to bizarre heights. In 2011, authorities in Rajasthan offered many prizes - motorcycles, television sets, food blenders and even a chance to win India's cheapest car Tata Nano.
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Chhattisgarh botched up surgeryThe tubectomy operations in Chhattisgarh were carried out on 83 women in just six hours
What are the dangers?
This is not the first time that sterilisation surgeries have gone so horribly wrong. In 2012, three men were arrested in Bihar for operating on 53 women in two hours in a field and without the use of anaesthetic.
Although Indian authorities say the surgery is voluntary, campaigners say the programme often leads to women being coerced into sterilisation.
Many women are forced by their husbands to undergo sterilisation for government incentives and benefits.
A large number of surgeries performed at once help officials meet family planning targets but, Dr Bedi says, they are fraught with danger.
"Targets are set - like cricket scores - to impress the authorities or funding agencies. But care for the patient is inadequate. Sometimes surgeons are not even properly qualified and there's no proper post-surgical care."
Also, most women who come to these camps are poor and have little education and hence are unable to give "informed consent".
"The women are told it's a very simple procedure, you'll go home in the evening, it'll be just one stitch on your stomach."
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India populationDr Bedi says instead of worrying about population control, India should aim for population stabilisation
Has India's contraception drive worked?
Over the years, massive awareness campaigns launched with catchy slogans advising people to have fewer children - like "Agla bachcha abhi nahin, Teen ke baad kabhi nahin (The next child not yet, And after three - never)" or "Hum do, hamare do (We two, our two)" and finally "One is fun" - have helped.
Mass distribution of free condoms have helped bring down the birth rate over the last three decades - from 5.7 children a woman in the 1960s to 2.7 now.
Dr Bedi says instead of worrying about population control, India should aim for population stabilisation.
And, he says, "we have reached that level. Even the poorest are now having at the most three children".
India, he suggests, should make its own population policy - "the population needs to be checked, but women undergoing sterilisation must be able to make an informed choice, they must be told tubectomy is a permanent procedure".
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29999883

INDIA - India's dark history of sterilisation




14 November 2014 Last updated at 01:32

Soutik BiswasDelhi correspondent


Nearly four million Indians, mostly women, were sterilised during 2013-14

The death of 15 women at two state-run sterilisation camps in Chhattisgarh has put a spotlight on India's dark history of botched sterilisations.
The drive to sterilise began in the 1970s when, encouraged by loans amounting to tens of millions of dollars from the World Bank, the Swedish International Development Authority and the UN Population Fund, India embarked on an ambitious population control programme.
During the 1975 Emergency - when civil liberties were suspended -Sanjay Gandhi, son of the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, began what was described by many as a "gruesome campaign" to sterilise poor men. There were reports of police cordoning off villages and virtually dragging the men to surgery.
The campaign also made an appearance in Salman Rushdie's novel, Midnight's Children.
An astonishing 6.2 million Indian men were sterilised in just a year, which was "15 times the number of people sterilised by the Nazis", according to science journalist Mara Hvistendahl. Two thousand men died from botched operations.
"India has a dark history of state-sponsored population control, often with eugenic aims - targeting the poor and underprivileged," Ms Hvistendahl told me. "The women's tragic deaths [in Chhattisgarh] show that it still happens today."
Since family planning efforts began in the 1970s, India has focused its population control efforts on women, even though, as scientists say, sterilisations are easier to perform in men. "This may be because women are deemed less likely to protest," says Ms Hvistendahl.
India carried out nearly 4 million sterilisations during 2013-2014, according to official figures. Less than 100,000 of these surgeries were done on men. More than 700 deaths were reported due to botched surgeries between 2009 and 2012. There were 356 reported cases of complications arising out of the surgeries.
Though the government has adopted a raft of measures and standards for conducting safe sterilisations, an unseemly haste to meet high state-mandated quotas has often led to botched operations and deaths.
Women have died from forced sterilisations in China where population control was institutionalised since the 1980s. "But the conditions in Indian sterilisation camps sound worse," says Ms Hvistendahl. There have been reports of the appalling quality of tubectomies for many years now, and authorities still don't seem to realise that it is an important reproductive health concern. And the shoddy surgeries continue, risking the lives of poor women.
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790

INDIA STERILISATION - Drugs may have been contaminated





Drugs given to 15 women who died after sterilisation surgery could have been contaminated, an official in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh has told the BBC.

A state health official said early tests and circumstantial evidence indicated traces of zinc phosphide - a substance used in rat poison.

The women were at a government health camp. The doctor who carried out the operations denies negligence.

But the cause of death remains unclear as post-mortem results are awaited.

Last week, two pharmaceutical factory owners were arrested and drugs administered to the women during the procedure were sent for testing. The factory owners deny any wrongdoing.

"It appears that the drugs seized in the factory were contaminated with zinc phosphide which is a poison. 

Circumstantial evidence suggests that it might be the cause of patients falling ill after the drug was administered," senior state health official Alok Shukla told the BBC.

Mr Shukla said the symptoms displayed by some of the patients were similar to reactions to zinc phosphide - a toxic substance also used in rat poison. He added that other patients responded when administered the antidote to zinc phosphide.

But, he cautioned, that this was the "preliminary finding and detailed lab reports of the drugs and the viscera reports of patients are awaited - and that should establish the cause [of deaths]".

A lone doctor, along with his assistant, carried out tubectomies on 130 women at two separate camps last Saturday and Monday. Reports said he operated on 83 women in five hours in one of the camps - government rules say one surgeon should only perform 35 operations in a day.

Fourteen died after the first camp in Bilaspur and one after the second. More than 100 women were admitted to hospital.

The doctor had been earlier feted by the state government for conducting a record number of sterilisations.
He reportedly said he was put under pressure to carry out the operations and also accused the government of making him a scapegoat.

Sterilisation camps are frequently held to carry out mass tubectomy operations for women - or vasectomies for men - and health workers often receive money for each person they bring to a clinic to be sterilised.

The vast majority who take part are women, often poor and paid to be sterilised.

Grey line
Explaining female sterilisation: Michelle Roberts, Health editor, BBC News website
Female sterilisation works by sealing the fallopian tubes that carry eggs from the ovaries to the womb. This can be done using clips, clamps or small rings or by tying and cutting the tube - this stops the egg and sperm meeting, so pregnancy can't occur.

Eggs will still be released from the ovaries as normal, but they will be reabsorbed by the body instead.
The procedure can be carried out via keyhole surgery or through an abdominal operation. It is very effective and straightforward when carried out correctly and by a highly trained professional. But it is not without risks. Most doctors will try to use the least invasive method.

It requires an anaesthetic and there is a risk of damage to other organs during the procedure. There can be bleeding and infection too. It should also be considered permanent - it is difficult to reverse.


Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30080163


9 October 2014

THE BENGAL FAMINE - How the British engineered the worst genocide in human history for profit






AUGUST 20, 2014 12:31 PM



I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”- Winston Churchill
The British had a ruthless economic agenda when it came to operating in India and that did not include empathy for native citizens. Under the British Raj, India suffered countless famines. But the worst hit was Bengal. The first of these was in 1770, followed by severe ones in 1783, 1866, 1873, 1892, 1897 and lastly 1943-44. Previously, when famines had hit the country, indigenous rulers were quick with useful responses to avert major disasters. After the advent of the British, most of the famines were a consequence of monsoonal delays along with the exploitation of the country’s natural resources by the British for their own financial gain. Yet they did little to acknowledge the havoc these actions wrought. If anything, they were irritated at the inconveniences in taxing the famines brought about.
Image source
The first of these famines was in 1770 and was ghastly brutal. The first signs indicating the coming of such a huge famine manifested in 1769 and the famine itself went on till 1773. It killed approximately 10 million people, millions more than the Jews incarcerated during the Second World War. It wiped out one third the population of Bengal. John Fiske, in his book “The Unseen World”, wrote that the famine of 1770 in Bengal was far deadlier than the Black Plague that terrorized Europe in the fourteenth century. Under the Mughal rule, peasants were required to pay a tribute of 10-15 per cent of their cash harvest. This ensured a comfortable treasury for the rulers and a wide net of safety for the peasants in case the weather did not hold for future harvests. In 1765 the Treaty of Allahabad was signed and East India Company took over the task of collecting the tributes from the then Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. Overnight the tributes, the British insisted on calling them tributes and not taxes for reasons of suppressing rebellion, increased to 50 percent. The peasants were not even aware that the money had changed hands. They paid, still believing that it went to the Emperor.
Image source
Partial failure of crop was quite a regular occurrence in the Indian peasant’s life. That is why the surplus stock, which remained after paying the tributes, was so important to their livelihood. But with the increased taxation, this surplus deteriorated rapidly. When partial failure of crops came in 1768, this safety net was no longer in place. The rains of 1769 were dismal and herein the first signs of the terrible draught began to appear. The famine occurred mainly in the modern states of West Bengal and Bihar but also hit Orissa, Jharkhand and Bangladesh. Bengal was, of course, the worst hit. Among the worst affected areas were Birbum and Murshidabad in Bengal. Thousands depopulated the area in hopes of finding sustenance elsewhere, only to die of starvation later on. Those who stayed on perished nonetheless. Huge acres of farmland were abandoned. Wilderness started to thrive here, resulting in deep and inhabitable jungle areas. Tirhut, Champaran and Bettiah in Bihar were similarly affected in Bihar.
Abandoned
Prior to this, whenever the possibility of a famine had emerged, the Indian rulers would waive their taxes and see compensatory measures, such as irrigation, instituted to provide as much relief as possible to the stricken farmers. The colonial rulers continued to ignore any warnings that came their way regarding the famine, although starvation had set in from early 1770. Then the deaths started in 1771. That year, the company raised the land tax to 60 per cent in order to recompense themselves for the lost lives of so many peasants. Fewer peasants resulted in less crops that in turn meant less revenue. Hence the ones who did not yet succumb to the famine had to pay double the tax so as to ensure that the British treasury did not suffer any losses during this travesty.
After taking over from the Mughal rulers, the British had issued widespread orders for cash crops to be cultivated. These were intended to be exported. Thus farmers who were used to growing paddy and vegetables were now being forced to cultivate indigo, poppy and other such items that yielded a high market value for them but could be of no relief to a population starved of food. There was no backup of edible crops in case of a famine. The natural causes that had contributed to the draught were commonplace. It was the single minded motive for profit that wrought about the devastating consequences. No relief measure was provided for those affected. Rather, as mentioned above, taxation was increased to make up for any shortfall in revenue. What is more ironic is that the East India Company generated a profited higher in 1771 than they did in 1768.
Although the starved populace of Bengal did not know it yet, this was just the first of the umpteen famines, caused solely by the motive for profit, that was to slash across the country side. Although all these massacres were deadly in their own right, the deadliest one to occur after 1771 was in 1943 when three million people died and others resorted to eating grass and human flesh in order to survive.
Image source
Winston Churchill, the hallowed British War prime minister who saved Europe from a monster like Hitler was disturbingly callous about the roaring famine that was swallowing Bengal’s population. He casually diverted the supplies of medical aid and food that was being dispatched to the starving victims to the already well supplied soldiers of Europe. When entreated upon he said, “Famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits.” The Delhi Government sent a telegram painting to him a picture of the horrible devastation and the number of people who had died. His only response was, “Then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”
Source: http://worldobserveronline.com/