duties as individuals, whereas Sen is offering an economic and political analysis of
the causes of famine. Nonetheless, Sen’s emphasis on the ‘political’ is important in
allowing us to see that what may be required of us as individualsdoes not necessarily
correspond to what is required of us as citizens, such that the cases of the starving
child and the drowning child are not analogous. This is not to argue that we should
not help people who are starving, but, rather, that a straightforward derivation of
politics from morality is simplistic.
Sen distinguishes famines from endemic hunger, defining the former as a ‘sudden
eruption of severe deprivation for a considerable section of the population’ (Sen,
1999: 160). He makes a number of empirical claims, the most striking of which
are: (a) there is no connection between starvation and lowered food production,
and (b) famines do not occur in democratic countries. Even when there is enough
food in a country to feed everyone there can be starvation, because it is the capacity
to buy food rather than its availabilitythat is the key determinant of adequate
nutrition. In a competitive democracy, with a free press and media, pressure is placed
on the government to put in place measures to deal with the immediate food needs
of the population and institute longer-term economic measures to restore the
purchasing power of the affected group. Non-democratic regimes lack both the
information flows and political incentives to respond properly to food crises (Sen,
1999: 180–1).
Famine cannot be understood, Sen maintains, out of the context of the entire
social, economic and political structure of a country. Food is not distributed through
charity or a system of automatic sharing, but rather the ability to acquire food must
be earned. What matters is not food production but ‘entitlement’, meaning the
ownership and command of commodities (Sen, 1999: 162). Entitlement is
determined by endowment, production possibilities and exchange conditions. Most
people’s endowment is limited to their labour power, meaning that they are
dependent on others for employment; should employment possibilities disappear
then they are vulnerable to a complete loss of entitlement. Those employment
possibilities are largely determined by production conditions, such as the develop-
ment of technology, and exchange rates, meaning the price of goods relative to
wages. Exchange rates can change significantly, leading potentially to famine. In
the 1943 Bengal famine, in which between two and three million people died, the
exchange rate between food and other types of goods altered radically; for example,
as people forwent having haircuts the rate of exchange between haircutting and
staple foods fell in some districts by between 70 and 80 per cent (Sen, 1999: 164).
Crucially, there is not always a direct causal relationship between food availability
and famine. The Bangladesh famine of 1974 occurred in a year of higher food
production than any other year between 1971 and 1976 (Sen, 1999: 165), and
where there is a link between food production and famine some sections of the
population are unaffected, with food moving from poorer to richer areas. A boom
in one area can lead to prohibitively high food prices in another: the 1943 Bengal
famine was caused, in part, by a ‘war boom’ in urban Bengal. In summary, famine
can only be explained within the context of the total economic structure of a society.
The ethical significance of this will be discussed after we have considered the
importance of the politicalstructure of a society to causing or preventing famine.
Famine prevention is dependent to a significant extent on entitlement protection.
After all, in the absence of social security payments some people in rich, Western484 Part 4 Contemporary ideas