at the same time as the Jewish Holocaust was happening in Europe, another Holocaust was happening in the world, namely the 1943/44 man-made Bengal Famine in British-ruled India. This atrocity took as many as 4 million lives and was associated with a 1940s demographic deficit of 10 million in Bengal. Satyajit Ray in his outstanding film “Distant Thunder” asserts that 5 million died. According to Amartya Sen, food was actually available there but cashed-up Calcutta, prosperous because of a war-time manufacturing boom, sucked food out of the rice-producing countryside. The price of rice increased 4-fold for a variety of reasons and in a free market, colonial economy and with a heartless, racist British administration, those who could not afford to buy rice simply starved.
During the 1980s - what was called the lost decade of development - from every $100 worth of global economic growth, around $2.20 found its way to people living below the absolute poverty line. A decade later that had shrunk to just $0.60c, and the actual mean income of those living under $1 per day in Africa also fell.
