Thar famine

Causes, implications and remedies

The situation in the Thar Desert is grave. Several hundred people have died as a result of the recent famine and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Funds (UNICEF) estimates that about three million people are at risk of starvation and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes. Worse is the fact that people are still continuing to die from this famine. The government’s apathy is tantamount to criminal negligence. Moreover, there are reports that the government is deliberately underreporting deaths to cover up its failures. Given the failure of the government to remedy this situation, it is important to analyse what the problem is and how to fix it. At stake are the lives of millions of innocent poor who live there.

Economists have long studied the causes and implications of famines. There are two main contending theories of the causes of famine. One is the Food Availability Decline (FAD) theory and the second is Amartra Sen’s entitlement approach or simply called the entitlement approach. Without going into technical details, I will explain each of these theories briefly and then use them to analyse the famine in the Thar Desert. The FAD theory, as the name implies, argues that famine occurs if there is a natural disaster which causes crop failure and subsequent food decline. This food decline then causes starvation. However, if there is food decline in a local area, then famine can be stopped through transporting food into the disaster area. So for food decline to be a reason for famine, there needs to be either a widespread food availability decline and/or disruption in the transport mechanism, which prevents food from being transported into the famine hit areas. However, there has been no starvation or shortage of food in Pakistan other than in the Thar Desert, the theory of FAD will have to be ruled out. Moreover, there has not been any disruption of transport infrastructure, so food could have been easily moved into aid the starving people. This evidence shows that lack of availability of food is not the cause of the famine in Thar.

The ramifications of a famine can be profound. They include a stark increase in mortality rates, disruption in social life, a decrease in the current and future workforce, and an escalation in poverty rates

This brings us to our second theory – the entitlement approach. In this theory, Sen argues that it is not food availability that is the problem, rather wealth distribution is the culprit. According to this theory, starvation happens because people are too poor to buy food. No rich person – such as landlords and or government ministers from this area — has died. Meanwhile, hundreds of people living at or below the poverty line have died. This evidence points to the fact that it is poverty itself that is causing the famine in the Thar Desert. Indeed, the lack of economic growth in the Thar Desert, coupled with rising inflation, has directly affected people’s ability to buy food. The lack of proper health care infrastructure has made the situation worse.

When famine strikes, some people die from starvation itself, but many deaths also occur due to disease. As a person becomes malnourished, his or her immune system weakens. This leaves the person more vulnerable to disease. Especially dangerous are diseases that cause further malnourishment and dehydration — such as cholera.

The ramifications of a famine can be profound. They include a stark increase in mortality rates, disruption in social life, a decrease in the current and future workforce, and an escalation in poverty rates. In addition, famines can sometimes cause permanent health damage to the survivors and a decrease in cognitive abilities of the malnourished children.

As a person becomes malnourished, his or her immune system weakens. This leaves the person more vulnerable to disease. Especially dangerous are diseases that cause further malnourishment and dehydration — such as cholera

To save lives and prevent future catastrophes, the government needs to act quickly and systematically. In the immediate future, the government needs to boost the food intake of the population at stake by providing food supplements. The government also needs to provide vaccinations to shield the poor from the consequences of immune suppression due to malnourishment. Also important is the provision of clean drinking water in the area to prevent diseases such as cholera. Moreover, a census of the local population should be taken and the government should track the health of these people. This data gathering will be crucial in monitoring the effectiveness of the policies implemented by the government and may provide important feedback for improving future policies.

In the medium to long term, the government needs to bring in economic growth and development policies to provide jobs and education to the people in the area, so that they can escape poverty. Moreover, given the recent pattern of monsoons and floods in Sindh, the government of Pakistan can build dams in the area and develop irrigation canals to bring water into the Thar Desert. This will not only provide water for the population and their livestock, but may also open up opportunities for agriculture and employment for local people.

Every single life is important and the continued increase in casualties from this avoidable famine is tragic. I hope the government learns from its mistakes and tries to prevent future deaths from famines. If the government fails, the people of Pakistan will hold it accountable for this criminal negligence.