§ 37. Sir Stanley Reedasked the Secretary of State for India whether he can give, on the basis of figures so far collected, the total excess in the number of deaths from all causes in the Presidency of Bengal for the year 1943, a period which would embrace the acute stage of the famine and the epidemics which accompanied it, over the average in normal years.
§ The Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery)Yes, Sir. The Directorate of Public Health in Bengal have now compiled figures of deaths recorded in the Province in 1943. The recorded deaths from all causes total 1,873,749. This exceeds the average recorded mortality during the previous five years by 688,846. This figure roughly represents the number of deaths due to starvation, malnutrition impairing resistance to disease, as well as to abnormal epidemic diseases not associated with malnutrition. It is the approximate measure of the great economic disaster which afflicted Bengal last year. I am glad as all must be that the very much larger figures quoted in some quarters have turned out to be erroneous. But I must not be understood as in any way minimising the extent of an appalling calamity.