PART O amounted to a relatively modest 11 or 12 percent in Sudan and Ethiopia. But while Sudan and Ethiopia, with comparatively smaller declines in food output, had massive famines, Botswana and Zimbabwe had none, and this was largely due to timely and extensive famine prevention policies by these latter countries. Had the governments in Botswana and Zimbabwe failed to undertake timely action, they would have been under severe criticism and pressure from the opposition and would have gotten plenty of flak from newspapers. In contrast, the Ethiopian and Sudanese governments did not have to reckon with those prospects, and the political incentives provided by democratic institutions were thoroughly absent in those countries. Famines in Sudan and Ethiopia – and in many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa – were fed by the political immunity enjoyed by governmental leaders in authoritarian countries. This would seem to apply to the present situation in North Korea as well.”344
In the Indian context, Sen points out that the Bengal famine of 1943 “was made viable not only by the lack of democracy in colonial India but also by severe restrictions on reporting and criticism imposed on the Indian press, and the voluntary practice of ‘silence’ on the famine that the British-owned media chose to follow”345. Political liberties and democratic rights are hence regarded as ‘constituent components’ of development.346 In contrast during the drought which took place in Maharashtra in 1973, food production failed drastically and the per capita food output was half of that in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet there was no famine in Maharashtra where five million people were employed in rapidly organized public projects while there were
344
Ibid, at page 179 Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, Penguin Books (2009), at page 339 346 Ibid, at page 347 345
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