"These are natural disasters," say those who know.
But in India during these atrocious years, the market is more punishing than the drought.
Under the law of the market, freedom oppresses. Free trade, which obliges you to sell, forbids you to eat.
India is a not a poorhouse, but a colonial plantation. The market rules. Wise is the invisible hand, which makes and unmakes, and no one should dare correct it.
The British government confines itself to helping a few of the moribund die in work camps it calls "relief camps," and to demanding the taxes that the peasants cannot pay. The peasants lose their lands, sold for a pittance, and for a pittance they sell the hands that work it, while shortages send the price of grain hoarded by merchants sky-high.
Exporters do a booming trade. Mountains of wheat and rice pile up on the wharves of London and Liverpool. India, starving colony, does not eat, but it feeds. The British eat the Indians' hunger.
On the market this merchandise called hunger is highly valued, since it broadens investment opportunities, reduces the cost of production, and raises the price of goods.
Natural Glories
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