The Bengal famine of 1943

Cyclone damage, the loss of Burmese rice imports, wartime requisitioning, refusal to divert shipping and provincial export controls combine to produce famine in Bengal in 1943, killing an estimated two to three million people. Amartya Sen's later analysis of it — that famines occur not from absolute shortage but from collapse in people's ability to obtain food — reshaped how famine is understood and won him the Nobel Prize in economics.