In an economic journal article in 1983 Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said India had not had a famine since independence, and was unlikely to because reports by “active newspapers” of deaths from hunger would reach the government. 

Faced with a threatening famine, wrote Sen, any government wishing to stay in office in India was forced “to abandon or modify its ongoing economic policy” and act swiftly to redistribute food within the country. ..

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