1 January 1877, Delhi. The viceroy, Lord Lytton, stages an imperial assemblage to proclaim Victoria Empress of India: elephants, banners, princes. In the south the monsoon of 1876 has failed across the Deccan. People are eating bark, and grain is still moving by rail toward the ports and the markets that can pay.
Why then
Drought is weather. Famine is also policy. The Raj believes in free markets and balanced books: relief must not disturb prices, and charity breeds dependence. Sir Richard Temple's relief camps pay a ration so low that people die on it.
What they wanted
Lytton wants an imperial show and a budget in surplus. Temple sets out to prove relief can be cheap. Villagers can see grain on the carts they cannot buy. A new class of Indian journalists and economists starts counting what the empire costs.
What changed
Between five and ten million people die in India; the same drought kills nine to thirteen million in northern China. A Famine Commission and a famine code follow. Dadabhai Naoroji turns the numbers into the argument that British rule drains India's wealth.
Still argued
Mike Davis calls these famines political: doctrine and markets killed more than the drought. Economic historians answer that the weather did most of it and that railways later ended famine in India. Both sides agree on the doctrine, and on the dead.