Monghyr > Munger Bihar India
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To please the British, Mir Qasim has robbed everybody, confiscated lands, reduced Mir Jafar's purse and depleted the treasury.
However, he had soon tired of British interference and endless avarice and like Mir Jafar before him, yearns to break free of the British influence.
He has shifted his capital from Murshidabad to Munger in present-day Bihar, where he has raised an independent army, financing it by streamlining tax collection.
He opposes the British East India Company's position that their imperial Mughal license (dastak) means that they can trade without paying taxes (other local merchants with dastaks are required to pay up to forty percent of their revenue as tax).
Frustrated at the British refusal to pay these taxes, Mir Qasim abolishes taxes on the local traders as well.
This upsets the advantage that the British traders have been enjoying so far, and hostilities build up.
As an impending famine in Bihar comes to light, a decision is made at the highest level to save lives at any cost.
Rs.4 crores are spent on importing four hundred and fifty thousand tons of rice from Burma.
Another Rs. 2.25 crores are spent in organizing relief for three hundred million units (1 unit = one person for one day).
In addition, for the first time, inspection of villages by the government officials is carried out in order to identify those in need of aid or employment.
In Sir Richard Temple's own description (in a contemporary correspondence), the generous aid allows the laborers to stay in good physical condition and to return to their fields in a timely fashion when the rains finally arrive; in addition, their actions put to rest any fears among relief officials that the government handouts are making the laborers "dependent."
Road construction becomes a major project of the famine relief works; the Road Cess Act of 1873, which is enacted just before the famine begins, establishes a fund for the "construction of roads, especially their metaling and bridging."
(Yang, Anand A. (1998), Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Bihar, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 50)
The Bihar famine had proved to be less severe than had originally been anticipated, and one hundred thousand tons of grain is left unused at the end of the relief effort.
Since the expenditure associated with the relief effort is considered excessive, Sir Richard Temple is criticized by various British officials.
Taking the criticism to heart, he revises the official famine relief philosophy, which hereafter will become concerned with thrift and efficiency.
The relief efforts in the subsequent Great Famine of 1876–78 in Bombay and South India will therefore be very modest, which in turn will lead to excessive mortality.