weakest. Nevertheless, food distributed from government gruel kitchens immediately became the main source of aid for the rural poor. The rails had been repaired in August and pressure from the Government of India brought substantial supplies into Calcutta during September, Linlithgow's final month as Viceroy. However, a second problem emerged: the Civil Supplies Department of Bengal was undermanned and under-equipped to distribute the supplies, and the resulting transportation bottleneck left very large piles of grain accumulating in the open air in several locations, including Calcutta's Botanical Garden. Field Marshal Archibald Wavell replaced Linlithgow that October, within two weeks he had requested military support for the transport and distribution of crucial supplies. This assistance was delivered promptly, including "a full division of... 15,000 [British] soldiers...military lorries and the Royal Air Force" and distribution to even the most distant rural areas began on a large scale. In particular, grain was imported from the Punjab, and medical resources were made far more available. Rank-and-file soldiers, who had sometimes disobeyed orders to feed the destitute from their rations, were held in esteem by Bengalis for the efficiency of their work in distributing relief. That December, the "largest [rice] paddy crop ever seen" in Bengal was harvested. According to Greenough, large amounts of land previously used for other crops had been switched to rice production. The price of rice began to fall. Survivors of the famine and epidemics gathered the harvest themselves, though in some villages there were no survivors capable of doing the work. Wavell went on to make several other key policy steps, including promising that aid from other provinces would continue to feed the Bengal countryside, setting up a minimum rations scheme, and (after considerable effort) prevailing upon Great Britain to increase international imports. He has been widely praised for his decisive and effective response to the crisis. All official food relief work ended in December 1943 and January 1944. Economic and political effects The famine's aftermath greatly accelerated pre-existing socioeconomic processes leading to poverty and income inequality, severely disrupted important elements of Bengal's economy and social fabric, and ruined millions of families. The crisis overwhelmed and impoverished large segments of the economy. A key source of impoverishment was the widespread coping strategy of selling assets, including land. In 1943 alone in one village in east Bengal, for example, 54 out of a total of 168 families sold all or part of