were abandoned by their providers at every level of society: male heads of peasant households abandoned weaker family members; landholders abandoned the various forms of patronage that according to Greenough had traditionally been maintained, and the government abandoned the rural poor. These abandoned groups had been socially and politically selected for death. A final line of blaming holds that major industrialists either caused or at least significantly exacerbated the famine through speculation, war profiteering, hoarding, and corruption – "unscrupulous, heartless grain traders forcing up prices based on false rumors". Working from an assumption that the Bengal famine claimed 1.5 million lives, the Famine Inquiry Commission made a "gruesome calculation" that "nearly a thousand rupees [£88 in 1944; equivalent to £ or $ in ] of profits were accrued per death". As the Famine Inquiry Commission put it, "a large part of the community lived in plenty while others starved ... corruption was widespread throughout the province and in many classes of society". See also Tebhaga movement Famine in India List of Bangladesh tropical cyclones Drought in India British Raj#Famines, epidemics, public health Footnotes References Notes Works cited Primary sources Books, book chapters An earlier and somewhat different version is available in a conference paper at UCD Centre for Economic Research (Working Paper Series). Retrieved 9 February 2016 Articles Reprinted as External links Bengal Famine materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) Hungry Bengal – War, Famine, Riots, and the End of Empire 1939–1946 BBC/OU: The things we forgot to remember – The Bengal famine Further reading 1943 disasters in India 1940s health disasters British Indian history 1943 in India British Empire in World War II Famines in British India Famines in India Famines in Bangladesh Bengal Presidency India in World War II 20th-century famines