devastation from war. The FEE account agrees that such external factors are in some cases important, but holds that famine is primarily the interaction between pre-existing "structural vulnerability" (such as poverty) and a shock event (such as war or political interference in markets) that disrupts the economic market for food. When these interact, some groups within society can become unable to purchase or acquire food even though sufficient supplies are available. Both the FAD and the FEE perspectives would agree that Bengal experienced at least some grain shortage in 1943 due to the loss of imports from Burma, damage from the cyclone, and brown-spot infestation. However, the FEE analyses do not consider shortage the main factor, while FAD-oriented scholars such as Peter Bowbrick hold that a sharp drop in the food supply was the pivotal determining factor. S.Y.Padmanabhan and later Mark Tauger, in particular, argue that the impact of brown-spot disease was vastly underestimated, both during the famine and in later analyses. The signs of crop infestation by the fungus are subtle; given the social and administrative conditions at the time, local officials would very likely have overlooked them. Academic consensus generally follows the FEE account, as formulated by Amartya Sen, in describing the Bengal famine of 1943 as an "entitlements famine". On this view, the prelude to the famine was generalised war-time inflation, and the problem was exacerbated by prioritised distribution and abortive attempts at price control, but the death blow was devastating leaps in the inflation rate due to heavy speculative buying and panic-driven hoarding. This in turn caused a fatal decline in the real wages of landless agricultural workers, transforming what should have been a local shortage into a major famine. More recent analyses often stress political factors. Discussions of the government's role split into two broad camps: those which suggest that the government unwittingly caused or was unable to respond to the crisis, and those which assert that the government wilfully caused or ignored the plight of starving Indians. The former see the problem as a series of avoidable war-time policy failures and "panicky responses" from a government that was inept, overwhelmed and in disarray; the latter being a product of wartime priorities by the "ruling colonial elite", which left the poor of Bengal unprovided for, due to military considerations. Sen does not deny that British misgovernment contributed to the crisis, but sees the policy failure