countries, there were no impediments to the export of food during times of famines. Lessons learnt from the Irish famine were not seen in the correspondence on policy-making during the 1870s in India. Famine Codes The Famine Commission of 1880 observed that each province in British India, including Burma, had a surplus of food grains and that the annual surplus amounted to 5.16 million metric tons. The product of the Famine Commission was a series of government guidelines and regulations on how to respond to famines and food shortages called the Famine Code. These had to wait until the exit of Lord Lytton as viceroy and were finally passed in 1883 under a subsequent more liberal-minded viceroy, Lord Ripon. They presented an early warning system to detect and respond to food shortages. Despite the codes, mortality from famine was highest in the last 25 years of the 19th century. At that time, annual exports of rice and other grains from India was approximately one million metric tons. Development economist Jean Drèze evaluated the conditions before and after Famine Commission policy changes: "A contrast between the earlier period of frequently recurring catastrophes, and the latter period when long stretches of tranquility were disturbed by a few large scale famines" in 1896–97, 1899–1900, and 1943–44. Drèze explains these "intermittent failures" by four factors—failure to declare a famine (particularly in 1943), the "excessively punitive character" of famine restrictions such as wages for public works, the "policy of strict non-interference with private trade," and the natural severity of the food crises. There was still a threat of famine, but after 1902 there was no major famine in India until the Bengal famine of 1943 during World War II. This famine killed between 2.5 and 3 million people. In India as a whole, the food supply was rarely inadequate, even in times of droughts. The Famine Commission of 1880 identified that the loss of wages from lack of employment of agricultural laborers and artisans was the cause of famines. The Famine Code applied a strategy of generating employment for these sections of the population and relied on open-ended public works to do so. The Indian Famine Code was used in India until more lessons were learned from the Bihar famine of 1966–1967. The Famine Code has been updated in independent India and it has been renamed "Scarcity Manuals." In some parts of the country, the