International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research

Authors
Swagatika Dash

Abstract
Rice is an important food element for the Indian subcontinent. It has a deep historical root into ancient period of India. Since the second urbanization movement in Northern India rice became the staple food of many regions of this land. Basically, eastern region of India due to its plain land have been adopted rice as their main food. Orissa which situated in eastern part of India also followed the same. Not only food, rice has taken an important place in the Oriya culture, religion, and social policies. During British administration once Orissa had faced a severe shortage of rice. Nearly one million people were died due to shortage of rice in 1866 famine. Women and girl children were left house to save male persons of the family. To fill the empty stomach and control the pain of starvation, human was eating own children’s body during this famine. Zamindar and landlord’s role was negative in this food battle. Peasants, labourer, workers and lower-class people were suffered a lot. This paper is attempted to analyze the various factors which led the shortage of rice in the society and find out how its shortage caused the death of thousands of people during 1866 famine of Orissa.