Analysing a Famine: A Response

I extend my thanks to Kanakalatha Mukund for her review of my book, A Haunting Tragedy: Gender, Caste and Class in the 1866 Famine of Orissa (EPW, 15 July 2023), commenting on the different chapters in detail and discussing the issues dealt in the book. I greatly value her words of appreciation for the rigorous scholarship underlying my work.

However, her comment on the data on the low death rate of women during the famine period being inconsistent with my main argument on explaining the increasing sex ratio needs clarification.