High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Famine has been a recurrent feature of life in the Indian sub-continental countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and reached its numerically deadliest peak in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historical and legendary evidence names some 90 famines in 2,500 years of history. There are 14 recorded famines in India between the 11th and 17th centuries. Famines in India resulted in more than 60 million deaths over the course of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The last major famine was the Bengal famine of 1943. A famine occurred in the state of Bihar in December 1966 on a much smaller scale. The drought of Maharashtra in 1970 1973 is often cited as an example in which successful famine prevention processes were employed. Famines in British India were severe enough to have a substantial impact on the long term population growth of the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.