The Aftermath

The government’s policy on providing loans and land revenue remissions after the cyclone further strengthened the landlords’ position. Sir Richard Temple’s misjudgment about the amount of relief needed resulted in a famine in Chittagong, while Romesh Dutt successfully handled a similar scarcity on the other side of the estuary. The maintenance of law and order in the cyclone-affected districts remained of great concern to the government, though it was reluctant to acknowledge a link between crime and deprivation caused by the cyclone. In the end, no measures were taken to prevent such a calamity from happening again.