information:extraction, linguistic:paraphrasing
Indian famine

A major famine coincided with Curzon's time as viceroy in which 1 to 4.5 million people died. Curzon implemented a variety of measures, including opening up famine relief works that fed between 3 and 5 million, reducing taxes and spending vast amounts of money on irrigation works. In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis criticised Curzon for cutting back rations and raising relief eligibility. At the time, Curzon stated that "any government which imperiled the financial position of India in the interests of prodigal philanthropy would be open to serious criticism; but any government which by indiscriminate alms-giving weakened the fibre and demoralized the self-reliance of the population, would be guilty of a public crime."