Nepal, Sept. 12 -- Like the red mouth of a rectum shrinking shut after ejecting waste," the doors close noiselessly behind Captain Aiden Byrne as he leaves the chambers of the Duke of Buckingham. His plea to halt grain exports from Madras, Vizag, and Nagore for a few months to salvage the famine has all but fallen on deaf ears.

Byrne could hardly have expected otherwise. He rides past Fort St. George onto Beach Road, through a city on the cusp of a great upgrade: new roads and railways, the Senate House rising, and a canal to join the Adyar and the Cooum. All of it richly enabled by the famine itself, which delivered labour more desperate than it had ever been - their wages disappearing upward into the nexus of contractors and bureaucrat...