Final answer:
The government may have allowed famines to worsen due to transportation and safety issues, economic policies that failed to address food distribution and security, and decisions prioritizing other objectives. Historical examples include the Ethiopian famine, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the famines during the Soviet collectivization and China's Great Leap Forward.
Step-by-step explanation:
The government may have allowed the famine to worsen due to a variety of factors such as transportation issues, safety problems, and underlying economic policies. For example, during the Ethiopian famine, despite being a net exporter of food, land tenure issues and poverty exacerbated the situation. While macroeconomic policies could potentially address issues of food distribution and security, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has pointed out the failure of such policies to solve food scarcity, arguing for the need for stable inflation, full employment, education of women, and preservation of property rights to eliminate starvation.
In historical instances such as the Bengal famine of 1943, governmental decisions such as the allocation of supplies for war efforts and a 'scorched-earth policy' contributed to the crisis, along with a lack of international response. Similar patterns can be seen in the Soviet Union's collectivization failures leading to the Holodomor in Ukraine, and China's Great Leap Forward, where poor government policies and the requisitioning of grain were principal causes for the famines. These examples illustrate how governmental actions and inactions, often influenced by broader policy objectives or mismanagement, can significantly worsen famine situations.