Bush points food finger at India
K.P. NAYAR Washington
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by Ajit |
India became the latest target of US President George W. Bush’s talent for verbal indiscretions when he said yesterday that demand for “better nutrition and better food” by Indians was one of the reasons for the looming global food crisis.
Answering a question about the challenge of rising food prices worldwide, Bush said: “Just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That is bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”
The latest “Bushism”, however, does not appear to be the result of any original thought by the President unlike his other faux pas which have already filled at least two volumes of books.
In this instance, Bush has merely borrowed the thoughts from his trusted aide, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
She said last week that “improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India” was contributing to a food shortage because of rising demand.
Cartoon from TOI Ajit Ninan
She made a case that in countries like India and China, it was not as much a problem of declining production as growing prosperity, which has pushed up demand resulting in “pressures to keep food inside the country”.
Bush’s tone was almost accusatory, as if Indians had no right to be prosperous and demand better things.
Of course, he did not dwell on the fact that because of the problem of plenty, Americans waste more food every year than could feed the poor of a continent.
US eats 5 times more than India per capita
Subodh Varma | TIG
Even as the world spins into a global food crisis, a popular theory — voiced by the likes of US President George W Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice — is that the Chinese and Indians are responsible. The ‘logic’: due to zooming incomes, they are eating more, causing worldwide shortages. But is that true?
Due to their huge populations, countries like India and China may appear to consume gigantic amounts of food. But the real elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about is how much each person gets to eat. And the answer will shock many.
Total foodgrain consumption — wheat, rice, and all coarse grains like rye, barley etc — by each person in the US is over five times that of an Indian. Each Indian gets to eat about 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1046 kg. In per capita terms, US grain consumption is twice that of the European Union and thrice that of China. Grain consumption includes flour and by conversion to alcohol.
These figures are collated by the US Department of Agriculture. US per capita grain consumption rose from 946 kg in 2003 to 1046 kg last year. India’s per capita consumption remained static in this period.
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