http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1806579,00.html?imw=3DY
President Bush has never been known for his eloquence, but his comment
earlier this month that India's growing middle class was demanding
"better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that
causes the price to go up" was neither particularly mangled nor, at
first flush, offensive. In the days since, though, India's most
nationalistic politicians, newspapers and television pundits have
expressed outrage, calling Bush's comment rude and insensitive because
it suggests Indians are to blame for recent global food price
increases and implies they should eat less. "U.S. Eats 5 Times More
than India Per Capita" blared a headline in the Times of India above a
typical story outlining the massive disparities between the amount of
grains, meat and vegetables the average American and average Indian
consumes. The message from many Indians over the past two weeks has
been stark: Americans should stop blaming others and start eating
less.
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Bush's wording was perhaps simplistic, a point U.S. diplomats have
been at pains to rectify as they try to dampen the food fight between
the two countries. But Bush was not completely wrong, either. There's
no doubt that China and India's growing middle cl***** are consuming
more and different types of food. As people get richer they tend to
eat more meat and dairy products, for instance, and that's exactly
what's happening in China and India. That growing demand will
naturally push up prices over the long term. But it's debatable
whether the huge price run-ups in the past few months for staples such
as rice and corn can be pinned on China and India alone. Short-term
factors=97such as the huge boom in biofuel production and the
skyrocketing cost of fuel that has pushed up fertilizer and trans****t
prices=97play a big part too. But to pretend that tens of millions of
Chinese and Indians who are joining the middle class every year have
no impact on demand for food is silly. Many Americans overeat, but a
growing number of Indians do as well (even if the national calorie
intake is still relatively small). That's a problem for both
countries' general well-being and health, but it's not the main issue
in rising food prices.
The key is not demand, but supply. Agricultural production in places
such as India has not kept up with the incredible social changes under
way in the country's cities and towns. The green revolution of three
decades ago helped keep the country from starvation, but since then
productivity growth in Indian agriculture has hardly moved. Dan Toole,
the South Asia regional director for the United Nations Children's
Fund, says India is suffering from "a very serious neglect of
agriculture in terms of investment." India, he says, "is perhaps the
solution but is also part of the problem." What's needed is massive
investment in farming, more assistance for the hundreds of millions of
Indians who are malnourished, and for the government "to somehow get
beyond the policy and into the implementation."
Without more attention and investment, India's health will continue to
be a national shame. Almost half of all Indian children under five are
malnourished. The effect of that lasts for years, not only because
malnourished kids are stunted, but because they do worse in school and
tend to have unhealthier kids themselves. "What happens in today's
India may have a bearing on the next two generations," said Dr. M. K.
Bhan, Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology in India's Ministry
of Science and Technology. "Undernutrition in early life is the most
profound issue that should concern us." Bhan urged all players to stop
slinging mud and instead work out how India can start feeding all its
citizens properly. That's pretty good advice. What's needed are
solutions, not debate over who's to blame for short-term food price
inflation.
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