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TechnoratiIndians Bristle At US Criticism on Food Prices
NEW DELHI - Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy and go on a diet, say a growing number of politicians, economists and academics here.
Criticism of the United States has ballooned in India recently, particularly after the Bush administration seemed to blame India's increasing middle class and prosperity for rising food prices. Critics from India seem to be asking one underlying question: "Why do Americans think they deserve to eat more than Indians?"
The food problem has "clearly" been created by Americans, who are eating 50 percent more calories than the average person in India, said Pradeep Mehta, the secretary general of CUTS Center for International Trade, Economics and Environment, a private economic research organization based in India with offices in Kenya, Zambia, Vietnam and Britain.
If Americans were to slim down to even the middle-class weight in India, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates," Mehta said. The money Americans spend on liposuction to get rid of their excess fat could be funneled to famine victims instead, he added.
Developing nations like China and India have long been blamed for everything from the rising cost of commodities to global warming, because they are consuming more goods and fuels than ever before. But Indians from the prime minister's office on down never fail to point out that per capita, India uses far fewer commodities and pollutes far less than the West, and particularly the United States.
Many Indians felt that the remarks of President George W. Bush on May 2 were more of the same, though this time they seemed to breed a widespread sense of "We're not going to take this anymore." During a news conference in Missouri, Bush mentioned India's growing middle class, and said "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." This came on the heels of a similar statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that had already upset many in India.
Americans eat an average of 3,770 calories per capita a day, the highest amount in the world, according to data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, compared to 2,440 calories in India. They are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of beef, the most energy-intensive common food source, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The United States and Canada top the world in oil consumption per person, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
"George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics," Jairam Ramesh, the minister of state for commerce, told The Press Trust of India after Bush's remarks, which he said proved again how "comprehensively wrong" Bush is.
"To say that demand for food in India is causing increase in global food prices is completely wrong," Ramesh said.
Politicians and academics in India cite various other reasons: diversion of arable land in the United States and Europe into ethanol production; trade subsidies by the United States and Europe; and the dollar's decline.
Subsidies to Western farmers have undercut agricultural production in fertile areas of Africa for decades, Kamal Nath, India's minister for commerce and industry, said by telephone. Meanwhile, he added, Americans waste more food than people in many other countries, in part because they buy in such large quantities.
The United States is responsible "many times more" than India for the world food crisis because of its higher food consumption, said Ramesh Chand, an economist with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which advises India's government on farming policy.
The Bush administration responded to the criticism from India with calls for a truce. Bush is a "great friend and admirer" of India, said David Mulford, the U.S. ambassador to India. He added that he thought "this is a time for increased cooperation among nations to solve this problem and that hostile political commentary is not productive."
A White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel said, "We think it is a good thing countries are developing, that more and more people have higher standards of living."
Blaming India's growth is not only unfair but nonsensical, some economists argue. Food prices have not been continually rising with the growth of the developing world, said Ramgopal Agarwala, a former World Bank economist and senior adviser at RIS, a think tank in New Delhi.
"They were static until 2006, then in 2007 and 2008 there was a sudden spark," he said. Meanwhile, India's boom has been happening over the past decade. This is "not last year's phenomena," he said.
"I don't know who advised the president" on his recent comments, Agarwala said, but his analysis is "subprime."
Bush's "ignorance on most matters is widely known and openly acknowledged by his own countrymen," The Asian Age argued May 5 in an editorial, but he must not be allowed to "get away" with an attempt to "divert global attention from the truth by passing the buck on to India."
Mehta said that his remarks on liposuction were meant to be tongue in cheek but that "politically incorrect" attitudes like Bush's and Rice's needed to be challenged. Rather than blaming India, Mehta said, the West should be adjusting to the changing world. "If the developing world is going to develop, demand is going to go up and there are going to be new political paradigms," he said.
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
© 2008 International Herald Tribune
23 Comments so far
Show AllHome Ec classes teach a lot of useful life skills, that could be beneficial to the iPod generation. Budgeting, math, problem solving, organization skills and motor skills. Hmm, is there a correlation there to the current fix we're in?
barksnotbites: One selling point for men to take a Home Ec class is that the class IS full of women. I've heard stories of more than one man taking it for that reason.
elmysterio: Same situation in my household. I took a part time job in college as a cook at a local restaurant. The best job I've ever had, taught me a lot. What woman doesn't appreciate a man that knows his way around a kitchen?
jun11 (aka rcarrace)
You are ignorant and racist. They normally go together. Its amazing that CD allows these trolls to spew their venom around here. Ofcourse, you make a single anti-zionist remark and CD censors yank your ass off the board !!
I have been to India and the situation is horrible for the poor of india. However, the wealthy live an exagerated lifestyle with slave labor at their door step. I dispise Bush but for the first time i must agree that indians are responsible for the indians that are starving. While i will not comment on the indians that are here in the US i must agree the old cliche that indians are smart is overblown and white america will notice that there is a reason why Great Britian has a quota on indian immigration. Indians are a people that few western nations have actually analyzed completely. It is not racism to analyze and discuss human behavior. The so-called liberals need to visit these third world countries and see what the problem is first hand rather then make assumptions based on other liberal writings.
consumption patterns and diabetes/ hypeetension/heart disease for upper middle class indians are inching to those of the west. however it hardly serves for the pot to call the kettle black.
what remains different is that for the 2/3 of indian country that is rural, food is seasonal,and is produced and consumed locally,and not packaged, making it a lot less energy intensive.and food is not wasted. bottled water consumption, another energy hog, per capita is also 1/5 that of usa/europe.
Elmysterio: You have one lucky wife. Trust.
Armybrat: Right on. Me too.
Lots of good points, peeps.
Racist attitudes gotta stop. We need an evolution of What Is Possible, All that is possible.
My "master-plan' is to grow enough food to feed several families, then get a big corporate store to donate non-toxic pots and pans, and teach families how to cook vegetables, grains and legumes. That is a small way to create the world I would like to live in. I am working on acquiring a large enough space to grow like this. I will keep you all updated. : )
It's embarrassing that Americans are the world's fattest people -- then to add insult to injury, arrogantly criticize other countries for their food intake.
:(
Hey, I just had a thought, maybe we could turn all of that excess liposuction fat into bio-fuels? Run your SUV on primo high-octane flab. 'Tap that ass' would take on an entirely new meaning..
Middle class India is developing a high rate of diabetes, welcome to the club of over consumers. The Indians who are really suffering from hunger have no voice in modern media, just like the poor have none here. But I think that a bone skinny starving villager would find it hard to relate to a pasty pudgy welfare recipient living on day old food bank pastries.
A lot of those 'fat ass' Americans are poor people who cannot afford decent diets and are forced to eat cheap carb-heavy greasy crap because it's cheap and they're used to 3 meals a day. In Europe, I only had a light lunch and then dinner - anyone ever hear of the 'Continental breakfast' ???? I've gotten by just fine on one meal a day for most of my life - and a light lunch when doing heavy physical work. But poor people can't afford the kind of food I buy - or else they're too ignorant (uneducated) to know better. The US ideal 'food pyramid' is a joke - always has been - because advertisers are allowed to lie. Just like they do with drugs, lemon-cars, shoddy houses, etc - one scam after another.
Oh, and it might help to junk all those idiot boxes that I see glowing throughout my town after dark - that's scary. Like everyone turns into pod-people after 6pm. (And of course, on week-ends).
from a prev blog entry ...
The global food crisis is primarily due to the conversion of food grain production to energy creation - biofuels. As always its us in the West, with our humongous appetite for energy and consumption thats responsible for this crisis and we are also the first to point fingers at others. The U.S. consumes 5 times the amount of food per capita as an average Indian. Maybe if we get our fat asses off the dinner table and lead a more healthy lifestyle we can affect change. Our racist attitudes to other cultures is deplorable.
I doubt that the rising food prices has anything to do with consumption.
more likely the folks who sucked the US economy dry by re-selling all that bad sub-prime debt are looking for a good place to stick their trillons, so they're speculating on comodities like food and oil and gold, driving the prices up.
what it means is that people will starve, suffer and die so they can make their profits.
barksnotbites I do all the cooking in my family. My wife prefers it that way. ;) And hell, I enjoy it.
Remember rcarrace everyone? he's the rabid cuban who's poor poor grandpappy lost his business to that evil evil Castro... Now he's on here slamming India.. What wonderful human being he is. ;)
rcarrace you racist prick stop trolling. Maybe if your daddy stopped shagging your sister .. er .. momma ... you would grow half a brain and be able to get your job back from those overrated cheap indians.
Home Ec. class in school was always filled with girls. Like it would be embarrassing for a guy to know his way around a kitchen. There is alot of math in cooking and my son loves that as well as exacting- pouring, fine motor skills, etc. Not to mention eating, which seems secondary after all the fun of creating and sharing with others.
Yeah...and them Injuns watch too many Bollywood movies. Using up popcorn. Well, time for a peanut butter 'n jelly sammich, an' some chocolate milk. I mean, my doctor, he a Injun, an' he want me to lose weight. Proves they hate us.
"If Americans were to slim down to even the middle-class weight in India, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates," Mehta said"
And we consume 3700 calories? Insane.
We eat 55% more calories per day than the average Indian. Holy Cow! Maybe we should adopt the Hindu's philosophy and not eat cows.
I think one root of this problem is the art of cooking is becoming lost in the US. We eat out several times a week and the portions are growing, along with our waistlines. The food we do cook at home comes from a box or can and is highly processed crapola. Hardly anyone can cook from scratch anymore.
They phased out home economic courses in high schools long ago. Time to start getting those programs started again. Our future health and well being may count on it!
The most offensive thing is the waste. Restaurant portions seem to be usually more than enough for 2 people. And they often get offended if you ask for less.
There is one place I go to as much as I can because the food is just too delicious to resist. When I asked for a smaller portion they said, "You can take it home and eat the rest tomorrow."
"But I'm on a bicycle and I'm not going right home. Do you think I want to carry a styrofoam container of jerk chicken around for an hour and a half in my backpack?"
So I either eat so much I can barely move or I leave some on the plate knowing that the health department requires them to throw it out.
They may mean well but it's frustrating.
"The money Americans spend on liposuction to get rid of their excess fat could be funneled to famine victims instead, he added."
Ha !! Aint that the friggin truth !
Always blame those who have little and ask them to cut down. Nothing's changed since the days of Oliver Twist. Mr. Bumble is the Bush administration's national advisor on hunger.
The picture reminds me of a commercial I just saw that shows a young lady with a child in an asian market very much like the one in the picture. The voice over says how great it would be to turn those stalls into a boxed supermarket and the scene morphs into that vision...
It's really creepy how our corporations keep saying they are going to get "value" out of the "emerging markets" but then we lament that this is adverse to our markets... It's all so greedy. Just wait and you'll see the evangelicals saying the word "Mammon" a lot more in coming days...
Fat Ass Americans, it's about time to face the truth. We are the sucking sound in the world today. No matter how good at conserving I might be, I am still part of the we until the whole country changes.
:(