Food prices continue to rise in the U.S., as well as around the world, and our President has evidently lumped some of the blame on India. The New York Times reports:
After a news conference in Missouri on May 2, he was quoted as saying of India’s burgeoning middle class, “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.”Some Indian economists note correctly that India’s economy has been growing at an impressive clip for almost a decade, while the surge in food prices is a much more recent phenomenon. This swiftly invalidates Bush’s pat assertion that growth in the developing world leads directly to price increases.
Still, I’m not ready to fully agree with Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International in Delhi, either, when he argues that “if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.”
Enough time spent in middle-class Indian circles has amply demonstrated to me that obesity isn’t just for the American middle-classes any longer. The continuing deprivation in rural India, on the other hand, remains the real story, and blame can probably be leveled in a number of directions.
