Hitting Back at the US

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 after the Bush administration seemed to blame India’s increasing middle class and prosperity for rising food prices. The food problem has ‘clearly’ been created by Americans, who are eating 50 per cent more calories than the average person in India, said Pradeep Mehta, the secretary general of CUTS Center for International Trade, Economics and Environment. If Americans were to slim down to 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 could be funneled to famine victims instead, he added. During a news conference in Missouri, George 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’. 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, per capita a day in India. “George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics,” Jairam Ramesh, the minister of state for commerce, said, adding this 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.