[Marxism] Adding insult to injury: Bush says starving India eats too much

[PoliticNow at aol.com]

Adding insult to injury: Bush says starving India eats too much
 
 
By Kavita Krishnan 
May 7, 2008 -- Karl Marx, born on 5 May, 1818, nearly two centuries ago, had  
in 1867 laid bare the ``intimate connection between the pangs of hunger of 
the  most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant 
consumption,  coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the 
basis''  (_Capital_ 
(http://www.resistancebooks.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=26_35&products_id=250)  Vol. 1, Ch. 25). In May 2008, nearly a century  
and a half later, as we hear Emperor Bush hold forth on global hunger, we are  
reminded that capitalism and global wealth remains just as intimately wedded 
to  hunger. 
For related Links articles, including a video by Hugo Chavez,  click _here_ 
(http://www.links.org.au/taxonomy/term/100)   
The global policeman Bush, in the time-honoured traditions of the backyard  
bully, has long harboured the habit of dictating to nations who their friends  
and enemies should be. Now, he has taken to telling nations how much they 
should  eat, and of wagging a disapproving finger at poor nations whose middle 
class has  made some improvements in its diet. 
Bush's sentiments (and those of his lieutenant Condoleezza Rice) reek of  
callous contempt for the world's poor. They lay bare the fact that the only  
perspective Bush and US imperialism is capable of is that of the US  corporations. 
In Bush's words, the growing purchasing power of the middle class  in the 
developing world is ``good'' because ``y'know, it's hard to sell products  into 
countries that aren't prosperous'' (see 
_http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3006775.cms_ 
(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3006775.cms) ),  he said on May 3. But, lamented Bush, ``you start getting wealth, you 
start  demanding better nutrition and better food''. In other words, India's 
growing  appetite was pushing food prices up and causing the rest of the world 
to go  hungry. Unfortunately, the world's people haven't mastered the art of 
being  markets, not mouths: of tightening the belt over their bellies while 
loosening  their purse strings ... 
Bush is the head of the nation whose successive governments used its military 
 to ruthlessly batter a long list of Latin American and African countries 
into  being pliant suppliers of cash crops for the US corporations; and in the 
process  devastating the food security of these nations. Major General Smedley 
Butler has  described how, as a US marine, he had been ``a high class 
muscle-man for Big  Business...a gangster for capitalism'' who had helped to make 
Honduras, Mexico,  Haiti, various Central American republics, Nicaragua and the 
Dominican Republic  ``safe'' for plunder by US fruit, oil, and sugar corporations 
and banks in the  early twentieth century. Washington's latest exploit has 
been to ``make Iraq  safe'' for US oil corporations, in the process devastating 
its economy, its  infrastructure, and its thriving health and education 
structures. Now, Bush has  the gall to offer in charity what his nation has 
plundered by military muscle  and economic arm-twisting. Like a rapacious wolf dressed 
up as a kindly and  nurturing mother, he describes the US as an 
``unbelievably compassionate and  generous nation'' and offers to help the poor countries 
out by ``buying food  directly from farmers as opposed to giving people food''. 
So, the deepest desire  of the US corporations –- to have the farmers of 
developing countries as captive  and direct producers for them alone -– is 
projected by Bush as generosity! 
The US today along with a small and exclusive club of ``developed'' countries 
 guzzles a disproportionate share of the world's scarce resources including 
fuel,  paper and food. It is also responsible for a disproportionately high 
share of  global pollution. Although constituting only 5 per cent of the global  
population, the US emits more carbon dioxide, consumes more paper and other  
forest products, and produces more municipal waste than any other country. Yet  
Bush refused to curb carbon emissions in the US, saying ``the American way of 
 life is not negotiable'', and peddling the absurd theory that cows were more 
 responsible for such emissions than cars, and so countries like China and 
India  ought therefore to bear a greater burden of curbing emissions! 
 
* * * * 
Annual per capita foodgrains consumption in the  US is over five times that 
of India, and three times that of China, according to  figures released by the 
US Department of Agriculture for 2007. On average, a US  citizen consumes 1046 
kg of grain, and around 20 times more meat and fish and 60  times more paper, 
gasoline and diesel than the average Indian. But in India,  since the entry 
of globalisation, the average per capita consumption of food  grain has 
actually gone down from 177 kg per person to 155 kg per person: which  is the same as 
the hunger levels seen during famine in times of the British Raj.  And in 
India, foodgrains absorption is rising fast for the (mainly urban) middle  class, 
which boosts the national average. A large section of the rural poor are  
actually reduced to as low as 136 kg per capita per year –- which is the same as  
that of starvation-hit sub-Saharan Africa. Bush grudges the 350 
million-strong  Indian middle class its improved diet: he is blithely silent about more 
than 350  million rural Indians who are below the average food energy intake of  
sub-Saharan African countries! Studies have shown a long-term tendency towards 
 declining per capita calorie consumption, especially in rural India -– that 
is,  Indians are growing hungrier year after year. Deaths by hunger are an 
all-too  common phenomenon which Indian rulers are united in denying.

And these millions owe their hunger directly to the rural job losses, income  
decline, land grab, slashed government expenditure on rural development, 
slashed  PDS and increased grain exports -– all of which are policies aggressively 
 promoted by the US-backed IMF-World Bank, and faithfully forced on Indian 
people  by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his predecessors.  
Of course, the actual food consumption of the poor Americans is less than the 
 national average. Hunger and homelessness are a growing phenomenon in the 
US,  the world's richest country. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 
in  2006 more 35 million people lived in food-insecure households, including 
13  million children. Adults living in over 12 million households could not 
eat  balanced meals and in more than 7 million families someone had smaller 
portions  or skipped meals. In close to 5 million families, children did not get 
enough to  eat at some point during the year. This hunger at home is all the 
more horrific  when one knows that more than sufficient food grains are grown in 
the US –- but  is fed to cars as ``bio-fuel'' rather than to hungry people! 
Bush's bratty and bullying arrogance is really nothing new: we expect nothing 
 better. The real question is why Manmohan Singh, our prime minister, 
describes a  man with such contempt for India and for the poor of the world, as 
``India's  best friend''? Why insist on continuing with US-dictated policies which 
favour  imperialism and force millions of Indians to live in misery and 
hunger?  
[Kavita Krishnan is an editorial board member of Liberation, central  organ 
of the _Communist Party of  India (Marxist-Leninist)_ (http://www.cpiml.org/)  
-- CPI (ML) Liberation.] 
_http://www.links.org.au/node/393_ (http://www.links.org.au/node/393) 





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