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PRESS RELEASE – MAY 2008
Press
Releases Archive...
Bush Talking through
his Hat
Jaipur, May 04, 2008
The US
President George W. Bush’s remarks that food
prices are going up due to the high middle
class consumption in India is as asinine as he
is incomprehensible.
In a
statement released here today, Pradeep S.
Mehta, Secretary General and Siddhartha Mitra,
Research Director of CUTS International, a
leading economic policy research and advocacy
group said that George Bush is well known for
talking through his hat, and his remarks on
India being the cause for high food prices
reflects his utter lack of intelligence, poor
understanding of economics, and sheer
ignorance of basic statistics on food
consumption.
“The average
American’s food consumption in calories is 50
percent more than the average Indian’s; in
addition it is still increasing over time and
a rate which is faster than that of half
starved India. The current average American
intake of 3770 calories, a figure provided by
the FAO Statistical Yearbook, is the
maintenance diet of a sedentary person
weighing 114 kilograms” say Mehta and Mitra.
Indians, on the other hand, still consume only
2440 calories per capita – just enough to
support a much leaner 74 kgs.
Clearly, the
food problem has been created by Americans; if
all of them were to come down to even the
middle class weight in India many hungry
people in Sub-Saharan Africa would find more
food on their plates. On top of that, resource
draining liposuctions would no longer be
necessary; the money instead can go to famine
victims in Somalia and Ethiopia. The loss of
obesity would also probably make Americans
look at the outside world with a less
jaundiced and more benevolent eye.
Apart from
the exploding problem of over consumption,
rising food prices have been caused by the
sudden shrinkage of food supply to the
developing world by the developed countries
who have been trying to sustain their
unsustainable fuel guzzling life styles by
trying to grow oil on plants and trees instead
of food, thus suddenly short-circuiting the
food supply in the international market.
“The harping
on more consumptive lifestyles in India and
China is nothing but a ploy to divert
attention from their complicity in engineering
food shortages and price spirals”, said Mehta.
For further
information please contact:
Pradeep S Mehta,
psm@cuts.org,
+9198290 13131
Siddhartha Mitra,
sm2@cuts.org,
+9197833 98920 |
