Bush's food for thought

Fingers poised over the keyboard, ready to start another diatribe against Bahrain's MPs, a topic came up in the office that derailed my train of thought and set me on to an entirely different track.

It seems that US_President George W Bush has made a comment that has set part of the Indian community on the edge. With his usual tactlessness he has implied that the problem with food shortages that is starting to plague the world is the fault of some 350 million middle class Indians who, as a result of getting consistently wealthier, are responsible for the lack of food in the world.

Talk about things that could have been better put!

Caught between outraged solidarity with my friends and colleagues and the rational part of my brain trying to tell me that no head of state - even one so famous for his verbal faux pas that they've actually been named 'Bushisms' - could actually be irresponsible enough to say something like that without it having some basis of truth, I had to put some thought and research into what had actually been said and whether or not it could have been construed as a racist comment.

What he actually said was: "There are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That's bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And 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".

While I can understand how and why tempers were inflamed, no one was more surprised than I to actually find myself defending what Bush had said.

And, it got me to thinking how our own preconceived notions of a person or situation can easily cause us to take offence where none was meant.

Bush hasn't made himself the most popular person in recent times and there is so much back-lash due to the war in Iraq that everything and anything he says is, more often than not, taken to be the evil rambling of a man who believes only he knows what's right for the world.

As a result, when he actually says something that might make a certain amount of sense, it's much easier to just put it down to him saying something offensive.

The truth is I'm not his biggest fan either but then I'm not a fan of politicians in general so that's not really big news.

But, taking a few moments to dissect what he really said, I actually found myself believing that he isn't entirely wrong. He wasn't being racist or idiotic or trying to point the finger at an entire race, he was simply stating a few facts.

Fact 1 - In recent years, India has enjoyed a well-earned economic boom and as a result a nation that used to be devastatingly poor is now doing very well for itself on a global stage. That's something for the entire world to be proud of as the less poverty there is in the world, the better and happier for all.

Fact 2 - India has the second largest population in the world and as a result its now wealthy middle class out-numbers the wealthy middle class of practically any other country - 350 million is a huge number of people whichever way you look at it.

Fact 3 - When generation after generation has lived below the poverty line, finding it hard to put food on the table, it's only natural that when they have the money to spend on food and luxuries they're going to do so. It is simple economics that when the demand is high and the supply is not big enough to meet it; prices are going to go up.

Put the three facts together and you have the comment that Bush made. He didn't actually apportion blame, he merely stated the obvious. There simply isn't enough food produced to meet the demands of the ever-increasing number of people that want it.

India's growing wealth is a contributing factor towards spiralling food prices. But then so is the rise in wealth of lots of large countries.

Along with India, China and Russia have also enjoyed large economic growths.

All-in-all that's a very large number of extra people able to now enjoy basic foods that in poorer times would have been considered a luxury.

That doesn't make it anyone's fault, it simply means that the rest of the world didn't take enough notice of what was happening and lacked the forethought to make sure that supply was increased to meet the ever-growing demands of the world in general.

In retrospect, it seems somewhat arrogant of developed countries to miss the fact that a country like India, which many still consider to be third world, has in fact very definitely joined the ranks of developing countries and by the time our children's children have children the third world will be a distantly remembered tag.

If we open our eyes properly to what's going on around us, it's clear to see that the 21st Century very much belongs to Asia and its development.