WHAT IF INDIA DOESN'T MAKE IT


	As everyone knows, the poorer countries are in a race
involving population growth, population control programs, development
of food production and starvation.  Since food production fluctuates
from year to year in all countries, if famine comes, it will probably
take the form of a crisis, in which several bad crop years in a row
lead to famine conditions.  Before modern transportation, such famines
occurred occasionally with great loss of life, though not with such
a loss of life as to constitute a substantial reduction in population.
The worst famine in history, according to \F1Encyclopedia Britannica\F0,
happened in Bengal in 1769, and 10,000,000 people died.  India as a whole
had a population of about 170,000,000 at the time, but the afflicted area
clearly lost a larger fraction of its population.

	Although some of the considerations of this section apply to other
countries, we shall concentrate our consideration on India specifically
for the following reasons: (1) It is large enough so that a famine relief
can strain world food supplies including those of the United States. (2)
It has a tradition of being rescued in food crises by outside aid.  (3)
It has a democratic government that is limited in what it can bring itself
to do in order to avert crisis or deal with it.

	Somewhat arbitrarily, we shall define a major Indian food crisis
as one in which food rationing would have to be introduced in the
United States in order to prevent more than two million people dying
directly of starvation in a few months in India.
Some of the considerations of this section might not apply until
the second major Indian food crisis.


	In face of a major Indian food crisis, the world, but especially the
United States because we have 40% of the world's exportable food, would have
the following alternatives:


	1. Introduce the necessary rationing putting no political conditions
on the government of India, and
appropriate tens of billions in fertilizer, production facilities, and
budgetary support in the hopes that this would prevent a recurrence.
The aid would be delivered through the United Nations in order to avoid
any suggestion that the U.S. might expect anything in return.
This way of handling the crisis would be appropriate on the basis of the
view that the richer countries are responsible for the troubles of the
poorer ones.  It would also follow from the view that any inequalities
in the world should be redressed by the richer countries as a moral
obligation.

	If the crisis recurred, it might be concluded that the richer
countries had been delinquent in not responding more generously to
the first or second crises.  If this view prevailed once or twice, it
would probably lose its popularity after several crises.