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WHAT IF INDIA DOESN'T MAKE IT


	Some year soon  India may face  a major food crisis  in which
the United  States of America would have  to introduce food rationing
in order to prevent several million Indians from starving  to death. 
The following considerations apply:

	1. The immediate  cause of the crisis will probably  be a few
years  bad weather or  possibly a  war or civil  war - in  any case a
temporary phenomenon.  Thus it will be possible to see  an end to the
immediate crisis.  However, one step back in the causal chain will be
India's failure to keep its population and food supply in balance. 

	2. Some  people will  say that  the U.S.  will have  a  moral
obligation to supply the food.  The reasons given will include simple
humanitarianism and  equalitarianism (we have it  and they don't) and
also reasons based on the proposition that we are guilty of something
-  imperialism, neo-colonialism,  letting international  corporations
exploit people. 

	Already  some people say that the  U.S. is guilty for feeding
so much to cattle when  more food could be exported if we  would live
on  grain and soybeans  rather than  feed them  to cattle,  hogs, and
poultry.  This point of view is not much impressed by arguments  that
the U.S. is already doing its share in putting  out 40% of world food
exports with only 6% of the world's population. 

	3.    It will  be easy  to  identify policies  of  the Indian
government and of political groups in India that are  responsible for
the  crisis.   Thus India  has managed  a war,  the development  of a
nuclear bomb, internal struggles about what language to speak in what
area of the country, and  the symbol of Mrs. Ghandi's  Congress Party
is the cow.   (India has 180,000,000 cows that  produce 600 pounds of
milk products a year whereas the U.S. has 17,000,000 milk cattle that
produce 10,000  pounds  of milk  products a  year  apiece).   India's
students  still  mainly want  to  be lawyers,  politicians,  and pure
scientists  and   government   officials   rather   than   engineers,
agronomists, or  businessmen.  Agriculture and  population control do
not command the full resources available to the government.  However,
these policies are the resultant of the  democratic political process
in  India, and it  is not easy  to say  that any particular  group of
politicians would be better of advocating different policies than  it
does. 


	4. Such  a  major food  crisis may  not happen.   The  Indian
government is  putting effort into the  food and population problems,
and India's increasing capability  for organized effort is  evidenced
by the  successful war with Pakistan  and by the organization  of the
production of atomic bombs. 

	5.  Foreign aid has not solved the  problem.  Some people say
this is because foreign aid has been insufficient and  that much more
would do  it.  Perhaps it  would, but it seems unlikely  that a great
increase is forthcoming.  Understanding of the problem is clouded, it
seems to me, by the tendency of the advocates of increased aid to try
to  instigate and  capitalize on  guilt  feeling among  the potential
donors.  This has created  a vague feeling that India's troubles  are
somehow the fault of foreign countries. 

	On  the positive  side,  foreign aid  has contributed  useful
technology  in agriculture, industry, and birth  control.  Other aid,
such as that to educational institutions has probably been neutral in
its  effects  on  the  population-food  problem.   Almost  certainly,
military aid has had negative effects.  The major negative effect  of
foreign  aid   has  been   to  postpone   the  time   at  which   the
population-food  problem  dominates Indian  politics  by  getting the
government over crises.  To the extent that foreign aid has permitted
a  perception  that  foreign  governments were  responsible  for  the
situation  or for finding a  solution, it has  had a negative effect.
Anything that allows resources to be expended on  increasing the size
of bureaucracy  has been negative.  The  tendency for the bureaucracy
to expand  is  important  in  almost  all  underdeveloped  countries,
because getting one's relatives into the bureaucracy  may be the only
way to  save them from a  life of extreme poverty,  and in almost all
such countries, family ties are  quite strong and family duties  much
recognized. 


POSSIBLE RESULTS OF A MAJOR FOOD CRISIS

	1. The required sacrifices are  made by the U.S. and possibly
other  advanced countries,  but no  fundamental changes in  India are
made.  Then there is a strong possibility that  the crisis will recur
in an aggravated form. 

	2.  The advanced countries  provide not only  the immediately
required food  but also  technological and  financial aid  on a  much
larger scale than  previously.  This  is the scenario favored  by the
Indian  government,   United  Nations  officials,  and  many  liberal
thinkers  about the  problem.    As  this  point  of  view  sees  it,
sufficiently generous aid on non-coercive  terms is the only way out.
Anything else tends to be unthinkable or at least unthought about.  A
failure of an aid program to achieve the desired  result would simply
mean that it wasn't  big enough.  Naturally, United Nations officials
cannot think  about  any  international  program  that  violated  the
sovereignty  of  the  recipient  country.     Indeed,  the  trend  of
international  political   opinion  is  in  the  direction  of  fewer
restrictions on the way aid is used, and many liberals  advocate that
U.S.  aid be  funneled  through the  U.N. so  that  we cannot  impose
conditions.   This tendency  protects the political  processes of the
recipient countries from external pressure. 

	In my  opinion, it may  turn out  that no-strings aid  simply
will not be forthcoming in sufficient quantity to prevent starvation. 

	3. The food crisis triggers civil war.  Communists of various
kinds  favor  civil  war  as  a  means  of  getting  power,  and  the
desperation induced by the crisis may get  them soldiers.  Once civil
war is started,  the situation is exacerbated by the fact that it may
be safer to be in one of the armies than to be a civilian,  since the
armies  will  requisition  food  for themselves.    The  actual  issue
starting the  war may not be the food crisis, but the crisis may make
it more likely that a  conflict over some other issue will  result in
war.  India may be the first country to have a nuclear civil war.  If
such a war started,  a substantial fraction  of the population  might
die, because productive  facilities would inevitably be  destroyed as
well as transportation  facilities necessary to bring in what foreign
aid might be available. 

	4.  A  military   dictatorship  may  take   over.    Such   a
dictatorship might find its  internal political problems simpler than
the  present democracy and hence  might be able  to dedicate a larger
fraction of  national resources  to the  food problem.   A  communist
dictatorship would also be able to devote major national resources to
the food and population problems.  This is said to have happened in China,
but one cannot be sure, because of that country's success in at
public relations and suppressing the export of bad news.

	5. The food  and population issues  might acquire  sufficient
salience in the minds of politically active Indians that a democratic
government  would be  formed that would  take sufficient  measures to
solve the problem.  This would be the best possible outcome. 

	6. Foreign  aid might  be conditional  on certain  measures. 
This would require a foreign country  with both the resources to give
the aid, and the political self-confidence to do what it thought best.