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 has happened in China.

	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, an