India's poverty rate is still tied to caloric intake of about 2100 (rural). Until recently this was how POV was measured now they include some nonfood items. Malnutrition persists despite government programs and rotting grain in the public distribution system.
Anthony DCosta Professor of Indian Studies Asia Research Centre CBS Sent from my iPhone On May 10, 2012, at 4:24 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > [much of the same stuff can be said about oil.] > > The New York Times / Sunday Book Review. > > THE TASTE OF WAR: World War II and the Battle for Food > By Lizzie Collingham > Illustrated. 634 pp. The Penguin Press. $36. > > May 4, 2012 > On Their Stomachs > By TIMOTHY SNYDER > > Calories were made to be counted, but they have generally been counted > for two very different reasons. We associate calories with excess, but > for most of its history this little unit of energy was linked to > shortage. The years since World War II have been a time of cheap and > plentiful food, and of obese and sick citizens. Since our own daily > struggle is fought against fat, we fail to see that many of the > conflicts of the past were wars against hunger. Just as obesity leads > to diabetes and human blindness, so plentiful food leads to decadent > forms of history and social blindness. We are fortunate to have a > bracing book like “The Taste of War,” which does much to correct > understanding of the causes of armed conflict and mass murder. > > If World War II were only about bad ideas, as we like to think, then > we are all safe. Who among us admires Hitler, Himmler or Hirohito? > But if the war and its atrocities had to do with material want, we > cannot so easily separate ourselves from evil. Lizzie Collingham > soberly argues that the expansionist designs of both Nazi Germany and > imperial Japan must be understood within a world political economy in > which the single crucial commodity was food. The British Empire had > dominated a global system of free trade that was disrupted by the > Great Depression. States like Germany and Japan, unable to supply > themselves with sufficient food for their own citizens from domestic > sources, had two choices. They could play the game by the British > rules, which could seem humiliating and pointless in the 1930s, or > they could try to control more territory. > > Collingham, the author of “Imperial Bodies” and “Curry,” sketches the > hunger motive on the body of the Japanese soldier in Asia, who not > only starved others but was starved himself. The energetic Japanese > attacks remembered with chagrin by British and American soldiers were > driven by the need to capture food from the enemy. In the end, more > Japanese soldiers died from starvation and associated diseases than in > combat. > > Nazi Germany planned to control a vast Eastern European empire whose > inhabitants would be starved in the tens of millions. It was a rare > case of planning more murder in war than actually happened. When the > Nazis had to choose whom to starve in an uncertain and long war, they > thought racially and picked the Jews. Most of the world’s Jews, seen > by the Nazis as the source of all ills to Germany, lived in the very > territories that were to be colonized. Collingham shows, and here she > is in the mainstream of Holocaust historians working beyond the United > States, how food shortages were one of the factors that led toward the > policy of full extermination. > > Another reason we dismiss the material causes of war is that > aggressive wars of colonization tend to fail. The Germans and the > Japanese lost the war and returned to home territory and home islands. > The Germans had hoped to supply themselves for eternity with grain > from the rich black soil of Ukraine; but in fact they got very little. > This is because, as Collingham demonstrates, war itself tends to > disrupt labor, harvests and markets. Even if the intention of the > Germans had not been to cause starvation, invasions tend to do so. > Some two million people starved to death in French Indochina. At least > 10 million starved in China, whose army was living from the land on > its own territory. About three million starved in Bengal in British > India. Collingham argues that many of them might have been saved if > Churchill had not been annoyed with Gandhi and the Free India movement > and inclined to see Indians as racial inferiors. > > Collingham’s case, in one respect, is even stronger than it seems. > Rather than seeing the Soviet Union as an aggressor in the war, which > it certainly was in 1939 and 1940, she discusses its fate after it was > betrayed by its Nazi ally and invaded in 1941. But larger history > confirms her argument. Like Germany and Japan, the Soviet Union too > was reacting to an international political economy dominated by > Britain. It too wished to create economic self-sufficiency on a > continental scale. The solution Stalin advanced was not to seize > territory from abroad, but to colonize itself from within. Agriculture > was “collectivized,” brought under state control. As Collingham notes, > millions of people died of malnutrition as a result. They died in what > their own leaders called a “war” against prosperous farmers, and in a > process that Stalin saw as necessary preparation for a general war to > come. > > The result was control without productivity, which left the Soviet > Union vulnerable when it was invaded by Nazi Germany. Communist > agriculture survived through a kind of parasitism upon capitalism: > Stalin allowed collective farmers to work private plots and middlemen > to profit on sales of food. In the end, though, it was American food > that ensured the Soviet soldier did not go hungry. > > As Collingham rightly notes (if not without some self-indulgent swipes > at American culture), the war was a very special moment for American > agriculture, offering a perfect conjuncture: demand abroad, stability > at home and a technological revolution. Prosperity depended in > considerable measure upon a world calamity, but in the United States > it was ascribed only to domestic freedom. Thus, Collingham argues, the > war did not boost policies of planning and redistribution in America > as it did in Europe, and it permitted the false lesson that > laissez-faire is always enough. The improvements in technology > (pesticides, fertilizers, hybrids) were very real, and spread from the > United States to the rest of the world after the war. They were and > remain enough to oversupply America and Europe with food. Had this > green revolution come 20 years earlier, World War II might have been > unthinkable. But will such abundance last forever? > > The combination of population growth and prosperity in this century > means that we have ever more urban people eating ever more meat, which > requires ever more grain, ever more land, ever more efficiency. > Climate change and water shortages make soil fertility uncertain. The > early 21st century is coming to resemble the early 20th century, with > expectations of shortfall influencing ideology and strategy. > > The American understanding of World War II arises from the special > circumstances that made it, for us, the source of postwar plenty. But > how would we behave if we anticipated that we will no longer be able > to feed ourselves as we are accustomed? How will Asia look in 30 > years, after China’s topsoil is eroded and its glaciers have melted? > Collingham’s book masterfully corrects our understanding of the great > conflict that made America what it is, and thus prepares us for the > conflicts that are all too likely to come. Its usefulness is hard to > overstate. > > ---- > Timothy Snyder is the Housum professor of history at Yale University > and the author of “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.” Most > recently he helped Tony Judt to write “Thinking the Twentieth > Century.” > -- > Jim Devine / "When truth is nothing but the truth, it's unnatural, > it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In > nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with > the essential truth." -- Aldous Huxley > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
