SEE INDIA ON LESS THAN FORTY CENTS A DAY!

The above offer isn't a travel agent's spectacular bargain offer for tourists. Forty pennies a day is the figure at which the Indian government defines poverty (!). You have to figure that the people who run the government over there are educated people, no? Maybe their area of expertise is not mathematics, but even a rudimentary education includes basic addition and subtraction, and India boasts very many institutions of higher learning, more than many Western nations.

Lately India has been enjoying unprecedented economic boom times. They are even manufacturing their own cars, tailored to the needs of their swiftly growing middle class. Well, you say, don't most nations build cars? No, they don't, but you'd expect a nation of 1.132 billion citizens to have all sorts of industrial capacities. And India does have a robust and growing economy, just not robust and growing enough for all those people. 27% of them live below the poverty line. Which means, in Indian government terms, that well over three hundred million people somehow get to see India every single day on less than forty pennies.

Can that be possible? This is a world power we're taking about, a nuclear-armed, high tech society that graduates the highest amount of PhD 's in computer sciences in the world. It is at the same time several large Third World countries teeming with starving people. Maybe their universities might offer some courses in agriculture? Instead of this option, Indian experts blame the United States, one of their greatest benefactors, for the high prices and shortage of food. The same United States that produces more food more efficiently than any other nation on the planet. America exports more food each year than most nations manage to produce in 5 years. And, by the way, so does india. They've got to pay for those nuclear bombs and large army somehow.

But it's easier to blame a successful nation located half a globe away for the hunger of your own people than to solve your own domestic problems. India is physically about half the size of America and has more than 4 times the inhabitants. India's climate is in large part wet and hot, ideal for growing just about anything. Look at all the humans it has cultivated in such a climate. Maybe now it's time to try to feed them and let that high economic tide lift all their boats. And let some of their agricultural ministers tour America and notice that exactly nobody here dies of starvation other than anorexic entertainers. Maybe get a few pointers before they start pointing fingers. Just a suggestion.