INDIA'S FAMINE IS JOHNSON'S OPPORTUNITY
Last February 14, the House Committee on Agriculture opened hearings in Washington on President Johnson's "Food. for Freedom" program. The main point on the agenda was the rising threat of mass starvation on the Indian subcontinent.
Dr. Roger Revelle, director of the Harvard Center for Population Studies, painted a dark picture, stating that "it is almost certain that tens of millions of people will starve" in the famine "and there will be millions of deaths that would otherwise not occur."
"The saddest part of the story is that it may be too late for us and the other rich countries to help very much," he continued. "My recent experiences in India have filled me with a great personal concern about the desperate conditions that our fellow human beings face today in that deeply impoverished country."
President Johnson got into the act by revealing to the press that he was considering calling an international conference to develop and coordinate greater famine relief efforts for India. He said that he was even considering asking for special emergency legislation, presumably to help India pay the shipping costs for U.S. wheat.
A typical response by generous-hearted Uncle Sam to a despairing plea from abroad? No doubt. It was also typical in another way. On November 29 in New Delhi, outraged members of Parliament rose one after another to denounce Johnson for delaying the grain shipments.
It appears there were certain strings attached. The Johnson administration wants bigger opportunities in India for American oil companies to build fertilizer plants. Johnson wants the so-called "surplus" states in India to ship food to the newly stricken areas. Above all, Johnson is fuming over the temerity of the Indian government in calling for a halt to the bombing of north Vietnam.
And so speaker after speaker in the Indian Parliament rose to denounce the freeze on grain shipments, to accuse Johnson of using improper pressures on the Indian government and to accuse Indian officials of not showing a proper feeling of "insult and national humiliation" over Johnson's blackmail tactics.
Even the New York Times felt that Johnson had been a bit too blatant in the way he had sought to advance his policies in India. To interrupt the grain shipment in mid-December, "just as famine threatens and critical elections approach," said the big New York daily editorially, "is a serious error." While the newspaper found extenuating circumstances in the depletion of American grain reserves and failure to increase crop acreage soon enough, still this was "not sufficient excuse for the tough tactics now being followed in the Indian crisis."
The grimmest note, however, is the fact that even last February Dr. Revelle felt that "it may already be too late" to prevent starvation in India.
The Johnson administration might ponder Dr. Revelle's additional comment: "A livable world cannot long exist in which two-thirds of human beings never get enough to eat, and the remaining third are overfed."