As US President George W Bush joined Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in blaming the growing prosperity of India’s huge middle-class for spiralling global food prices, there were sharp reactions from the entire Indian political class.

While Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh questioned the US President’s knowledge of economics, Minister of State for Home and AICC spokesperson Shakeel Ahmad said India is a sovereign nation and “nobody should lecture us”.

CPI(M) Politburo member S R Pillai said, “It is too silly a statement to react”. The Samajwadi Party termed Bush’s statement as “illogical”. At an interactive session on economy in Missouri earlier, Bush argued that there are many factors for the present crisis, only one of which was investment on biofuels like ethanol.

“Worldwide there is increasing demand. There turns out to be prosperity in the developing world, which is good,” he said. “It also, however, increases demand. So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle-class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle-class is larger than our entire population,” he added.

“And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up,” he said.

The comments come close on the heels of Rice’s theory that “apparent improvement” in the diets of people in India and China and consequent food export caps is among the causes of the current global food crisis.“George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics. And he has just proved once again how comprehensively wrong he is. To say that the demand for food in India is causing increase in global good prices is completely wrong,” said Ramesh.

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