This is in regards to a chinese posting that the chinese on chinese forums 'condemned' their government despite its improved performance on hunger eradication, and balking at the Indian members for apparently "defending" their government despite its cankered performance. Well, think of it this way: how do you guys get all riled up when the West talks about freedom of speech and political rights in China. You lot know that despite state repression and controls on the media, there are other avenues to express yourself- like the internet. So too do we object when the West tries to make it seem like we're a 'poor, starving' nation by comparing it to their 'objective' standards of calorie deficiency and daily dollar wage. Because we know, that despite the relative incidence of poverty, many of those in that 'starving, edacious' group tend to feed themselves off the land better than those in other poor countries do. This applies not only to grain produce and crop harvest, but also to fruitage and animalia - there are several large tribes like the 'Musahaars' in Bihar that eat field mice as a source of protein, the Chitewāle in central India that hunt with a tame leopard the wilde beasts of the jungles in Jharkhand, the Shishi, that consume crocodile meat, and the Gosain Pārdhis who eat hares, jackals and foxes - things not recorded because they transpire outside of the market or are not catered through the normal course of subsistence. This is evident because India has far more arable land and land cultivable or under cultivation than most other countries do- consider for example that India ranks 7th in total arable land, while China ranks a lowly 77th.
Land use - arable land(%) 2006 country rankings
In addition, any 'survey' that was taken last year was exacerbated by the deficient monsoon - very different and not characteristic of previous or most monsoons.
Furthermore, this also transpired last year:
India Keeps Homegrown Rice to Feed Its Hungry Millions
Therefore, yes, the number is exaggerated in the case of India just as
India's AIDS figures were exaggerated for the longest time by the UN and then brought down by more than half in an embarrassing abnegation or quitclaim. Or how conventional wisdom or 'findings' by world food agencies claimed 'significant gender bias' in the allotment of food between males and females in rural households. Interestingly, a very large data set on the incidence of children with an anthropometric status below standard norms (46,000 households) in India recently been made available to the international research community, revealed that there was "no significant or systematic difference" in anthropometric status along gender lines. Attached is the file below:
http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iiessp/0699.html
[Interestingly, even the Government is estimated to have "overestimated" the number of people living with AIDS in India due to "flawed methodology":
http://infochangeindia.org/200612185269/Health/News/India-s-HIV-numbers-inflated-study.html