On Food Crisis ( a letter sent to Jinoy and other comrades)

Jinoy,

This is just the continuation of the debate. You must be remembering an article by Fidel Castro on the Bush admin's energy policy, published on Granma almost one year back. Castro's article was timely written when Brazil's "socialist" president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva visited Washington to clinch a bio-fuel agreement with the Bush admin. Your magazine (Down to Earth) had published one Lead soon after, unless I am mistaken. One year after, we have got all of our international magazines running cover stories and news papers leading debates on the global food crisis. I am not saying that the bio-fuel policy alone is responsible for the crisis. Rather, my focus is on the resource crunch. One argument from the free marketist bloc is that the scarcity of resources and subsequent high prices have eventually led to conservation and innovation. I remember reading somewhere recently about how people a couple of centuries back switched to kerosene from whale oil to fuel lamps. They argue the technological advancement, clean production of electricity, desalination...etc would ultimately help us overcome the resource crunch. Is it so? The criticisms against capitalist mode of production and the free-market driven consumption spree were always rejected as moralist arguments by many among us (including myself). Now Stiglitz warns that if the markets continue their free-run, the world will soon become unviable. Newstatesman asks how did the rich starve the world (http://newstatesman.com/200804170025)? The World Bank warns of riots for food in future. The international press is concerned of the "empty bellies (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/world/americas/18food.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin). Your magazine has also run a cover sty on the same issue (http://www.downtoearth.org.in/section.asp?sec_id=9&foldername=20080415). Perhaps my friends from science background could help me understand this better? We have seen several changes in the Capitalist development pattern in the past. After the great economic depression, they stood for more regulation and welfarism. We had Keyenes. And in 1970s, with Reagan and Thacher coming to the helm, we witnessed a radical overhaul in the world economy. Now the Wall street economists argue for more regulations, but only to save the monetary institutions and corporate majors. This is what somebody critically said abt neoliberalism, Capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich. Is it so?

stanly