By Anil Pandey India is being blamed for current food shortage in south asia. How far this is true? A couple of weeks ago Ameri can President George Bush made similar statement blaming the prosperity of the rising Indian middle class for the current food crisis. This is far from truth as the consumption of food grains has been growing three times faster in the US as compared to India, according to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Also on average an American consumes five times more food grains as compared to an Indian. In light of these facts it is deplorable that fingers should be pointed at India for tying to protect the interests of its people. World food grain production has been on a steady decline for twenty years. In a report "To Defeat Famine: Kill the WTO' Marcia Merry Baker writes that after global food supplies were boosted through the Green Revolution and related programs lasting into the 1970s, more recently, world food production has actually declined. Baker writes, "World per-capita output of grains of all kinds (rice, wheat, corn, and others) has been falling for twenty years. Whereas in 1986 it was 338 kilograms per person, it went down to 303 by 2006. Due to rapidly increasing prices of oil more and more land is used for growing agro fuels. FAO warns that the explosive growth in acreage used to grow fuels and not food in the past three years is dramatically changing the outlook for food supply globally and forcing food prices sharply higher for all foods from cereals to sugar to meat and dairy products. In this already dismal state of production of food grains, cyclone Nargis rampaged the main rice growing areas of Myanmar, pushing the price of rice up by four fold. So why blame India? This is because protagonists of free trade have for decades have attempted to shove structural and free trade prescriptions down India's throat. Where as in reality there is no such thing as free trade in agricultural commodities. Total subsidies for farms in United States totaled nearly 180 billion from 1995 through 2006. European Union also shows similar case of protection to its farmers. The trade in agricultural commodities is anything but free! Nearly 80 percent of cultivated land in the US is farmed by larger corporations and the subsidy to farmers in essence means support to large corporations whose fundamental interest is to destroy the self sufficiency of other nations so that they rely heavily on food imports from large corporations of developed countries. A well known correspondent, author and a professor Devinder Sharma says that "Not only has this protection from market forces given to the American and European farmers has led to ecologically unfriendly agriculture, it has driven at least 50 countries in Asia and Africa to dependence on food imports and widespread starvation.' If India has escaped the fate of these countries it is because of Pandit Nehru who 1955 realized the pain of being food dependent, and in his Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort, he said: "There is nothing more humiliating for any country than to import food. Therefore everything else can wait, but not agriculture'. Nehru and his able successors followed the reverse route to globalisation to attain economic sovereignty. The strategy included raising tariffs to ensure that cheaper imports do not marginalise the farming communities. India still has a long way to go. The distress of Indian agriculture is reflected in the fact that close to 150,000 Indian farmers committed suicide in nine years from 1997 to 2005. On average, one Indian farmer committed suicide every 32 minutes between 1997 and 2005. Since 2002, that has become one suicide every 30 minutes. On the other hand over 320 million people still go hungry in India. The country still has a long way to go.