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I’m Happy No One is Starving in India Anymore
But…jokes!?
While there is no shortage of bad news and crises in the world, there is also ample proof that some things are getting significantly better. In my internet surfing, I came across something that caught my attention. Starvation is no longer a leading cause of death in India.
In fact, India’s malnutrition rate is now comparable with that of the USA. There have been no recorded deaths due to starvation India since 2016. As someone who grew up in the seventies, this is a seismic improvement.
I have written before about how world starvation was presented to my generation of schoolchildren as a problem we were charged with solving. World hunger and our assigned responsibility for it was so deeply ingrained that it became a fixture in western culture.
How many of us remember being told at the dinner table to finish what’s on our plate because there was someone starving in India? Years later, I attribute my Dad Bod to that ethic around eating.
The notion that people were starving in India found its way into comedy, including my favourite Rodney Dangerfield joke:
“My wife is a terrible cook. She keeps telling me “Finish what’s on your plate, there are people starving in India. I replied, “Let’s have sex, there are guys who are…