OCR Text |
Show India's Hunger Told in Bread Wheat Loan Is Equal To 4 Billion Loaves Measured in bread, America's emergency food loan to India recently re-cently approved by both houses of congress will equal more than 4,000,-000,000 4,000,-000,000 one-pound loaves. Each loaf will be more food than a peasant of northern Bihar now eats in two days. By enabling India to buy two million mil-lion tons, or roughly 75,000,000 bushels, of American wheat in American markets, the $190,000,000 loan may help to keep some 7,000,-000 7,000,-000 people from mass starvation this summer. On the threshold of famine, India's diet already includes herbs and locusts, tree leaves, twigs, dried grass and weeds, boiled to a watery broth that can fool the stomach only for a while. Nearly a third of the 350,000,000 people of the Indian republic are on rationing. They are living on a daily handful of rough grain rice; grain sorghums such as jowar, bajra and ragi; or coarsely-milled wheat. Still vivid in Indians' memory is the great Bengal famine of 194; which went almost unnoticed by s world concerned with war. Japa-nese Japa-nese control of Burmese rice storei and a breakdown in India's food dis tribution system caused the deatt of three to four million people di rectly, many more by diseasi brought on by malnutrition. |