Arms yes, bread no

Another great statistic to be proud of. 

India has now become the world’s largest arms importer.

People are starving in the central states, reduced to eating grass.  An international food crisis is hitting even the lower middle class section of society. There is an insurgency in the Red Corridor, in Kashmir, and in the north east.  There’s a couple of hundred million people in the country who can’t read, and even more who have no easy access to water or electricity.  There is the problem of crappy infrastructure (from public toilets to aiports), horrendous highways (and if you’re disputing that, have a drive through Bihar), rural decline and urban neglect.  But I’m glad to see there’s one industry that’s flourshing. 

Yes arms by all means, more arms. 

So we can have a few more millionaires and a few million more poor people.

The fact that more than 80% of the arms imports are from Russia, is just the cherry on the cake.  Putin’s Russia, famous for ethnic massacres, rampant corruption, as vicious a crackdown on press freedom as exists anywhere in the world, but India’s buddy when it comes to import/export of death machines.

And as we know, Pakistan and India are caught in the fatal game of “Whatever you can do, I can do better”.  So that’s two countries spending spending spending on military hardware at the cost of their own people.