Washington, May 3: India became the latest target of US President George W. Bush’s talent for verbal indiscretions when he said yesterday that demand for “better nutrition and better food” by Indians was one of the reasons for the looming global food crisis.

Answering a question about the challenge of rising food prices worldwide, Bush said: “Just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That is bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”

The latest “Bushism”, however, does not appear to be the result of any original thought by the President unlike his other faux pas which have already filled at least two volumes of books.

In this instance, Bush has merely borrowed the thoughts from his trusted aide, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

She said last week that “improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India” was contributing to a food shortage because of rising demand.

But unlike her boss, the secretary of state made out a cogent case in support of her argument, laying out a full picture of the international food crisis.

According to Rice, “we obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food”.

She made a case that in countries like India and China, it was not as much a problem of declining production as growing prosperity, which has pushed up demand resulting in “pressures to keep food inside the country”.

Bush’s tone was almost accusatory, as if Indians had no right to be prosperous and demand better things.

Of course, he did not dwell on the fact that because of the problem of plenty, Americans waste more food every year than could feed the poor of a continent.

Bush, however, was not unhappy with another aspect of India shining. “There turns out to be prosperity in developing world, which is good,” the President said. “It is going to be good for you because you will be selling products into countries — big countries perhaps — and it is hard to sell products into countries that aren’t prosperous. In other words, the more prosperous the world is, the more opportunity there is” for American businesses.

The real reason for the latest “Bushism” is, however, not hard to seek. The President’s reputation is that of a simple man, who is transparent and cannot cloak his real feelings in political correctness.

One interpretation here was that yesterday’s references to India were a manifestation of his disappointment that things were not moving ahead with India as Bush had hoped three years ago.

No nuclear deal, no quick orders for 126 multi-role combat aircraft... and on top of it all, as Bush saw it, Manmohan Singh, whom he considered a friend, had spent more than three hours a day earlier with someone Bush despises: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It is also possible that the global food crisis was on his mind because an American, former undersecretary of state for economic affairs, Josette Sheeran, is director of the UN’s World Food Programme.

Knowing Bush, Sheeran framed the global crisis as a “silent tsunami” in terms that would catch Bush’s attention. It prompted a call by him to the US Congress to put up an additional $770 million in urgent food aid.