NEW DELHI — A nuclear cooperation deal reached last week between the U.S. and India has added fuel to the debate over whether the South Asian nation can afford a multibillion-dollar push to become a regional military power.
As President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shook hands on the landmark pact Thursday, the World Bank released a study showing that almost 40% of the world's malnourished children live in India.
Bush administration officials say the nuclear accord, which must be approved by Congress, is partly aimed at strengthening India so it can serve as a counterbalance to neighboring China. However, development experts here said the strategy ignores the plight of several hundred million Indians mired in poverty.
"I think the Western world, and perhaps more so the United States of America, has a feeling that India is a highly developed country," said Babu Mathew, India director of the development agency ActionAid. "So they are reluctant to face the reality of the other side of India, which is millions of people living in poverty."
An estimated 300 million of India's 1.1 billion people live below the official poverty line of less than $1 a day. The number of poor is actually much higher because the government underestimates the daily minimum of calories each Indian needs when measuring poverty, Mathew and other experts say.
Although the right to adequate nutrition is enshrined in the Indian Constitution, more than 38% of the nation's children are undernourished, compared with 26% in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank study found.
Singh's government raised defense spending 7% in its budget announced last week, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which leads a left-wing alliance that keeps the coalition government in power, said the budget didn't provide enough for agriculture, health, education and job creation.
The budget "has failed to address many of the vital problems of the common people, particularly the peasantry and the unemployed," the party said in a statement.
Bush said U.S. aid to India's civilian nuclear program would strengthen the country's economy by helping it meet rapidly growing demand for electricity. India gets 56% of its electricity from coal-fired plants and just 3% from nuclear reactors. A quarter of its power supply comes from hydroelectric dams.
