In China’s famine of 1958-61, nearly three crore people died. In those days India’s economic condition was not much better than China. Yet India did not have a famine of the kind China had. The reason was the difference in the economic policies of the two countries. Democratic government in India responded to the food shortage in a way that Chinese government did not. If China too had had multi-party elections, an opposition party and a press free to criticise the government, so many people would not have died in the famine.