They know little of the taste of meat. For their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little khichri, made of ‘green pulse’ mixed with rice, which is cooked with water over a little fire until the moisture has evaporated, and eaten hot with butter in the evening; in the daytime they munch a little parched pulse or other grain, which they say suffices for their lean stomachs,” wrote Franco Palsaert in his report, based on the seven years he spent in Agra.
This extract, from the late Angus Maddison’s book, The Moghul Economy, could well have been written by his illustrious namesake and Nobel Prize winner for Economics, Angus Deaton. He won the award in 2015 for his work on the causes of stunting amongst children in India. His thesis attributes this to the rampant prevalence of malnutrition. Deaton is not impressed with the argument of those who want growth at all and any cost like Arvind Panagriya and Jagdish Bhagwati.
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