India, Jan. 25 -- In 1958, a social and economic campaign, led by former Chairman of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong, sought to transform the Chinese economy from an agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse. It is widely believed that some of the policies introduced during the Great Leap Forward eventually led to the Great Chinese Famine between 1959 and 1961. While China focussed on moving its workers from farms to factories, simultaneously, it went through one of the worst famines in human history.

Peculiarly, in the years leading up to the Great Chinese Famine, Beijing was actually exporting significant amounts of grains while a large population of the country was dying of starvation. Why was this so? Reason for this seem...