Starvation in India "doesn't worry" Paul McCartney

[...]

Start to get around to the no-punches-pulled bit. Talk about cripples (or disabled persons, as my correspondent of last week tells me.)

What about helping people like this, I ask. What about giving them the money to buy things to make things, to obtain their satisfaction and self-respect?

Paul: "Well, what about helping the cripples?"

Me: "Well, why not?"

Paul: "Well, why?"

Me: "Because maybe they're having a hard time of it, and you're doing all right. Don't you believe in human kindness?"

Paul: "Cripples are not necessarily having a hard time of it. And even if they are having a hard time of it - it's their hard time. It is, man. It doesn't matter what you say about helping cripples or India...there's no way to pour millions into India and make India all right."

You must have seen, in India, people with their bellies hanging out with hunger.

"No," says Paul. "I didn't see that."

But doesn't it worry you?

"No," says Paul flatly, "starvation in India doesn't worry me one bit. Not one iota. It doesn't, man.

"And it doesn't worry you, if you're honest. You just pose. You don't even known if it exists. You've only seen the Oxfam ads. You can't pretend to me that an ad can reach down into the depths of your soul and actually make you feel for those people - more, for instance, than you feel about getting a new car.

"If it comes to a toss-up and getting a new car, you'd get a new car. And don't say you wouldn't - 'cause that's the scene, with you and most people."

Published in NME - 17 August 1968, page 3