this passage from http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.html

Like others, Ryan reasonably selects as Exhibit A of the criminal indictment the Chinese famines of 1958-61, with a death toll of 25-40 million, he reports, a sizeable chunk of the 100 million corpses the "recording angels" attribute to "Communism" (whatever that is, but let us use the conventional term). The terrible atrocity fully merits the harsh condemnation it has received for many years, renewed here. It is, furthermore, proper to attribute the famine to Communism. That conclusion was established most authoritatively in the work of economist Amartya Sen, whose comparison of the Chinese famine to the record of democratic India received particular attention when he won the Nobel Prize a few years ago. Writing in the early 1980s, Sen observed that India had suffered no such famine. He attributed the India-China difference to India's "political system of adversarial journalism and opposition," while in contrast, China's totalitarian regime suffered from "misinformation" that undercut a serious response, and there was "little political pressure" from opposition groups and an informed public (Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action, 1989; they estimate deaths at 16.5 to 29.5 million).

any more information/rebuttal to this? the use of "totalitarian" seems like a priori libshit, but please enlighten me. yes I've read the monthly review article on the great leap forward, any more information?