In the name of alleviating poverty . . .

Saarc was also formally launched in Dhaka on December 8, 1985, aiming to promote peace, stability, amity, and progress. From this, we understand that Dhaka is a leader, or at least wants to be a leader, as far as regional cooperation is concerned.

One main piece of this year's 13th Saarc Summit is to find ways to alleviate poverty from our collective countries. As pointed out by Foreign Minister Morshed Khan, the 13th Saarc Summit will deliberate on how to inject impetus into poverty alleviation. To Debapriya Bhattacharya, poverty is one of the heads of the two-headed dragon traumatizing developing nations, and at the same time Professor Yunus has hailed the idea of creating a South Asia Poverty Fund.

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It would seem that poverty alleviation is the current buzz-word and that we are all fired up to get rid of poverty! In the midst of all this, we need to ask some baseline questions. To my mind the all-pervading question is: are we, in Bangladesh, aware of how poverty is created or understand what causes poverty? As an example, let us take a closer look at what happened during the days of the summit in the city center.

Dhaka city's wholesale hub -- Kawran Bazar was shut down. On November 9, The Daily Star reported that: "Wholesale markets have already stopped their businesses and have started leaving the city as the authorities have ordered a four-day shutdown of markets from the 10th onwards, for security of the Saarc Summit."

Besides the kitchen supplies market, Kawran Bazar houses the biggest wholesale fish and vegetable markets. There are separate markets for rice, cloth, electronic goods, wood, hardware, household appliances, and poultry. The sources of the newspaper allege a total daily business turnover of Tk.600 crore. Most significantly, about 5,000 labourers and rickshaw-van drivers derive their daily hand-to-mouth living from their work at Kawran Bazar.

These daily workers at Kawran Bazar, who also have their families to support, earn between Tk.150 to Tk.200 per day. Many also eat their daily meals at the market. My question is: how will these hand-to-mouth daily workers survive? It is for sure they will have to survive by hook or by crook. Over the minimum shut down period of four days, each will lose Tk.200 plus the opportunity to buy/get lunch each day. This amounts to a bare minimum of Tk.800 for the four days. The shut down is depriving these hand-to-mouth workers the opportunity of earning for their daily food a total of Tk.40 lakhs (5,000 x 800) and an opportunity to feed themselves.

Let us look at how the authorities view this deprivation. Again quoting from The Daily Star: "A high official of the revenue department of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) said the closure will not have much of an impact[!]" The Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) said: "All of us should sacrifice for the sake of security and the greater interest of the country[!]"

Let us examine the impact and nature of sacrifice. In addition to the daily labourers, imagine what will happen to the connected stakeholder chain, restaurants, and families who buy from the market, retail markets who buy from the market, suppliers who supply the wholesale market, and fresh food in the pipeline waiting to be supplied to the wholesale market. A retailer in Gulshan who could not buy his supplies from Kawran Bazar spent almost Tk.700 trying to locate a place from which he could replenish his stocks and remarked that for example the retail price of a kilogram of onions will have to go up to at least Tk.100 during this period.

To survive, the daily labourers would need to borrow money to eat on a daily basis. How far will the borrowed money go? How will they pay the money back? The Kawran Bazar shutdown will create a poverty and debt cycle for these people from which they may not be able to easily recover. Should we blame them if they are tempted to take short cuts to make up the shortfall? If someone offers these people money to do something illegal, how many would be able to resist? Would we then start calling these people terrorists?

Such a shutdown does not even take place during hartals. It is estimated that these markets operate at almost 60 percent of their efficiency during hartal hours. So in the name of poverty alleviation are we actually alleviating poverty? Could the Saarc security not have been better planned, so as not to deprive people of their basic rights?

Amirah Islam is an A level student at Scholastica.