Going Deeper
Can the strains be overlooked?
DESPITE the authorities' strong denial that a state of silent famine exists in the country, the concern expressed by the country director of the World Food Program about the lack of access of the poor and ultra-poor to the food necessary to survive has to be taken note of.
International organisations are reportedly worried that lack of food may lead to civil disturbance that for a country like Bangladesh, eagerly waiting for transition to democratic rule, would be disastrous.
Complacency over major economic indicators being satisfactory, while a sizeable portion of the population is unable to eat two meals a day, is a recipe for a revolution that is not guided by political ideology, but is a demonstration of the failure of the government to provide the basic necessities of life.
In 1992, USAID gave a broad definition of food security as a situation "when all people at all times have both physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet their dietary needs for a productive and healthy life,"
The international community had concluded that about half of the Bangladeshis remain below the established food-based poverty line, and about one-fourth of the population cannot consume minimum caloric requirement to be food secure. Given the reduction in real income of the middle class and the poor, Bangladesh is faced with Amartya Sen's "entitlement theory," that basically rests upon the inability of the poor to command resources to purchase essential commodities.
Unfortunately, in countries like Bangladesh, the market does not operate on the basis of demand and supply alone. There are other factors also, like an oligopolistic type of market structure in which a few firms indulge in collusion to fix an artificial price by creating artificial demand, and in which the consumers are treated as hostages, particularly for essentials that have inelastic demand.
In the absence of enforceable regulatory mechanisms, people remain at the mercy of unscrupulous business people who have shed their social responsibility in preference to their greed for reaping abnormal profit.
Strangely the authorities have remained indifferent to the woes of the common people, perhaps because they are sanguine of their "erudition" of decades old western education that has confined them in a glass cage, throwing up coloured images that have no connection with reality.
Attempts have been made to link the abnormal rise in the price of essentials with international rise in the price of commodities, particularly in the price of oil. While international price increase cannot be denied, the profiteers have conveniently forgotten to mention that price of essentials kept rising daily even when there was no import of some commodities.
There is no denying the fact that Eurocentric globalisation is a fact of life, despite the opposition by some who detect in it a form of domination by the First World countries over the Third World countries and see globalism as "a teleological doctrine which provides, explains and justifies an international system of world trade" and has "ideological overtones of historical inevitability."
The good side of globalism has been demonstrated by the quick import of rice from India, and proposed import from Vietnam and other South Asian countries. One must, however, be prepared to face the situation that the global population is increasing at an alarming rate, particularly in the poorer countries, and that the effects of climate change will put a part of countries like Bangladesh under water while its population will continue to increase and arable land will continue to decrease.
The Green Revolution that had transformed agriculture around the globe between 1950-1984 with hybrid strains of high-yielding crops may have reached its peak, and may not be able to feed the growing number of people in regions like South Asia.
Indian and Chinese economic growth is expected to contribute to increased cost of inputs of agricultural production throughout the world, increasethe price of oil, worsen the effects of climate change and of the other bad effects of fast economic development from which these countries too will not remain immune.
But then, when the largest polluters are the western developed nations, it would be difficult to argue that the pace of development currently taking place in China and India should be arrested.
Yet, the tragedy of both these countries is the large populations they are saddled with and the abject poverty that a significant segment of their populations is doomed to live in for generations despite a growing middle class with disposable income in the two countries.
Bangladesh already has huge trade imbalances with both India and China, though, in statistical terms, Bangladesh's export to India has increased considerably. The point that has to be considered is that, in the future, prices of essentials are not going to go down, and the more we remain import-dependent the more pronounced will be our import imbalance and, as we are not rich enough to emulate European Union's Common Agricultural Policy or the US Farm Act by doling out subsidy to the agricultural sector, the spectre of hunger and grinding poverty will remain.
We, therefore, have to use every inch of arable land and provide agricultural inputs to the farmers at affordable price to prevent students and hungry people from marching on our streets, shouting for an end to speeches and assurances given by the authorities that all will be well and demanding that the government get down to the business of providing essentials to the middle class, poor and ultra-poor who are indeed going through the pangs of a "silent famine" engulfing the country.
One hopes that the extreme poverty does not become a breeding ground for Islamic extremists who, some believe, have only gone underground after the execution of JMB leaders and the arrest of HuJI while their cadres continue their aberrant struggle for the soul of Islam.
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