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The pangs of hunger
Sanam Amin and Turaj Ahmad examine the now uncontrollable rise in food prices that has created a situation of slow starvation amongst the poorest of the poor, as grain supplies reach new lows with each passing week
photos by Al-Emrun Garjon / Abu Taher Khokon
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Abu Ali, a 42-year-old mishuk driver, waits in the late afternoon rush hour traffic. As soon as the traffic begins to flow at a snail’s pace, he ignites the engine in a hurry only to put it to rest at the next traffic stop.
‘I try to conserve as much fuel — and in the process some valuable money — as I possibly can, especially now since the prices of basic essential food are rising almost on a daily basis,’ says Ali. ‘If I don’t drive for a couple of days, my family will starve.’
Ali says that in the past Tk 100 spent per day on food would have been sufficient to feed his family of four. ‘But now, expenses have exceeded Tk 250 which can, at times, limit my family to just one meal a day.’
The rising trend in food prices is now a national phenomenon.
In Dhaka, coarse rice costs up to Tk 40 per kilo, though a year ago the price was half. In Barisal the coarse rice price has gone up from Tk 30 to Tk 34 in just the last two days. Rajshahi’s coarse rice costs Tk 32 per kilo as of last Tuesday, but this same type of rice was Tk 14 a scant year ago.
Everywhere, the price of rice has gone up and shows no sign of backing down. Other goods have been similarly affected.
According to the statistics of Consumers Association of Bangladesh, rice price increased by 63 per cent, pulse 66 per cent, flour 78 per cent and cooking oils 107 per cent in last one year.
Moinul Islam, who runs a paan and tea stall in Tejgaon, says he has been operating at a loss for the past year. ‘The price of one paan has now gone to Tk 2; if it goes any higher then people won’t buy it,’ he says.
‘I have to buy shupari [betel nut] at Tk 120 to 140 per kilo. Paan leaves cost me at least Tk 70 in bulk; when you add the other ingredients the final finished paan actually costs a lot more. But I can’t raise the price to Tk 6 or I won’t be able sell even one.’
‘My wife and my daughter work in a garments factory; apart from them I have two younger brothers at school and two aged parents who are too weak to work. Our three combined incomes are not enough to cover six people’s costs.’
‘I haven’t paid rent for the last two months because we have had to spend our entire earnings on food.’
Asma and Joy Mia, residents of Begunbari slum, have two children, a boy of seven who has just been circumcised, and a baby girl of barely two. The girl has not had any milk since Asma left off breastfeeding six months ago.
‘What can we do? Milk costs Tk 300 to Tk 350. Shuji costs Tk 40 so we feed her that.’
Undoubtedly, the worst conditions are with the poorest of the poor, particularly labourers and rickshaw-pullers who are unable to work unless they have their three meals a day.
While their families go without meals for two or three days at a stretch, they must share the largest chunk of their daily earnings on their own food. Economist Abul Barakat estimates that round half of the population are going half-fed or without food.
Nurul Islam, a 38-year-old rickshaw-puller, moved to Dhaka seven or eight months ago. He spends Tk 60 to Tk 80 a day on food, mostly in the mess halls. ‘I start work at 11am and work till late in the evening. It is difficult to make enough money.’
It is the same for Abu Bakr, a 56-year-old who has been pulling rickshaws for nearly twenty-six years. ‘Ten years ago I used to pay Tk 30 for the rickshaw; nowadays they ask for Tk 90 or Tk 100. Then you need at least Tk 60 for food.’
‘For a while, I forgot how dal [lentils] tastes as I could only afford to buy rice and even the price of wheat had gone up from Tk 15 to Tk 45,’ says Fazlu, a rickshaw-puller aged 35.
‘Dal now costs Tk 90 per kilo,’ says Abdus Selim, the owner of a small stall in Moghbazar that sells rice, eggs, oil and other essentials. ‘Hardly anyone buys dal now; it’s too expensive and beyond their means.’
He reports that people have been buying more or less the same amount of rice over the past year, since they cannot choose to buy any less, but instead are cutting down on other costs such as meat and vegetables.
‘Soybean oil price has been fluctuating though,’ Selim adds. ‘It actually went down by Tk 12 in the past few days.’
Elsewhere in the country, both soybean and mustard oil are unpredictable essential goods, with prices rising and falling almost whimsically. In Rajshahi a litre of soybean oil now costs Tk 108, though it cost more last week and cost Tk 75 a year before.
Grave repercussions
The World Food Program predicted that the rising prices of food items, especially rice, could cause political instability as poorer households spend most or all their income on food. The UN agency said that the possibility of political, economic and social unrest is growing as the price of food is rising much faster than people’s wages in Bangladesh.
Politicians and economists observed that the hard-pressed people would have taken to the streets had the state of emergency not been in force.
‘What has till now prevented a rise in crime is the largely visible security forces and policemen everywhere. But sooner or less, I think it will become inevitable as more and more people reach a point where they have absolutely nothing to lose,’ says N Ahad, a private service holder, also a victim of food shortage.
‘I’m living in the same place with the same facilities, but I’m paying Tk 7000, whereas some months ago it was Tk 5500,’ he says.
Protests have already begun.
On March 25, several hundreds formed a human chain before the Chittagong Press Club on Saturday, protesting against unusual price hike of essential commodities and sale of unpacked and unhygienic baby food.
In Sylhet, Rajshahi, Bogra, Barisal, Khulna and Jamalpur, according to New Age reports, people have become frustrated with the high prices and only find a small measure of respite from the OMS centres.
Poor response
The continuing crisis of rice is a result of the government’s failure to ensure timely import, point out economists. Although, the twin floods and cyclone Sidr hampered rice production, experts feel, the market could be stabilised had concrete and faster steps been taken.
The government has been slow to tackle the problem and has only recently set up open market sales (OMS) around the country, and that too in small numbers.
It was only this week that the Barisal district controller of food and deputy commissioner offices sources said that number of open market sale (OMS) centers in the city has been increased from 26 to 42 and ordered to increase supply quotas of 500 kilos to 1020 kilos per OMS dealer at the rate of Tk 23.50 per kilo and to sell between 3 kilos to 5 kilos per customer at the retail rate of Tk 25 per kilo.
The announcement led to complete stock depletion by Tuesday. Khokon Gosh, a rice whole seller of Faria Potty, said that the stock exhausted due to the rush of retail purchasers panicked by news of Indian rice price hike.
Economist professor Abul Barakat puts the blame for the current price spiral on the free market economy and specifically ties the rice price rise to market speculation, import problems, high production cost and a lack of coordination among the ministries.
Zaid Bakht, research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, says the government was late in making pragmatic decisions keeping the global food production and supply situations in mind. He believes that programmes such as open market sale and vulnerable group feeding should have been launched earlier to keep people’s sufferings at minimum levels.
The international market
The rising trend in food prices is now an international phenomenon as world grain supplies are at their lowest levels since records were first kept in 1960.
Outside Bangladesh, food riots have become common around the world.
From Morocco to Mexico to Mauritania, people are dying in food protests. A month ago, Indonesia had to call out federal troops in order to quell protests against the rising cost of basic food items. Last November food riots in Mauritania claimed the life of an 18-year old boy.
The Indian state of Bengal also saw massive food riots; at least 25 million people in India are now subsisting on maximum two meals a day.
In Italy, residents are protesting the rising cost of pasta. There are critical food shortages in major American cities as well, including Amarillo, Texas, southern Minnesota, New York City, Los Angeles, California, eastern Texas, and Manchester, New Hampshire. Kansas has seen theft of corn, wheat and soybeans — all high cost grain — from grain elevators.
USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations.
That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year’s end.
Pakistan has seen the reintroduction of food rationing cards while price controls have been introduced in China and Russia. Argentina and Vietnam are applying export taxes on food staples and limiting wheat exports.
Kazakhstan has frozen grain exports and Russia is considering doing the same.
Internationally, the problem has been attributed to three main factors: overall population increase, the rise in living standards of growing economies India and China, and a short-sighted allocation of crops to biofuel.
And now, the recent announcement by Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Program, that the globe’s main provider of food aid may have to start rationing means the world’s poor is just going to get hungrier.
Enamul Haque, who lectures in economics at East West University says that the rise in food prices is due to the ‘lag effect’.
‘Oil prices have been going up from 2001 onwards. Since then, the cost of food production has simultaneously grown. It is a worldwide trend; prices of food worldwide have gone up and one of the main links is the cost of fuel.’
‘Oil prices have shot up from 30 USD to 100 USD per barrel. The food crisis that we are seeing now started in 2006; the rate of growth of food production is in trouble.’
Solutions
The solutions are not easily at hand.
Enamul Haque however points out that the problem is more complex than that.
‘Bringing the prices down will leave the farmers in a dire condition,’ he says. ‘This is what we have seen in the potato market. Strategically, lowering the rice price will be very risky for the farmer. Some years ago rice fields were converted to ponds for fish, because fish prices were so high; now if we do the reverse and produce more rice at a lower price, they will be at a tremendous loss.’
‘A bumper harvest next season will mean the price goes down and it will be a complete disaster for the farmers.’
Haque says that ultimately two alternatives will come up.
‘The first one, irrigation, came up before in the 1970s. The second option of hybrid rice or GMOs will come up more strongly. Though many people are against it, the technology is available and it will become a necessary option,’ he predicts.
As for immediate solutions, Haque recommends a procurement drive.
He warns however that most people who have the access and ability to keep large amounts of rice, such as 50,000 tonnes in stock will be in a hurry to get it into the market and off their hands, fearing of being accused of stockpiling and trying to hike up prices further. This, in the long run, means that there will be a greater shortage as people empty out their stocks.
Anu Mohammad, professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University, says that it is too late for any intervention now. ‘Whatever the government could have done, whatever measures they could have taken to prevent such adire crisis should have been taken at least a year ago,’ he says. ‘Soon the next crops will come along and the rice price will go down again.’
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