WHILE the government is relentlessly upholding the tall talks of success in food security over the past several years, the World Food Programme (WFP) has stated that about 60 million people of Bangladesh, out of a total of 160 million are facing food insecurity at the moment. The people do not consume the minimal daily caloric intake required for a healthy life due to low purchasing capacity, severe unemployment rate and the concentration of property to a selected few, among many other reasons. The problem is growing income inequality when government leaders and public servants are taking away public money doubling salary while the poor outside the government are remaining totally ignored. In terms of food production, our farmers produce a lot, the government has enough stocks to fight natural disasters, and even, to some extent, some food items are exported but almost one third of the total population are partially under-feed.
Quoting UNICEF, a national daily has stated that almost one-third of all women of reproductive age in the country are extremely underweight, and the analogous condition is prevalent even in the wealthiest section of the society. And the FAO showed that 56 percent of all pre-school children are underweight. The satisfying statistics of average GDP increase rate, per capita production or purchasing capacity belie the extreme poverty and millions of malnourished children.
One of the fundamental rights of the citizens is food security exists in the country when all people have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to maintain healthy and productive lives. The dominant determinant of access to food is obviously the level of income. The GDP increase rate is more than 6.5 percent every year but, the income is highly unequally distributed and the disparity has been growing. As a result, nearly one-third of the people still live below the poverty line, with inadequate income to access food from the market.
Despite stunning success in reducing maternal and child mortality, a coherent move is imperative to fight chronic malnutrition. The government must ensure social justice in production and service distribution aiming at ensuring a sustainable growth for all. Solving the problem will require concerted action by the government, NGOs, the private sector and individual households. Continuous efforts need to be made in developing and diffusion of improved crop varieties and natural resource management. All that must aim at generating an adequate supply of food to meet the needs of the growing population. Government’s interventions should be part of a broader social protection strategy that is both cost-effective and comprehensive in coverage.
