Thirteen eminent citizens on Saturday demanded that the government should issue food cards for all families of the country for ensuring food security during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak across Bangladesh.
In a joint statement sent to media, they said, ‘Coronavirus had brought great disaster in the country. Ensuring food security for every family is badly essential for saving lives.’
They demanded that the government should issue food card and provide balanced food for every family through civil administration with the help of army immediately. They also urged the government to curb irregularities in this regard.
While it may not be possible to provide food for all the families in Bangladesh it should be possible to issue ration cards for the poorest families which have no disposable real income.
We have over 40 million households each spending on average over 9000 Taka per month on food. Finding out the most economically deprived and then giving them food cards should not take a very long time.
Of course finding the money to spend on them would be more difficult. Even if the government gave subsidised food at half the cost to half the households it would still amount to an expenditure of over Tk 9000 crores every month.
The government can afford to spend that for a few months before it would have to resort to mass borrowing. A better option would be to engage the citizens in a food for work programme to ensure that they can contribute economically while getting paid and ensuring that they retain their dignity.
But never in the history of a nation has the administration been able to ensure development programmes for half of its population. So it seems unlikely that it would be possible now.
We are surprised that the people are not heard of their essential needs to survive. Sycophants in the government are anxious to suppress the people’s demands and anxieties being expressed under threat of police action.
The government should be able to fight rumours by involving itself visibly with the good things its people are doing. The truth is that the government has to ensure free food for the people who have no income.
Selling rice at low cost is not food freely available. It is a business. The government seems not to understand what economic shut down means.
It may be difficult for the nature of our government to understand that helpless people’s need to survive is the most important responsibility of the government to meet.
Even in rich countries in normal times also unemployment benefit is ensured. Now during this pandemic free meals and medical care are delivered to those in need.
The government’s prime obligation as regards public money is to feed people if starving.
