The claim made by the army chief, General Moeen U Ahmad, during his visit to a wholesale market in the capital on Saturday, that there is no rice crisis in the country strikes us as particularly strange. 'Where is the crisis? There is no crisis. The crisis has been created. Price has increased but there is no crisis,' he said, according to a UNB report published in New Age on Sunday. Such a statement could only mean that the army chief is either in denial or has misinterpreted the criteria for what constitutes a crisis.
There is indeed panic-buying in the market as Moeen has claimed, but this is a result of the inflationary phenomena that the market is experiencing. When the general level of prices rises consistently in an economy, people reinforce that price rise with panic buying resulting in even higher prices. These are the vagaries of the market, not a conspiracy. The government's responsibility rests in its ability to protect ordinary people from such market vagaries, not through coercive measures which only create more panic in the market, but through measures that deliver adequate food to vulnerable communities, while at the same time calming the markets.
Secondly, the empirical study of famines in the 20th century has proved beyond argument that famines occur, not because there is a shortage of food in the market, but because this food is priced beyond the purchasing power of large sections of the population. The ominous signs of this are evident in the fact that people from the higher income groups are also starting to stand in line to buy rice at the government organised OMS points in the city. The scope of the food crisis is steadily widening to affect wider and wider sections of the population. Not only has purchasing power of ordinary Bangladeshis been corroded significantly in the past two years of inflation, it is continuing to happen as a result of rising prices even as we speak.
Against this backdrop of rapidly shrinking purchasing power, and the resultant inability of millions of Bangladeshis to purchase adequate amounts of food, to deny that there is a crisis is misleading. There is indeed a crisis, and it has now taken on the proportions of a national crisis. Unfortunately, purchasing power is not an economic variable that can be restored easily, or even over a short span of time. Purchasing power is destroyed easily, as this military-controlled interim government has successfully shown in the past 14 months or so, but to restore it takes a wide array of measures that includes confidence in markets and government in no small part. So, given that the juncture that the country is currently at, we suggest that the only option open to the government at the moment is to start an organised and well-executed ration programme that seeks to deliver cheap food to section of the population where market failures are denying access. We also underscore the need for an effective array of measures such as 'vulnerable group feeding' and 'food for work' programmes which will reach out to communities who are bearing the brunt of this current food crisis.
The debate of semantics over whether this is a 'silent famine' or 'hidden hunger' are worthless in the eyes of the people who are feeling the pangs of this dehumanising deprivation. If such deprivation continues, there would be public anger and the government should realise that it would not be hidden.
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