Govt's dubious claims
THE claims and conclusions of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on food security during her question hour in parliament on Wednesday could at best be the result of an inadequate reading of the reality on the ground, and at worst a deliberate attempt at misleading the people at large. According to a report published in New Age, Hasina claimed that there is no food crisis in Bangladesh and blamed 'some evil circles' for creating an artificial crisis in the market. She also said the government had taken an initiative to amend the anti-hoarding law to make it up to date and effective in checking hoarding. The prime minister seems to have equated food security to available food stock in the country, so suggests her emphasis on its replenishment through imports of rice and wheat from India, Thailand and Vietnam. What seems missing from her reading of the situation is the fact that adequate or even surplus food stock counts for little if people have no access to it and people's access to food is consequent upon their purchasing capacity, which appears to be on a sustained decline in the face of raging price inflation and shrinking employment opportunities.
Simply put, if people don't have the money in their purse, even the minimum possible price of food and other essential commodities would be beyond their reach. Indeed, the government needs to wage a fight against the market syndicate that creates artificial crisis for a windfall and keep the prices stable. However, here too, the prime minister's tough words against hoarding lack contextualisation. For example, it is not clear what she means by 'hoarding' nor is it defined who would be guilty of hoarding or what the distinction between legitimate storage and hoarding is.
If her definition of food security or hoarding is dubious, her claim that the people in Bangladesh are eating more food now as their earnings have increased simply borders on the absurd. Moreover, it runs counter with the very rationale for her government's decision to launch open market sales of rice and fair price shops for class IV employees. In fact, available statistics tend to generally indicate erosion in the people's real income. While dwindling investment, both foreign and domestic, caused by a wide range of factors such as abysmal law and order, pervasive corruption, inadequate infrastructure and erratic electric and gas supply, has prompted the private sector to go for consolidation through layoffs, the public sector expenditure has been dismal, to say the least. According to media reports, the Awami League-Jatiya Party government has utilised 37 per cent of the money allocated for its annual development programme in the firs eight months of the current fiscal year, which is two per cent lower than the corresponding period of the last financial area. It follows then that employment generation in the public sector has been limited as it has been in the private sector.
The prime minister and her government needs to realise such erroneous reading of the reality on the ground and inflated claims would sound like a cruel joke to the people at large, who are in a perpetual struggle to make ends meet. If the incu
http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/11052.html
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