http://www.newagebd.com/2008/apr/05/edit.html#1
New Age, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Saturday, April 5, 2008
EDITORIAL
Blaming others will not condone govt's responsibility for food crisis
WHATEVER be it called, 'silent famine', as some politicians and
economists put it, or 'hidden hunger', as the food adviser termed it
on April 3, the food situation has assumed, beyond an iota of doubt,
crisis pro****tions. Of late, the military-backed government has
admitted as such, with its chief adviser saying as recently as on
March 31 that the price situation has become 'unbearable' for most
people. That the prices, especially of rice, have become unbearable
even for the middle-income group becomes evident if one looks at the
ever-growing queues at the economy shops run by the border guards
Bangladesh Rifles. According to a re****t, front-paged in New Age on
Friday, a growing number of children are forgoing their cl***** and
women keeping their households work aside to stand in queue at the
economy store for hours on end to 'save Tk 35 on five kilograms of
rice allocated per head'. A photograph on the same page shows women in
veils standing in long queues in front of a BDR-run in Dhaka. Re****ts
also have it that the price of coarse rice has increased roughly Tk 5
per kilogram in the past three days.
When the desperation of the people over the apparently endless
spiral of food prices has reached such a level, certain suggestions
made by the key figures of the in***bent administration appear to be
no less than a cruel joke. For instance, the food adviser said a few
days back that the people should eat less until the boro harvest when
they can make up for the nutrition losses by eating more. The army
chief said on April 2 that people should develop a habit of eating
potato, which will not only reduce demand for rice but also fulfil
nutrition requirements. These suggestions could only be construed as
lack of urgency on the part of the in***bents to mitigate the ever-
growing misery of the people, which, by the way, befell them in the
first place because of certain actions and inactions of the interim
government.
In the wake of the back-to-back floods and then cyclone Sidr in
2007, which caused extensive damage to standing crops, the government
was inordinately slow to *****s the food situation and plan exigencies
despite repeated warnings by the economists, the politicians and even
the Asian Development Bank. Meanwhile, it has virtually destroyed the
food distribution network through its overzealous, and often
arbitrary, 'drive against crime and corruption'. Now, it seems, the
government is trying to pass the blame on the business community. The
finance adviser is quoted in the media as saying on April 2 that the
business community 'should be socially responsible' for the price
manipulation by some traders.
There is no doubt in the people's mind that the government is
principally responsible for the prevailing crisis, no matter how hard
it tries to pass the blame on others. Therefore, the in***bents should
immediately stop making such outlandish suggestions, and also the
blame game, and undertake immediate measures to rein in the prices.
The government should realise that its failure would come at a very
high price - social, political and economic.
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