http://newagebd.com/2008/may/10/front.html#10
New Age, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Hungry Banglade****s want rice, not potatoes
Agence France-Presse . Dhaka
The humble potato is being promoted as the answer to soaring rice
prices in impoverished Bangladesh as the crisis pushes many to the
brink of starvation, but the poor are reluctant converts.
Some of the nation=92s many impoverished people have turned to
potatoes - which they eat seasoned with chilli and salt to make them
more palatable - only as a last resort.
Squatting by an urn on a Dhaka street corner, Kushnahar Begum, 55,
ekes out a living selling tea to passers-by for a single taka a cup.
The business brings in only about Tk 50 (70 cents) a day while the
cost of a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice has doubled in a year to more
than Tk 40.
=91We eat one meal a day but if we become sick and cannot earn
anything for a few days then we cannot eat at all,=92 said Kushnahar,
adding that she lived in a state of constant anxiety about where the
family=92s next meal was coming from.
In a country where 40 per cent of the 144 million population
already lives on only a dollar a day, the rise in the cost of rice and
other essentials has caused widespread suffering.
The situation has been compounded by floods last summer and last
November=92s devastating cyclone Sidr which damaged some two million
tonnes of rice crops.
=91We are suffering, my husband (a labourer) doesn=92t get the energy
to work every day any more and my son has become lean and bony for
lack of food,=92 said Kushnahar.
Nearby, her seven-year-old nephew runs up and down the street as he
plays with a home-made kite. The boy complains daily to his mother
that he is hungry and wants to eat meat, fish and rice, not potatoes,
said Kushnahar.
The authorities, however, want Banglade****s to consume more of the
tuber.
The chief of army staff, General Moeen U Ahmed, last month urged
all citizens to include potatoes in their diet and army rations now
include a daily helping.
This week the country=92s military-backed emergency government even
organised a three-day potato promotion campaign in an attempt to
publicise different cooking methods.
Kushnahar has four children, the youngest of whom is 13, and said
her family stopped eating fish and vegetables seven months ago as
prices spiralled beyond affordability.
The only meat they have had in the past year was donated by rich
households during the two main Muslim festivals.
Government-run shops sell subsidised rice at Tk 25 per kilogramme
but queues are long and the amount each person can buy is limited.
=91If I stand in the queue at 5:00am then I get five kilograms of
rice by 12 noon. It is enough for one meal a day for five or six
days,=92 she said.
Car painter Dulal Sarker, 35, who earns a monthly salary of around
Tk 5,000 (72 dollars) said his family had also taken to eating
potatoes but only because there was no alternative.
Potatoes sell in the markets at Tk 14 (two cents) per kilogram, or
ten in the subsidised markets. The country this year saw a bumper
harvest of a record eight million tonnes, up by a third on 2007.
=91We are Bengalis. We eat rice and fish and we cannot easily change
to potatoes except to eat as a vegetable,=92 he said.
Sarker said he was angry that the suffering of the poor and lower
middle class had gone almost unnoticed for so long.
=91They (the government) are not feeling it as a crisis because they
have everything: money in the bank, cars, homes. They can manage
everything for themselves but it is a crisis for us because we have
nothing,=92 he said.
In his family village in the central Faridpur district, he added,
the poorest were now eating just one meal every two days.
=91Only God knows how they are surviving, it is unimaginable,=92 he
added.
At a supermarket in Dhaka=92s upmarket Gulshan suburb, meanwhile,
most rich families remain unaffected by the crisis.
Here, im****ted cheese and pun nets of blueberries sell for four or
five times a labourer=92s daily wage.
Shopper Faramarz Al Nur, 31, an ex****t businessman, said his family
enjoyed potatoes, especially baked, but that poorer sections of the
population were not used to the tuber and would take years to change
their eating habits.
=91Rice is the staple. It will take ten years for all people to get
habituated with potatoes,=92 he said
In the meantime, the government would have to stem the growing tide
of anger with concrete improvements, he added.
=91It is a silent crisis and those who are running Bangladesh have to
feel for the country rather than just making speeches. Sweet words are
there but nothing is changing.
=91The rich are getting richer and the poor are now destitute,=92 he
said.
|
