Food security remains elusive

FE Team | Published: November 05, 2025 20:58:45

No nation can be proud if only 32.9 per cent of its population have full food security. Of the rest, 22.75 face extreme food insecurity and 44.57 per cent people enjoy marginal food security which otherwise translates into vulnerability of food availability. Their fragile food availability can deteriorate at anytime. So the myth of near self-sufficiency in food gets busted by the latest survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) which unfortunately was once credited to have painted the rosy picture based on its distorted, flawed and what-the-doctor-ordered data base. Since food security is a political and human rights issue, no government feels comfortable with any exposition of such a grim reality. The autocratic and even elected party governments were known to have instructed the statistical body to manipulate data in order to reflect an impressive achievement.
Food availability can be categorised, according to globally recognised metrics, into healthy diet and improper or inadequately nutritious diets. The report carried in this paper on Tuesday last does not present these aspects of food. Did the survey not deal with the population's access to quality food? It is a vital issue in measuring the level of food security. The global picture of food security is not at all reassuring. As many as 2.3 billion people on this planet faced moderate to severe food insecurity in 2024. According to different metric, 673 million suffered hunger in the same year. But when it concerns healthy diet, 2.6 billion had no access to such wholesome diets. Overall, one in four people faces food insecurity globally. In Bangladesh 73 per cent people could not afford a healthy diet in 2022, according to an estimate. In 2021, though, the percentage of such people was 66. In 2025 the percentage of such people may be even higher.
After more than a half century of independence, the socio-economic picture looks terribly uninspiring. There is no denial that the country has flourished in terms of infrastructure development, industrial output and expansion of commerce. The country's gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita income have witnessed from moderate to phenomenal increase. Yet something vital is missing and that is the uneven distribution of wealth. While the number of millionaires has soared, the deprivation of segments lying at the bottom of society has also been alarming. Disparities and discriminations have yawned because of the oligarchic system favouring the educated and the privileged.
Clearly exposed here is the systemic fault line of social and economic policies and practices. Following the July-August uprising, hopes were raised to bury the discriminatory system and replace it with equitable system of social justice. But such hopes now look like a distant dream. The interim government's elitist stance on all matters of governance falls far short of what was required. The urban-rural divide, as exposed by the BBS survey, is yet to be adequately addressed. According to the survey, moderate to severe food insecurity is prevalent among 20.94 per cent of urban people while it is 25.75 per cent among their rural counterparts. If the survey brought incomes of men and women living in rural and urban settings, the gender discrimination would be grossly exposed too. With such disparities in society, no nation can break the cycle of poverty.