Food cost renders more people poor
Ehsanul Haque | Saturday, 23 August 2008
BANGLADESH has been consistently producing record harvests of food grains in recent years. This would lead to a conclusion that the rate of consumption of basic food, rice or wheat, is rising or remains at a reasonably satisfactory level. But these assumptions have been challenged now by a joint study conducted by the Dhaka University (DU) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The study report contends that nearly 60 per cent or 36 million people out of those who are regarded officially as the non-poor in the country actually suffer from food poverty. Although this study has been criticized by the World Bank (WB) for drawing conclusions after examining too few samples (the sample size should have a lot bigger for real determinative value, according to WB), there are grounds to think seriously about the findings in the joint study.
For it is a reality that food productivity and availability is one thing and its distribution or purchase is another. The Nobel prize winning economist, Amartya Sen, in his seminal works demonstrated how food production may not have so crucial a relation with food consumption or poverty alleviation. There may be mountains of food near at hand but the consumption of the same is vitally determined by purchasing power, the priorities of the consumers and other changing factors.
It a truism in the Bangladesh context that inflation or higher prices have been progressively putting more and more pressures on the family budgets of persons of modest means. They are ranked above the categories of the poor in official measures of poverty. But the measures can be flawed for not adjusting to rates of price escalations or upwards movements in the costs of living or more specifically to the rise in the price of food grains compared to the declining purchasing power of the consumers. For example, the price of ordinary types of rice used to be Taka 22 to 25 per kg only about a year ago. The same rice is now selling at Taka 35 per kg or more. Thus, the price rise of the basic staple in the diet for common people have risen not marginally, but substantially within a period of 12 months, whereas their purchasing powers remain where those used to be or have actually gone further down due to the generally depressed economic situation.
Serious research conducted by different bodies including a few official ones has been quite uniform in their findings that efforts towards poverty alleviation and adequate consumption of daily essentials have been declining worryingly from price escalations and diminished earning opportunities for even those who are considered to have an existence above the poverty line. Thus, the idea probably is that the poor have been turning poorer and the ones above poverty in many cases have lost their previous status and joined the ranks of the poor although these regressive developments are not capable of measurement by stereotype official assessments.
The solution lies in inter-related activities on many fronts. The purchasing power of the rural and urban poor must be improved in many sectors. This will call for creating conditions for sustainable occupations for them and also government's planned intervention to create job opportunities. The rise in the costs of living must be brought under control by implementation of a great number of policies ranging from fiscal measures to make essentials -- specially foodstuffs -- cheaper to efficiency and incorruptibility in their distribution. Government's effective price monitoring with related mechanisms is a must. Wages, salaries and prices paid to producers at the grass roots, all will have to be adjusted within the bounds of reason and feasibility, to increase the incomes of people so that they can spend properly on essentials, particularly basic foods.
(The writer is a researcher and freelance journalist)
For it is a reality that food productivity and availability is one thing and its distribution or purchase is another. The Nobel prize winning economist, Amartya Sen, in his seminal works demonstrated how food production may not have so crucial a relation with food consumption or poverty alleviation. There may be mountains of food near at hand but the consumption of the same is vitally determined by purchasing power, the priorities of the consumers and other changing factors.
It a truism in the Bangladesh context that inflation or higher prices have been progressively putting more and more pressures on the family budgets of persons of modest means. They are ranked above the categories of the poor in official measures of poverty. But the measures can be flawed for not adjusting to rates of price escalations or upwards movements in the costs of living or more specifically to the rise in the price of food grains compared to the declining purchasing power of the consumers. For example, the price of ordinary types of rice used to be Taka 22 to 25 per kg only about a year ago. The same rice is now selling at Taka 35 per kg or more. Thus, the price rise of the basic staple in the diet for common people have risen not marginally, but substantially within a period of 12 months, whereas their purchasing powers remain where those used to be or have actually gone further down due to the generally depressed economic situation.
Serious research conducted by different bodies including a few official ones has been quite uniform in their findings that efforts towards poverty alleviation and adequate consumption of daily essentials have been declining worryingly from price escalations and diminished earning opportunities for even those who are considered to have an existence above the poverty line. Thus, the idea probably is that the poor have been turning poorer and the ones above poverty in many cases have lost their previous status and joined the ranks of the poor although these regressive developments are not capable of measurement by stereotype official assessments.
The solution lies in inter-related activities on many fronts. The purchasing power of the rural and urban poor must be improved in many sectors. This will call for creating conditions for sustainable occupations for them and also government's planned intervention to create job opportunities. The rise in the costs of living must be brought under control by implementation of a great number of policies ranging from fiscal measures to make essentials -- specially foodstuffs -- cheaper to efficiency and incorruptibility in their distribution. Government's effective price monitoring with related mechanisms is a must. Wages, salaries and prices paid to producers at the grass roots, all will have to be adjusted within the bounds of reason and feasibility, to increase the incomes of people so that they can spend properly on essentials, particularly basic foods.
(The writer is a researcher and freelance journalist)