Inverse relationship between price and adulteration
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Maswood Alam Khan
PRICES have spiralled up 14 per cent for flour, 13 per cent for soybean oil, 13 per cent for powdered milk and 7.0 per cent for sugar during the last two months, when there was ostensibly no visiting of warehouses and factories by personnel of the Bangladesh Rifles(BDR) or joint armed forces and, according to press reports, when edible oils marketed were all adulterated to an extent of 70 per cent.
This is puzzling as we know 'prices of edibles in our country are always in inverse proportion to adulteration'. "Higher the adulteration, lower the price" is a market matrix known to us. Price of oil is supposed to be low or stable with such high rate of adulteration, irrespective of international price. Of course, uncanny traders nowadays---in a break of tradition---market their adulterated products with higher price tags, lest their products with lower price tags are taken by consumers as shoddy.
Profiteering by a section of traders is being identified by people in general as the main culprit in the price crisis. Economists are pointing their accusing fingers at the imbalanced relationship between the amount of goods that are available and the amount that people want to buy. Traders are shouting about rising commodity prices in the international markets and the concomitant increase in their import cost. Monetarists are puzzled as to why American dollar is still robust in Bangladesh while the same hard currency has been diluted all over the world. Bankers are contemplating to open a spigot of our reserve tank to deluge the market with US dollars in an attempt to bring about some kind of parity.
When politicians, economists and members of think tanks are tearing their hair out brooding over the price crisis and devising solutions on how to throttle back price spiraling some people, who constitute the majority of market stakeholders, are busy manicuring and grooming their mustaches and massaging their protruded bellies: they, the gurus in the world of adulteration, are chuckling at their ability of hoodwinking the consumers into buying whatever they are fancying. Their profit making is not predicated upon the law of supply and demand in the market; these adulteration nerds dictate the market by throttling up and down the quantity of adulterants being punched into edibles like oil, flour, ata, milk or medicines.
Foisting spurious and shoddy goods and edibles on consumers is not new in our society. Sellers used to display their products of different grades with price differentials. A steel almirah (cupboard), for example, made of sheets of thicker gauge was priced higher than those of thinner gauge. Shoppers with thinner wallets were content with cupboards of sleeker partitions made of iron sheets of thinner gauge. Sometimes, shop-owners even used to fill hollow panels of steel almirahs with sands and stones to make them weigh heavy. There were adulterated edibles too: like milk diluted with water or tea brewed with spent tea leaves etc., served in a tea stall to shortchange the customers. Both shoppers and sellers were not unhappy---in spite of adulteration that was not so malignant to human health. Life was easy, undemanding, silky and downy. But, never ever in those days edible oils were made cheaper and at the same time more delicious by punching into oils chemically treated spent lubricants.
Nowadays traders no more display their produces of different grades and qualities; they don't allow a buyer to leave their shops without his/her taking delivery of goods. First, they somehow sense the buyer's budgetary capability and then they accordingly force-supply the exact quantity of goods the buyer needs; the only difference the seller ensures is that of the quality. The lower the budget the higher the quantity of adulterants punched into edible oil or milk.
Every businessman knows that the possibility of incurring loss is minimal in two areas of business in our country: one is related to food and drink and the other, drugs and medicines. Notwithstanding high import cost of medicinal raw materials and ever increasing price of locally available food grains, medicines and food items manufactured and processed in Bangladesh are the cheapest in the world even compared to those in neighbouring countries like Thailand.
The Bangladeshi secret behind roaring business on anything edible may be 'unbridled scope and lust for adulteration' whenever the fancy takes a processor of foods or a manufacturer of medicines who can easily hoodwink inspectors who are too few in numbers and who are too poorly equipped with logistics and equipment to detect adulteration. Many of today's manufacturers of foods and drugs would have been nonexistent if they had to shut up their departments of adulteration in their respective mills and factories.
While shopping we rely on what we see with our eyes, how our tongues taste an edible, how our noses sense the pungency of mustard oil, how our fingers feel the finesse of clothes or how heavy our hands feel the weight of an electronic gadget. We are too illiterate, poor, gullible and ignorant to verify the intrinsic genuineness of what we buy. Our judgmental capacity has been warped and stunned.
We are happily content as long as our stomachs remain stuffed with foods that ostensibly look good and fresh and taste delicious and our bodies infused with medicines that are packed in attractive foils and bottles. A poor rickshaw puller does not know that modern chemistry can transfuse animal urine into pure ghee. Fifteen million human mouths of our country have thus been turned into dumping pits for our unscrupulous businessmen and traders to foist upon their adulterated edible products.
Equipped with the cutting edge of technology, workforce of scientists and lessons learned from global swindlers unscrupulous businesspersons of our country have long been pumping in full throttle into the market adulterated edibles and spurious products in such subtle strategies that counterfeited and shoddy products look more attractive and taste more delicious than their genuine counterparts.
Many of such adulterers are camouflaging their clandestine operations behind the signboards of reputed companies who occupy primetimes of TV advertisements the way Managing Director of Hotel Purbani had his young paramours dancing and drinking all night and all day in his grand suites behind the smokescreen of VIP boarders of his multi-starred hotel.
With the joint forces and BDR personnel decelerating their operational speed in checking how our businessmen are adulterating consumer items in consideration of bringing about a semblance off confidence in markets at the behest of business doyens, the malaise of adulteration, which was about to be eradicated after the present caretaker government started campaigns against immoral businesses, has been left half-treated clearing the ways for the old traders to resume their businesses as usual. Adulterated edibles packed in attractive bottles and containers are thus reoccupying their old spaces in shelves of grocery shops and drug stores.
It is heartening to note that the government is going to form soon a 'Price Commission' to suggest ways and means to address the issue of spiraling prices. The government is also planning to resume mobile court drives with renewed vigour to ensure weight and quality of goods in trading.
Such simultaneous moves with pincers to control market and at the same time ensure quality of goods are the best way to reassure the public about genuine goods at fair prices. But, in reality the government, with poor logistics, cannot really afford to check each and every shop in urban and rural areas to measure the quality of the edibles and it would be unrealistic to expect an overnight metamorphosis in the quality of government-sponsored inspections of foods and drugs to rid the nation of the malaise of adulteration.
Adulteration of food items and counterfeiting of other consumer products are the easiest ways to make money from, in a country like Bangladesh where police forces equipped with hackneyed 3not3 rifles moving in rickshaw vans at a snail's pace have to brave terrorists equipped with the latest automatic machine guns moving in robust speeding jeeps.
Decades back, the only instrument the food inspectors used to carry was a lactometer, a hydrometer to test specific gravity of milk based on Archimedes principle. But today's adulteration chemists know how to fool the hydrometer into measuring the correct specific gravity of milk by removing the milk fat and replacing it with fats from coconut oil or palm oil. In this nuclear age scientists equipped with the latest laboratory instruments are necessary to detect hi-fi adulteration of foods and medicines.
We have achieved phenomenal successes in controlling terrorism, thanks to crossfire! Adulteration is more dangerous a terror to our life than JMB. Only death or fear of death can stop adulteration. A few deaths in summary trials or crossfire encounters may send a real signal for adulteration nerds to rethink before they switch on their blending machines next time.
There is a glorious opportunity now for us to estimate correctly the extent of adulteration we have been used (or intoxicated with) to, if the present caretaker government---which has no political ambition---moves all their forces against adulteration even at the cost of further spiraling of prices of edibles and non-edibles. If this opportunity of administering full-dozed antibiotic---in the form of crossfire, if necessary---to eradicate our adulteration disease is missed the next chance may be too costly and may require cross-bombardments or the strongest dozes of antibiotic not yet invented.
We should educate ourselves that a rise in price is not that bad if the oil, flour or milk we are consuming is pure and that abnormally low prices of edibles compared to their international prices is a dangerous signal. We should not mind consuming half the quantity of oil and milk at double the price if only we are sure that the oil we are frying vegetables with is genuine and the milk we are feeding our babies is unadulterated.
Our printing and electronic news media are investing tonnes of money to modernise their printing and video departments with state-of-the-art equipment. We were enthralled by NTV's live coverage on how JMB stalwart Bangla Bhai was rounded up, thanks to their smart journalists equipped with costly gears who spent sleepless days and nights to send live signals from the far-flung spot of the incident to feed us with updates. Both TV viewers and TV advertisers have nowadays been more interested in live news and views than in prerecorded dramas and dances.
May we appeal to all the printing and electronic news media to open their respective chemistry departments equipped with scientists and laboratories exclusively dedicated to detecting adulterants in foods and medicines?
May we see in a near future a live coverage undertaken by a private TV channel with one of their courageous (and unadulterated) journalists-a brilliant graduate in applied pharmacy---inspecting a drug store in a remote village, picking some medicines from a shelf, putting those under a microscope and extracting out impurities and adulterants on the spot---all under the nose of a running movie camera and being beamed live direct to TV viewers---in presence of local witnesses enthusiastically gathered around during an investigative scoop dubbed "Clean Medicine"?
The writer General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank, and may be reached over:
maswoodalamkhan@gmail.com
PRICES have spiralled up 14 per cent for flour, 13 per cent for soybean oil, 13 per cent for powdered milk and 7.0 per cent for sugar during the last two months, when there was ostensibly no visiting of warehouses and factories by personnel of the Bangladesh Rifles(BDR) or joint armed forces and, according to press reports, when edible oils marketed were all adulterated to an extent of 70 per cent.
This is puzzling as we know 'prices of edibles in our country are always in inverse proportion to adulteration'. "Higher the adulteration, lower the price" is a market matrix known to us. Price of oil is supposed to be low or stable with such high rate of adulteration, irrespective of international price. Of course, uncanny traders nowadays---in a break of tradition---market their adulterated products with higher price tags, lest their products with lower price tags are taken by consumers as shoddy.
Profiteering by a section of traders is being identified by people in general as the main culprit in the price crisis. Economists are pointing their accusing fingers at the imbalanced relationship between the amount of goods that are available and the amount that people want to buy. Traders are shouting about rising commodity prices in the international markets and the concomitant increase in their import cost. Monetarists are puzzled as to why American dollar is still robust in Bangladesh while the same hard currency has been diluted all over the world. Bankers are contemplating to open a spigot of our reserve tank to deluge the market with US dollars in an attempt to bring about some kind of parity.
When politicians, economists and members of think tanks are tearing their hair out brooding over the price crisis and devising solutions on how to throttle back price spiraling some people, who constitute the majority of market stakeholders, are busy manicuring and grooming their mustaches and massaging their protruded bellies: they, the gurus in the world of adulteration, are chuckling at their ability of hoodwinking the consumers into buying whatever they are fancying. Their profit making is not predicated upon the law of supply and demand in the market; these adulteration nerds dictate the market by throttling up and down the quantity of adulterants being punched into edibles like oil, flour, ata, milk or medicines.
Foisting spurious and shoddy goods and edibles on consumers is not new in our society. Sellers used to display their products of different grades with price differentials. A steel almirah (cupboard), for example, made of sheets of thicker gauge was priced higher than those of thinner gauge. Shoppers with thinner wallets were content with cupboards of sleeker partitions made of iron sheets of thinner gauge. Sometimes, shop-owners even used to fill hollow panels of steel almirahs with sands and stones to make them weigh heavy. There were adulterated edibles too: like milk diluted with water or tea brewed with spent tea leaves etc., served in a tea stall to shortchange the customers. Both shoppers and sellers were not unhappy---in spite of adulteration that was not so malignant to human health. Life was easy, undemanding, silky and downy. But, never ever in those days edible oils were made cheaper and at the same time more delicious by punching into oils chemically treated spent lubricants.
Nowadays traders no more display their produces of different grades and qualities; they don't allow a buyer to leave their shops without his/her taking delivery of goods. First, they somehow sense the buyer's budgetary capability and then they accordingly force-supply the exact quantity of goods the buyer needs; the only difference the seller ensures is that of the quality. The lower the budget the higher the quantity of adulterants punched into edible oil or milk.
Every businessman knows that the possibility of incurring loss is minimal in two areas of business in our country: one is related to food and drink and the other, drugs and medicines. Notwithstanding high import cost of medicinal raw materials and ever increasing price of locally available food grains, medicines and food items manufactured and processed in Bangladesh are the cheapest in the world even compared to those in neighbouring countries like Thailand.
The Bangladeshi secret behind roaring business on anything edible may be 'unbridled scope and lust for adulteration' whenever the fancy takes a processor of foods or a manufacturer of medicines who can easily hoodwink inspectors who are too few in numbers and who are too poorly equipped with logistics and equipment to detect adulteration. Many of today's manufacturers of foods and drugs would have been nonexistent if they had to shut up their departments of adulteration in their respective mills and factories.
While shopping we rely on what we see with our eyes, how our tongues taste an edible, how our noses sense the pungency of mustard oil, how our fingers feel the finesse of clothes or how heavy our hands feel the weight of an electronic gadget. We are too illiterate, poor, gullible and ignorant to verify the intrinsic genuineness of what we buy. Our judgmental capacity has been warped and stunned.
We are happily content as long as our stomachs remain stuffed with foods that ostensibly look good and fresh and taste delicious and our bodies infused with medicines that are packed in attractive foils and bottles. A poor rickshaw puller does not know that modern chemistry can transfuse animal urine into pure ghee. Fifteen million human mouths of our country have thus been turned into dumping pits for our unscrupulous businessmen and traders to foist upon their adulterated edible products.
Equipped with the cutting edge of technology, workforce of scientists and lessons learned from global swindlers unscrupulous businesspersons of our country have long been pumping in full throttle into the market adulterated edibles and spurious products in such subtle strategies that counterfeited and shoddy products look more attractive and taste more delicious than their genuine counterparts.
Many of such adulterers are camouflaging their clandestine operations behind the signboards of reputed companies who occupy primetimes of TV advertisements the way Managing Director of Hotel Purbani had his young paramours dancing and drinking all night and all day in his grand suites behind the smokescreen of VIP boarders of his multi-starred hotel.
With the joint forces and BDR personnel decelerating their operational speed in checking how our businessmen are adulterating consumer items in consideration of bringing about a semblance off confidence in markets at the behest of business doyens, the malaise of adulteration, which was about to be eradicated after the present caretaker government started campaigns against immoral businesses, has been left half-treated clearing the ways for the old traders to resume their businesses as usual. Adulterated edibles packed in attractive bottles and containers are thus reoccupying their old spaces in shelves of grocery shops and drug stores.
It is heartening to note that the government is going to form soon a 'Price Commission' to suggest ways and means to address the issue of spiraling prices. The government is also planning to resume mobile court drives with renewed vigour to ensure weight and quality of goods in trading.
Such simultaneous moves with pincers to control market and at the same time ensure quality of goods are the best way to reassure the public about genuine goods at fair prices. But, in reality the government, with poor logistics, cannot really afford to check each and every shop in urban and rural areas to measure the quality of the edibles and it would be unrealistic to expect an overnight metamorphosis in the quality of government-sponsored inspections of foods and drugs to rid the nation of the malaise of adulteration.
Adulteration of food items and counterfeiting of other consumer products are the easiest ways to make money from, in a country like Bangladesh where police forces equipped with hackneyed 3not3 rifles moving in rickshaw vans at a snail's pace have to brave terrorists equipped with the latest automatic machine guns moving in robust speeding jeeps.
Decades back, the only instrument the food inspectors used to carry was a lactometer, a hydrometer to test specific gravity of milk based on Archimedes principle. But today's adulteration chemists know how to fool the hydrometer into measuring the correct specific gravity of milk by removing the milk fat and replacing it with fats from coconut oil or palm oil. In this nuclear age scientists equipped with the latest laboratory instruments are necessary to detect hi-fi adulteration of foods and medicines.
We have achieved phenomenal successes in controlling terrorism, thanks to crossfire! Adulteration is more dangerous a terror to our life than JMB. Only death or fear of death can stop adulteration. A few deaths in summary trials or crossfire encounters may send a real signal for adulteration nerds to rethink before they switch on their blending machines next time.
There is a glorious opportunity now for us to estimate correctly the extent of adulteration we have been used (or intoxicated with) to, if the present caretaker government---which has no political ambition---moves all their forces against adulteration even at the cost of further spiraling of prices of edibles and non-edibles. If this opportunity of administering full-dozed antibiotic---in the form of crossfire, if necessary---to eradicate our adulteration disease is missed the next chance may be too costly and may require cross-bombardments or the strongest dozes of antibiotic not yet invented.
We should educate ourselves that a rise in price is not that bad if the oil, flour or milk we are consuming is pure and that abnormally low prices of edibles compared to their international prices is a dangerous signal. We should not mind consuming half the quantity of oil and milk at double the price if only we are sure that the oil we are frying vegetables with is genuine and the milk we are feeding our babies is unadulterated.
Our printing and electronic news media are investing tonnes of money to modernise their printing and video departments with state-of-the-art equipment. We were enthralled by NTV's live coverage on how JMB stalwart Bangla Bhai was rounded up, thanks to their smart journalists equipped with costly gears who spent sleepless days and nights to send live signals from the far-flung spot of the incident to feed us with updates. Both TV viewers and TV advertisers have nowadays been more interested in live news and views than in prerecorded dramas and dances.
May we appeal to all the printing and electronic news media to open their respective chemistry departments equipped with scientists and laboratories exclusively dedicated to detecting adulterants in foods and medicines?
May we see in a near future a live coverage undertaken by a private TV channel with one of their courageous (and unadulterated) journalists-a brilliant graduate in applied pharmacy---inspecting a drug store in a remote village, picking some medicines from a shelf, putting those under a microscope and extracting out impurities and adulterants on the spot---all under the nose of a running movie camera and being beamed live direct to TV viewers---in presence of local witnesses enthusiastically gathered around during an investigative scoop dubbed "Clean Medicine"?
The writer General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank, and may be reached over:
maswoodalamkhan@gmail.com