Many faces of food insecurity

If 25.5 per cent households in the country, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), are compelled to borrow money for purchasing their daily foods, it exposes straightway the vulnerability of more than one-fourth of the total families. If each family has at least four members on an average, the percentage of food-insecure people is likely to be higher than the 24 per cent the World Food Programme found in August, 2023. Then there are street children and floating people who are unaccounted for in such official surveys. Together the vulnerable population size is likely to make a mockery of the official data of multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) at 18.2 per cent. Also, no cold figure or statistics is capable of capturing the painful saga of foregoing a meal or costly protein-rich food items by some families and reducing intakes of staples or basic foods by others.
Strangely, the BBS insists on the below 20 per cent poverty rate. If its statistics of borrowing money for purchasing food is correct, the poverty rate should have shot up to an alarming level by this time. The BBS report titled "Food Security Statistics" reveals, if read between the lines, disturbing developments such as the highest expenditure on rice purchase. This means people at this level skip other food items as much as they can. What about wheat? With the coarse flour price outstripping coarse rice price following the Ukraine war, it is only natural that the vulnerable segments would opt for the local staple. Financial hardship compels them to go for cheaper varieties of foods at the expense of nutritional items. After all, larger quantities of cheaper foods at least help fill their stomachs. The breaks of expenditure on food items corroborate the fact as 22.36 per cent is spent on rice followed by 14.05 per cent on fish and crab-type items and a distant 7.40 per cent on fruits.
If, notwithstanding all this manoeuvring such as skipping quality foods and reducing intakes, people have to borrow money for purchasing the cheaper dishes, the desperation of the borrowers can be imagined. Worse, borrowed money comes at a cost. Although the BBS claims that the majority of the surveyed households receive loans from non-profit organisations, including NGOs. In fact, in this case, the word non-profit is a misnomer. How can NGOs which extend microcredit at interest rates at around 20 per cent be called non-profit organisation? The report itself finds that as high as 68.2 per cent of the poor borrowers take loans from NGOs. Then 14.4 per cent accept loan from money lenders who just take the borrowers for a ride.
So it is clear, the poor are entangled in a vicious cycle of poverty. There is a need for government intervention in this demeaning process of social exploitation and discrimination. Contrarily, when businesses are sluggish, industries also suffer on account of fallouts from global economic recession, the rich have, according to a report published recently, become richer. In fact, this has been a global trend. What makes the condition of the poor in this country different is that social welfare benefits, apart from food assistance and some paltry allowances for vulnerable groups and extreme poor, the rest remain outside of the social safety net. The poor are better off when they are provided with meaningful employment and their children enjoy the opportunity of receiving functional education.