Rural Development Essential

The thrust toward industrialization has contributed to the current food supply shortage and persistent hunger poor people have been suffering for decades.

“It has taken people away from their source of subsistence and has contributed to the neglect of agriculture,” says food security expert Mohiuddin Alamgir. Alamgir, the author of Providing Food Security for All and Famine in South Asia, is the former director for policy and planning of the International Fund for Agriculture Development.

He explains that as farms are converted into subdivisions and industrial zones, people move out of rural areas to take low-paying jobs that are often hardly enough to provide for all their needs.

“Investments have been channeled to sectors with limited capacity to give employment. And while wages have gone up, actual purchasing power is declining because of inflation,” he explains.

This has been going on for years and the current food problems, he says, actually only highlights the hunger that has persisted in Asia for decades.

In Bangladesh, A.M.M. Shawkat Ali, food and disaster management adviser to the government, says in newspaper reports that the situation has revealed a persistent problem that Bangladesh has been experiencing. "We are facing a hidden hunger that has been more exposed now due to the sudden sharp rise in food prices," he was quoted as saying.

Alamgir says that rural areas have to be developed “so people do not feel so compelled to leave” in search of employment. After all, what good is farmland without people to tend to it? Thus, basic institutions have to be reformed, and infrastructure, education and health centers, and access to credit provided.

“People are not asking for dole-outs, just opportunities to farm and earn an income,” he says. •