Why Nations Fail to Feed The Poor: The Politics of Food Security in Bangladesh

318 Pages·2022·4.553 MB·English

by  Mohammad Mozahidul Islam

WHY NATIONS FAIL TO FEED THE POOR

‘. . .Islam precisely analyses how patronage politics affects food security
and convincingly identifies the political make-up as the cornerstone
of state capacity.’
Arild EngElsEn ruud
Professor of South Asia Studies, University of Oslo
This book examines the political and economic dimensions of food
security in Bangladesh and assesses the role of the state in meeting the
challenges of food security. The key concern, which is at the heart of
this study, is to explore how Bangladesh responds, when its people
go hungry. There are no detailed empirical studies that examine the
Bangladesh’s role by providing an historical cum political analysis;
however conventional approaches are primarily concerned with a
partial diagnosis of the economic or nutritional problems of food
security.
This work provides a detailed picture of the missing dimensions
of stateness that include the strength of institutions, the scope of
state functions, and other important attributes. In doing so, it uses
the concept of neo-patrimonialism to explore the political system of
Bangladesh. This book explicates the various impediments to food
security, ranging from the process of policy formulation to their
implementation mechanisms. It unpacks the structural weaknesses
of the Bangladeshi state’s institutional capacity in promoting food
security, and, in the process, argues that the root cause of food
insecurity is deeply embedded in the nature of the government itself,
and the political institutions that link the state and society.
Mohammad Mozahidul Islam is Professor and Chairperson,
Department of History, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka.

WHY NATIONS FAIL

TO FEED THE POOR

The Politics of Food Security
in Bangladesh
MOHAMMAD MOZAHIDUL ISLAM
MANOHAR
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Mohammad Mozahidul Islam and Manohar Publishers
The right of Mohammad Mozahidul Islam to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
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invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan
or Bhutan)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-032-37694-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-37697-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-34145-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003341451
Typeset in Adobe Garamond 11/13
by Kohli Print, Delhi 110051
Contents

List of Tables and Figures 6

Preface 7

1. Introduction 13

2. Food Security, the State and Institutional Effectiveness 24

3. The Political Origin of Hunger in Bangladesh 50

4. The Problems of Food Availability and Accessibility 91

5. Governance, Food Availability and Food Security

in Bangladesh 138

6. Governance, the State and Food Accessibility 207

7. Conclusion 262

Appendix 1: Interviewee Codes (Anonymized) 275

Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Bengali Terms Used 277

Bibliography 279

Index 313
List of Tables and Figures

TABLES
4.1. Trend in Per Capita Food Intake in Bangladesh 110
4.2. Cereal Production, Imports and Food Aid in
Bangladesh, 1981-2010 112
4.3. Value of Imports by Major Agriculture Commodities 114
4.4. Main Reasons for Food Crisis 125
4.5. Incidences of Poverty in Bangladesh 126
5.1. ADP Actual Expenditure for Agriculture,
1991-2 to 2009-10 144
5.2. Distribution of Agricultural Holdings in 2005 166
5.3. Bangladesh Foodgrain Imports, 1980-1 to 2010-11 171
6.1. Public Foodgrain Distribution in Bangladesh 235
6.2. Trend in Expenditure on Targeted Food
Programmes as a Share of Total Development
and Public Expenditure 236
FIGURES
4.1. Prices of Coarse Rice in Bangladesh (monthly
average Taka/QTL), 2002-10 131
6.1. Public Stocks of Cereals in Bangladesh, 1989-90 to
2009-10 247
Preface

This book attempts to illustrate the political and economic di­
mensions of food security in Bangladesh and assesses the role of
the state in meeting the challenges of food security issues using a
political economy approach. The key question which is at the heart
of this project is to explore how the Bangladesh state responds
when its people go hungry. Upon considering the fact that Bangla­
desh is a food insecure, under-resourced, and poorly governed coun­
try, the study critically examines the causes of food insecurity in
general and the state failure and/or inability to promote food security
in particular. I argue that food security in Bangladesh has a multi­
dimensional aspect which involves national and international poli­
tics. While the role of inter-governmental and non-governmental
agencies are important factors, the project particularly focusses on
the state capacity of Bangladesh. The thesis explores the neopatri­
monial politics of Bangladesh and its impact on state capacity and
governance. In other words, in order to examine the ‘scope of state
functions’ in relation to food security, this study is designed to
investigate the institutional effectiveness (state capacity and/or
governance) to promote food security. In this regard, my main
concern is to investigate the different kinds of impediments to
food security in Bangladesh, from the policy formulation process
to policy execution mechanisms. This study focusses on the state’s
responses and activities and the ways in which it interacts with the
food and agriculture market, agricultural development strategies
and activities, farming and non-farming subsidies and the public
food distribution system of Bangladesh. It is imperative to note
that this thesis seeks to examine the politics of food and hunger in
the context of the ‘right to food’ and a ‘social-welfare sense’ of
economic analysis.
In order to examine the politics of food security in Bangladesh,
my research attempts to contribute several important issues at the
8 Preface
forefront of the Bangladesh’s food security analysis. These are the
concepts of neopatrimonialism, linkages between food security
and state capacity, institutional effectiveness, ‘interest politics’ and
patronage politics in the making of and implementing of food
policies. All of these issues are to some extent linked to the notion
of good governance. To this end, regarding governance as an im­
portant factor in providing food security of nations, initially my
study was aimed at investigating the governance-food security nexus
in Bangladesh. My understanding was straightforward and naive:
I saw poor governance as the underlying factor behind the poor
policy-making process thereby weakening policy implementation
mechanisms and resulting in the state failure in promoting food
security to hungry citizens. The fact is that in the early stages of
my research, I did not grasp the underlying ‘politics of the good
governance’ in relation to the politics of food security.
However, in the course of my fieldwork examining the politics
of food security in Bangladesh, I gained new insights into the no­
tion of ‘good governance’, which is sometimes merely a ‘project’
allocated to some political actors, and does not always capture the
inherent causes of food insecurity in its entirety. More eloquently
expressed, as Norris (2011, 2012) argues, good governance is an
abstract and vague term which is open to alternative interpreta­
tions. During my fieldwork, I realized that the policy failure in
promoting food security is not merely the consequence of poor
governance, as is commonly thought, but is the inevitable out­
come of patronage politics, which in turn is essential for the regime’s
survival. This dynamic offers benefits/patronage for the ruling elite,
and consequently, the failure of appropriate policy formulation for
corresponding target groups is inevitable. Therefore, drawing from
first hand experiences and practical insights from field research, I
began to think about the factors that impede good governance in
implementing state functions such as food, health, education and
the like. In doing so, my research drew from, and built upon, re­
cent literature on neopatrimonialism, state building and state capa­
city, state-society relations, state power and the political economy
of food security. I attempt to explore the process of making and
unmaking of a weak state that has failed to penetrate society, re­
Preface 9
mains unable to carry out basic state functions (food, health, edu­
cation and so on) and fails to implement an ‘ambitious range of
activities’ that often aims to perform well.
My underlying justification for undertaking this project is con­
nected to the premise that in order to understand the challenges
of food security, the structural causes of hunger, and the roots of
food insecurity, it is important to understand the missing dimen­
sions of stateness that include the strength of state institutions, the
scope of state functions, and the like. Hence, in the course of ex­
amining the politics of food security in Bangladesh, the core of my
attention will lie in investigating the role of the state with special
reference to the process of policymaking. In particular, I am inter­
ested in the interactions between various (political) actors. After
identifying the politics of policymaking, I then draw my atten­
tion to exploring its implementation mechanisms to understand
the state’s capacity to promote food security. At the very outset of
dealing with the policymaking process, a series of sub-questions
are raised. These are: ‘What is the nature of the state that formu­
lates policy?’, ‘Is the state responsive to demands from within the
society?’, ‘Has the state the capacity to formulate a better policy to
promote food security?’, ‘What is the nature of Bangladeshi poli­
tics that shape and/or re-shape the state mechanism?’, ‘How is the
policy formulated?’, ‘Who is making the policy?’, ‘Are food issues
on the agenda of policy-makers?’, ‘Who are the beneficiaries of the
policy outcome?’, ‘Who participates in policy-making in Bangla­
desh?’, ‘Who is included and excluded?’. I argue that it is impera­
tive to deal with these critical issues as outlined above, and to
examine the politics of food, as all these issues are linked to the
state capacity of a particular nation state, in particular, the Bangla­
desh state.
Throughout this study, I critically engage the capability of the
state’s policymaking process and implementation mechanisms with
regard to food security. In other words, in order to understand
factors and conditions that prevent food from being distributed
throughout society from a welfare perspective and to seek reasons
for market failure focussing on patronage politics, my main con­
cern is to critically review the politics of policymaking and policy