Bangladesh having slipped three notches in the Global Hunger Index 2024, based on 2019–2023 data, shows that the development model pursued and trumpeted by the toppled Awami League government ignored people’s most basic necessities. The index, prepared by two European non-governmental organisations and made public on October 11, has put Bangladesh in the 84th position among 127 nations. Bangladesh has an overall score of 19.4 based on four crucial indicators — undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality. The overall score has, in fact, remained stuck at around 19 in 2020–2024 from around 25 in 2017–2019, suggesting that the country has been at a moderate level of hunger. The index also shows that 11.9 per cent of children are malnourished and 2.9 per cent die before their fifth birthday while chronic malnutrition has resulted in 23.6 per cent of children under five being stunted and 11 per cent experiencing wasting, where weight does not increase in proportion to height. The prevalence of child stunting — 3.9 million stunted children in Bangladesh as a UNICEF Bangladesh report says — reflects a lack of access to a healthy diet and low food security.
The Food Security Statistics 2023 of the Bureau of Statistics says that about 22 per cent of households face moderate food insecurity while about 1 per cent face severe food insecurity. Food insecurity, under-nutrition and stunting also vary between different regions. The report finds that the highest 29.98 per cent of households in the Rangpur division suffered from food insecurity while food insecurity is more acute in rural areas. The highest number of households facing severe food crises is in the agriculture sector. Other UN and independent studies also paint a bleaker picture of food security in Bangladesh. A report by five UN agencies, made public in July 2023, says that about 30 per cent of people in Bangladesh experience varying levels of food insecurity, ranging from severe to moderate. Within this group, about 18.7 million people, or about 10 per cent, are facing the most severe form of food insecurity. The South Asian Network on Economic Modelling also finds a rising level of food insecurity. The food insecurity situation is caused primarily by the erratic nature of food prices, which the government has lamentably failed to address. Besides, the failure to bolster domestic agriculture for increased production, over-reliance on food import, failure to timely import food and inadequate social safety net programmes are reasons for the rising food insecurity.
The government should, therefore, make food security a policy priority. It needs to attend to the interconnected issues of hunger, malnutrition, food security and poverty reduction. To address food insecurity, the government should ensure an adequate supply of food items by increasing domestic production, facilitating timely food import and enhancing social safety programmes to cover all vulnerable people.