DHAKA: In the first week of November in Bangladesh, those living in the country’s northern districts are usually hard at work harvesting the winter paddy crop after two lean months. Not this year. For an estimated seven million people, the seasonal lack of food has turned into near-famine conditions.

Ibrahim Mia is one of nearly a hundred thousand that have made their way to the capital to escape famine. His home district of Panchagarh is about 400 kilometres north-west of Dhaka and Ibrahim is scraping together savings by pulling a rickshaw.

“I came to Dhaka along with my fellow villagers about three weeks ago in search of work,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I don’t know when I will return home.”

Nor is Dhaka the only centre to absorb the hundreds of thousands making their way out of northern Bangladesh. Non- government organizations (NGOs) and district officials say streams of people are heading for the southern and south-eastern districts of Sylhet, Moulavibazar, Comilla and Chittagong in search of work.

The several million landless and agricultural labourers in the northern districts — Rangpur, Nilphamari, Kurigram, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandah, Dinajpur, Panchagarh and Thakurgaon — usually get paid the equivalent of 1.3 US dollars per day for eight hours of manual labour.

Driven by starvation and desperation, they are now working for just 30 US cents a day. That’s if they find work. For thousands, the situation is more than desperate. Newspaper reports have said that at least 24 people died of diseases brought on by starvation conditions during September and October.

The local language daily ‘Jugantar’ in a recent report pointed out that famine-affected people in Bangladesh’s Rangpur district were eating boiled weeds or banana leaves in a bid to stave off hunger and are suffering from severe diarrhoea — 38 people have died of diarrhoea in this district.

Yet despite the clear and obvious suffering, the official machinery is choosing to either downplay the extent of the misery, or attribute motives to the political opposition for making the situation known.

Abdullah al Noman, the minister for food in Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s government, has claimed that the ‘monga’ — the local term for the acute shortage of food at this time of year — was “not grim” in the northern districts and that no one has died of starvation”.

This hasty denial flies in the face of all available evidence.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.