¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·

BOTH at theoretical and empirical levels, ample literature on food security is in evidence worldwide. Particularly in Bangladesh, the food security issue buzzes around academic and research corners most frequently. Policymakers and politicians seemingly feel perturbed at the perilous food insecurity in the country despite tonnes of reports and recommendations put forth to face food insecurity.

However, the book titled ‘Why Nations Fail to Feed the Poor The Politics of Food Security in Bangladesh’ (Manohar 2022) deserves special attention on many counts. First, it is perhaps a systematic — albeit scientific — detailed empirical study on food security in the country having historical, economic and political niches. Second, the approach embraces an analysis of political economy without dismissing or undermining previous literature. Third, the book provides a distinctive framework for analysing food security in Bangladesh by applying the notion of a new dimension called ‘neopatrimonialism’. Finally, unlike previous works focusing on policy failures like governance, corruption and rent-seeking, this book examines the ‘politics of policymaking’ — why actors take certain actions in certain way.

Written by Mohammad Mozahidul Islam, a historian by profession and of Jahangirnagar University, the central aim of the book is that ‘the root cause of food insecurity is deeply embedded in the nature of the Bangladesh state itself and the political institutions that link the state and society’. Ipso facto, the focus of the study hovers around the central role of the state ‘in shaping and reshaping national food policies and in order to promote food security’. The author further argues that millions of people go hungry not because of resource scarcity but because of the foundation in neopatrimonial politics, which ‘ systematically weakens the state capacity, promotes patronage politics and results in poor governance.… This has adversely affected governmental markets and non-market based policies’.

Composed of seven chapters, the 313-page hard-cover book discusses food security and the state (chapter 2), nature of political power with special reference to ‘neopatrimoniaalism’ (chapter 3), and challenges of food security in relation to availability and accessibility (chapter 4). A critical dive into the attempts at providing food for all people at all times (chapter 5), the political dynamics of market regulation and the state-sponsored Public Food Distribution System (PFDS) and concluding remarks in chapter 7.

Some of the key observations emerging from the study are as follows: (a) rent-seeking and public corruption are widespread and required reforms have fallen into the syndrome trap of ‘partial reform syndrome’ unpacking the indication of poor governance and weak state capacity to formulate and implement policies; (b) food availability and accessibility in Bangladesh are under serious threat under regimes of quasi-autocratic, centralised power structure in the veil of democracy; (c) policies adopted by the ‘neopatrimonial Bangladesh state’ are broadly politically motivated ‘and, therefore, do not promote food accessibility to the hungry poor’. For example, ‘target error’ and ‘leakage error’ in politically motivated projects and programmes seemingly support the allegations of ‘regime survival’ through the distribution of state resources among the various political actors; (d) market management fails due to political pressures.

By and large, Mozahidul Islam investigated the political and economic dimensions of food security through five political economy approaches: rent-seeking, public corruption, the partial reform syndrome, weak state capacity and poor governance. Coincidentally or not, these five pillars arguably aroused anger among youths to lead to a mass upsurge of the most recent kind. The author of the book reckons that ‘ the neopatrimonial Bangladesh state has a lack of administrative capacity, effective institutions and coherent ideology, and thus, is unable to carry out development as well as economic goals …. As a consequence of the loss of state capacity, the state’s ability to define and pursue basic services has declined over the years and been rendered incapable or rarely capable of providing basic services to its citizens. Most importantly, argues the author, neopatrimonial regimes of Bangladesh survive based on patronage politics and the patron-client nature of politics with heavy emphasis on personalised exchanges, thus emerging as the antithesis of good governance as well as of development.

To me, the book is worth the buck. It would be helpful for policymakers and politicians as well as academics to glance through the book to capture the main constraints to food security in Bangladesh. It is not only an analysis for Bangladesh, but the same framework could be applied elsewhere with similar socio-economic and political settings. The discovered ‘devils’ in the book also tend to deter economic, social and political security in Bangladesh. Thus the solutions to food security lie in reforming the whole system.Ìý

Ìý

Abdul Bayes, a former professor of economics and vice-chancellor, Jahangirnagar University, is now an adjunct faculty at East West University.