Starvation stalks 7m in northern districts

Anwar Ali, from Kurigram

Severe joblessness and food crunch twinned with skyrocketing prices of essentials during the monga (famine) period have threatened the lives of about seven million people in eight northern districts.
Women, children and men are either starving or living on a single meal a day, while workers are leaving home in their hundreds every day for jobs in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country.
Of the eight districts, Kurigram, Gaibandha, Rangpur and Nilphamari have been hit the hardest by monga, admitted sources at the Rajshahi divisional commissioner's office. The other monga-stricken districts are Lalmonirhat, Dinajpur, Panchagarh and Thakurgaon.
Labourers wearing a lifeless look spend all day at bazaars with no-one willing to hire them even at a price four times cheaper than usual.
"You can easily hire a labourer for a day's work at only Tk 20," said NGO worker Abdul Mannan in Kurigram.
"Our credit distribution in Ulipur upazila has dropped by Tk 1 lakh this year," said Mannan, a field supervisor of Chhinna Mukul Bangladesh, an NGO.
Monga, the period of extreme penury, torments the poor in the agro-based northern region during Bangla months of Bhadra and Kartik every year when peasants have no crop to harvest.
Unprecedented draught this year has only compounded their yearly woes, prolonging the spell over a month already.
Meanwhile, the five additional secretaries, tasked with monitoring the monga situation, left Dhaka yesterday for the five worst-affected districts -- Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandha, Kurigram and Nilphamari.
Official sources said the additional secretaries have been asked to monitor the situation in person, supervise the relief operation and report to the Prime Minister's Office and the relief and disaster management ministry.
At the bus terminals in Kurigram, people are found deserting their home to try their luck in big towns like Bogra, Rajshahi and Dhaka.
But its even harder for women, children and elderly people, who have nowhere to go.
On the Dharla embankment of Buraburi village, Ulipur, three housewives --Selima, Aklima and Shakila, aged between 35 and 40 years -- said they do not know how long they can survive without food and work.
"My four daughters and I have been fasting day and night. We take only water during iftar and at night we eat kaun (millet) rice along with kachu (arum) curry," said Aklima, whose husband and the only son went to Dhaka a week ago.
"A villager gave me only Tk 1 on Monday to sell milk at a local market and I bought muri (puffed rice) for that day's iftar," she said.
Selima meanwhile said neither the members nor the chairman of Buraburi union visited their village and are yet to arrange relief goods for them.
Devastated by poverty, many people have also been selling their crops and labour in advance in Ulipur.
Meher Ali of Ugura village sold his green crops on his three bighas to one Abdul Kuddus of the area at a rate of only Tk 200 a mound.
Esar Ali, 45, a labourer of Shatbhita village, was lying on bed with his skin shrunk to the skeleton as he has been starving more or less for the last one month. His wife Yaban Banu, a mother of seven daughters and three sons, said her sons had gone to Dhaka a month ago and they were yet to return with money.
She now begs door to door to make a living for her ailing husband and daughters. "I have no money to take my husband to hospital," a sobbing Yaban said.