ABSTRACT
In March 2011, a young Bangladeshi rickshaw-puller said the following about how food markets should (be made to) work:
This fragment of popular political culture came from a focus group discussion in a northern Dhaka slum, as part of research on experiences of food price volatility. In Dhaka in March 2011, the price of coarse rice (the kind eaten by rickshaw-pullers and other people on low-incomes) was BDT 34 per kg (then USD 0.47), almost as high as at its peak during the 2008 food price spike.1 During the 2008 crisis, 20,000 factory workers had rioted in Dhaka, protesting low wages in a time of high food prices (Schneider 2008). Yet it seemed that retail rice prices could be controlled, when the will existed: in 2009, after sales of cheap grain and other state actions to curb prices, rice had dropped to BDT 20/kg (USD 0.28). This followed Bangladesh’s return to multiparty democracy after two years of military-backed rule (2007-2008) and the steep drop in global commodity prices after the global financial crisis struck in 2008.
