ABSTRACT
Bangladesh, worst affected by famine in the world food crisis and belonging to world hunger’s core, remained a land of chronic hunger as a result of rural development policies that spurred inequality. Foreign-backed public policies aimed at intensifying small producers’ rice farming through subsidizing inputs. Cooperatives, domestic and foreign-run integrated rural development programs, and a new national fertilizer industry supported this until the 1980s. Then, foreign-financed NGOs combining credit with education induced some reorientation from staple foods to self-employment, especially for women. They, too, generated inequality but rarely wealth. Many schemes raised agricultural production but hardly productivity to the 1980s. ODA rather benefitted urbans, as did food rationing. In rural areas, rich peasants appropriated subsidies and development funds and used this for venturing into commercial business. Farms were shrinking, landlessness increased, and poverty and hunger remained common. Social conflict and struggles for land, often violent (also among the poor and within families), were aggravated by ‘development’. The particularly low social position of women improved only slowly, through diversified income or proletarianization in the garment industry, whereas millions of men went on labor emigration, adding to the family income but only sometimes contributing to the acquisition of land and agricultural inputs.
