I just wanted everyone of us to keep our eyes and ears open,
see and listen how other people think and say.
The post is not my original ... it was published in 'New Age BD' .
As far as I know New Age not a BAL news paper.
By the way, Ireland, where potato is the staple, had great
Irish potato famine...so had Rumania and other countries
that depended on potato....
The problem is not rice or rice, problem is somewhere else
...... we need to find that out ...
My uncle tells me that in the late 60s when there was a food crisis.
Bhutto recommended the rice-eating people of the east to eat Bhutta [Maize]
as sunstitute [Is that true? Mr. Ayubi can shed some light on that]
Talking of fun, the real fun was at the "potato feast" at Radisson Water Garden Hotel.
where more than 140 potato recipes was on displayed for the "high class" [Ashraf]
Bangladeshis....
In the mean time some people [Dusto Lok]
are singing:
One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
five potato, six potato, seven potato more.
Icha bacha, soda cracker,
Icha bacha boo.
Icha bacha, soda cracker, where goes Mo-U?
five potato, six potato, seven potato more.
Icha bacha, soda cracker,
Icha bacha boo.
Icha bacha, soda cracker, where goes Mo-U?
Take it easy and have fun.
A Rahim Azad
On 5/11/08, Faruque Alamgir <faruquealamgir@yahoo.com> wrote:
May be for this type of clowns harsh comments are appropriate. That fools will be making fun out of evrything even if their near dear ones dies they will dance and singing that s/he is acting dead !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What else could be told about the fun maker of serious national issues. Just ignore the ingnorants
Faruque Alamgir
Salahuddin Ayubi <s_ayubi786@yahoo.com> wrote:
Do you know how much of water is required to grow rice. Our water tap is controlled by our big neighbour and if they close the tap then we will run short of water and we will not have the necessary water to grow rice. So I suggest tht Bengalis shuld kick the habit of eating rice and get used to eating wheat, corn, potasto and/or cassava etc that requires much les water to grow. Think realistically and pragmaticlly before you embark on a mission of making fun of peoples misfortune. In due course we will be left with no option but to take wheat, corn or cassava and/or potato.Your posting reminds me of an incident when my younger son was about seven years old. One day when I came home from office for lunch I found my young son is in heated arguement with his mother complaining about the food. About a year fefore that I had a heart attack and my wife stopped meat in the house and we were taking fish only. Young boy got fed up of eating fish every day and he finally revolted. I heard his mother explain to him " Baba amra mache bhate bangali, amder to mach khetei hobe". He then blew his top off and said why do bengalis had to become mache bhate bangali, why could not they become mangshe bhate bangali?'From: AbdurRahim Azad <Arahim.azad@gmail.com>
Subject: [notun_bangladesh] Hungry Bangladeshis want rice, not potatoes - AFP
To: notun_bangladesh@yahoogroups.com, "khabor" <khabor@yahoogroups.com>, chottala@yahoogroups.com, uttorshuri@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, May 11, 2008, 2:32 PM
rice, not potatoes
Agence France-Presse . DhakaThe humble potato is being promoted as the answer to soaring rice prices in impoverished Bangladesh as the crisis pushes many to the brink of starvation, but the poor are reluctant converts.
Some of the nation's many impoverished people have turned to potatoes - which they eat seasoned with chilli and salt to make them more palatable - only as a last resort.
Squatting by an urn on a Dhaka street corner, Kushnahar Begum, 55, ekes out a living selling tea to passers-by for a single taka a cup.
The business brings in only about Tk 50 (70 cents) a day while the cost of a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice has doubled in a year to more than Tk 40.
'We eat one meal a day but if we become sick and cannot earn anything for a few days then we cannot eat at all,' said Kushnahar, adding that she lived in a state of constant anxiety about where the family's next meal was coming from.
In a country where 40 per cent of the 144 million population already lives on only a dollar a day, the rise in the cost of rice and other essentials has caused widespread suffering.
The situation has been compounded by floods last summer and last November's devastating cyclone Sidr which damaged some two million tonnes of rice crops.
'We are suffering, my husband (a labourer) doesn't get the energy to work every day any more and my son has become lean and bony for lack of food,' said Kushnahar.
Nearby, her seven-year-old nephew runs up and down the street as he plays with a home-made kite. The boy complains daily to his mother that he is hungry and wants to eat meat, fish and rice, not potatoes, said Kushnahar.
The authorities, however, want Bangladeshis to consume more of the tuber.
The chief of army staff, General Moeen U Ahmed, last month urged all citizens to include potatoes in their diet and army rations now include a daily helping.
This week the country's military-backed emergency government even organised a three-day potato promotion campaign in an attempt to publicise different cooking methods.
Kushnahar has four children, the youngest of whom is 13, and said her family stopped eating fish and vegetables seven months ago as prices spiralled beyond affordability.
The only meat they have had in the past year was donated by rich households during the two main Muslim festivals.
Government-run shops sell subsidised rice at Tk 25 per kilogramme but queues are long and the amount each person can buy is limited.
'If I stand in the queue at 5:00am then I get five kilograms of rice by 12 noon. It is enough for one meal a day for five or six days,' she said.
Car painter Dulal Sarker, 35, who earns a monthly salary of around Tk 5,000 (72 dollars) said his family had also taken to eating potatoes but only because there was no alternative.
Potatoes sell in the markets at Tk 14 (two cents) per kilogram, or ten in the subsidised markets. The country this year saw a bumper harvest of a record eight million tonnes, up by a third on 2007.
'We are Bengalis. We eat rice and fish and we cannot easily change to potatoes except to eat as a vegetable,' he said.
Sarker said he was angry that the suffering of the poor and lower middle class had gone almost unnoticed for so long.
'They (the government) are not feeling it as a crisis because they have everything: money in the bank, cars, homes. They can manage everything for themselves but it is a crisis for us because we have nothing,' he said.
In his family village in the central Faridpur district, he added, the poorest were now eating just one meal every two days.
'Only God knows how they are surviving, it is unimaginable, ' he added.
At a supermarket in Dhaka's upmarket Gulshan suburb, meanwhile, most rich families remain unaffected by the crisis.
Here, imported cheese and pun nets of blueberries sell for four or five times a labourer's daily wage.
Shopper Faramarz Al Nur, 31, an export businessman, said his family enjoyed potatoes, especially baked, but that poorer sections of the population were not used to the tuber and would take years to change their eating habits.
'Rice is the staple. It will take ten years for all people to get habituated with potatoes,' he said
In the meantime, the government would have to stem the growing tide of anger with concrete improvements, he added.
'It is a silent crisis and those who are running Bangladesh have to feel for the country rather than just making speeches. Sweet words are there but nothing is changing.
'The rich are getting richer and the poor are now destitute,' he said.
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