How can we prevent starvation, since bad weather and drought are obviously beyond our control?
Only a small percentage of hunger deaths are caused by starvation. Most hunger-related deaths are the result of chronic undernutrition, which weakens the body's ability to ward off diseases, prevalent in poverty-stricken communities. Most hungry people have some food, just not enough food or enough of the right kinds of food.
When people actually starve to death—where virtually no food is available—the cause is primarily political, not weather-related. In North Korea, untold millions starved because of the government's unwillingness to give up on failed economic policies. In Sudan, millions are threatened with starvation because of an ongoing military conflict that devastated the country's ability to produce food and because the government restricts the flow of emergency relief.
At the same time India—a country that experiences chronic hunger—has eliminated the threat of famine and mass starvation. Nobel prizewinning economist Amartya Sen explains that "open journalism and adversarial politics" have made it impossible for local governments "to get away with neglecting prompt and extensive anti-famine measures at the first sign of a famine." India's free press and the investigative role played by journalists as well as opposition party members require politicians to prevent and respond to frequent dips in food supply and occasional drought.
A story of hunger in Bangladesh
Malekha Khatun's story reflects the situation of many women in developing countries. Born in the village of Dhemsha in Bangladesh, she lost her father, the family's wage-earner, when she was very young. Malekha, her younger brother and mother slept outside since they had no house. In this wet climate, they got soaked when it rained unless someone else offered shelter. Her childhood was spent helping her mother work to earn money, attending a few years of school and witnessing the death of her nine-year-old brother from fever.
At 14, Malekha was married off to a man from another village for a small dowry equaling about nine U.S. dollars. She became pregnant right away and lived with her husband's family, while he left to work as a menial laborer so he could send money back to her and the baby. Upon his return, she became pregnant again. When Malekha's husband left a second time, she received no money or word from him. Left on her own with two small children and no means of income, her youngest child died of malnutrition and diarrhea.
Malekha worked at a variety of jobs in order to support herself, becoming skilled at knitting and making nets. She moved out of the home of her husband's family to live with her mother. Hard work and resourcefulness enabled her to run a small grocery store, but competition caused her business to suffer and she sometimes had to fall back on begging.
Malekha's constant hard work and industriousness could not overcome the poverty and hunger that shadow a woman alone at the bottom rung of an already poor nation. For all her struggling, Malekha ended up with no food to feed herself, no umbrella to protect her from the rain and only one sari to her name. |
