Inflationary bite pushes many poor to begging for survival

Lives of most people have become unbearable due to inflation, yet the government has not taken any concrete steps to bring it down.

The growing presence of beggars on the streets and market places gives an impression that the economy has been going through as tough a period as the nation experienced during the Covid-19 lockdown when there was no work available for the daily labourers and poor people.

People beg for many different reasons such as physical disabilities and lack of employment, but the ongoing inflation is also forcing many elderly people to beg for survival.

There is a phenomenon called ‘monga’ that once used to hit people of the Rangpur region every year when work was not available. People did not have money to buy food and other necessities.

Thanks to infrastructure development, this period of extreme hardship started to leave the northern districts.

But now it seems that monga has returned not just to the northern region, but all over Bangladesh.

Only rich people and the educated class that have public or private jobs with high salaries are not having the bite of ongoing inflation.

Rural people are running to cities in increasing numbers for work and yet what they earn on a daily basis hardly helps them to buy the daily necessities.

Reportedly, beggars themselves said that they turned to begging due to unemployment in areas outside the capital and escalating living costs. Bangladesh is experiencing the highest food inflation in recent times.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, food inflation now stands at 12.56 per cent in October for the first time in the past decade and the rural people were facing a higher inflation than the urban residents.

What are the steps the government has taken to save people from this critical time? The money is being devalued against the dollar almost every day and the economic condition, experts point out, will be even more serious in the coming days.

It is very unfortunate that the government does not have any word for how and when it wants to overcome the situation.