Our food security and India’s medical tourism goal
Jamal Uddin Bari
Food security does not simply mean making sure every person fills their stomach by any means. Uninterrupted production and supply, nutritional value of food, and protection from adulteration and contamination are also essential parts of food security. Recently, a test of a shipment of 135 tonnes of rice imported officially from India found aflatoxin, which causes terrible cancer in the human body. There has been wide reaction on social media over this. A kind of fear has grown among the public about buying and using rice, pulses and other grains imported from India.
This has happened at a time when India and Bangladesh relations and trade are facing some tension and uncertainty. Especially after the July revolution, leaders of India’s ruling party have kept up anti Bangladesh provocation, threats and propaganda. Bangladeshis have been made unwelcome at tourist spots in India. The decisions to stop visas for Bangladeshis and to halt export of essential food items became a boomerang for Indian farmers and the Indian economy. So the move to step back from the negative decision of keeping everything shut can be seen as an effort to normalize trade and bilateral ties.
But there are plenty of examples of India protecting only its own interests by any means and using Bangladesh’s dependence on India for raw materials and trade as a dominating political agenda. Even during the global Corona pandemic, the Hasina government, a puppet of India, rejected China’s attractive terms and signed a deal to import Corona vaccines from India’s Serum company, and fell into a big trap. As a priority, to buy the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine made by India’s Serum Institute as fast as possible, Bangladesh paid about Tk 1,200 crore in advance in two installments. Beximco Pharmaceuticals, owned by an influential person of the Hasina government, signed this deal as local commission agent and distributor.
Extreme Indian Hindutva followers cheated on the safety of the people of Bangladesh even during a global pandemic. Like a bolt from the blue, India suddenly stopped vaccine export and pushed crores of people of Bangladesh into the risk of the Corona pandemic. In danger, friend and enemy become clear. In urgent need, friendly China stood by Bangladesh by sending Corona vaccines, oxygen ventilators, medical equipment, expert advisory teams and trainers. Development partner nations including the United States, the European Union and Japan also extended a helping hand.
On the other hand, Bangladesh did not get the vaccines even after paying Tk 1,200 crore in advance to India’s state owned company. It is surprising that even after five long years Bangladesh has not got back the money paid to the Serum Institute. It was the duty of the Sheikh Hasina government to bring this money back. They did not do it. On top of that, thousands of crores of taka were looted in the name of tackling the Corona pandemic. Awami supporting touts, with licenses to give fake Corona tests and certificates, played a game of cheating over people’s lives. It is learned that more than half of the Tk 40,000 crore spent in the name of tackling the Corona pandemic was wasted and stolen through oligarchs close to the government.
Earlier, during the interim government, 11,000 tonnes of rice imported from India was sent back from Chattogram port itself because of mold and poor quality in the boiled rice. Indian exporters are desperate to raise the volume of export earnings by sending poor quality goods by any means. In the last few years, countries of the European Union banned import of more than 500 food products from India. Because of dangerous levels of ethylene oxide, tricyclazole, heavy metals like lead and cadmium, and cancer causing elements in Indian farm products, these countries decided to ban hundreds of Indian products.
Shipments of Indian spices, rice, mango, fish and meat are not only being sent back. Asian countries including China, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong are also imposing bans on importing these goods from India. In this reality, the Indian government and exporters are supposed to take extra care in exporting farm products abroad. But no, India has never had to take care when exporting goods to Bangladesh. Especially during Sheikh Hasina’s rule, the government treated raising questions on the quality of any Indian product as rude or discourteous.
Even though sending goods to the Seven Sisters through Bangladesh’s transit corridor saves huge cost and time, the Bangladesh government could not charge tax as per international transit and trade rules. Yet before approving the transit, to handle public opposition and pressure, a story was presented that the country would become as strong as Singapore through hundreds of crores of dollars in duty income each year from this sector. After the transit corridor started, the opposite happened. The earnings of Bangladeshi companies that exported goods to India’s northeastern states fell to less than half.
India took its transit facility using roads, highways, land ports and river ports built with the taxes of the people of Bangladesh. But the burden of thousands of crores of taka in loans and interest spent on infrastructure was put on the Bangladesh government and its people. These are old matters. India keeps up many kinds of harmful acts against Bangladesh’s trade potential, including tariff barriers on traditional export goods like garments, medicine, jute, tea and leather, and cancelling transit facilities.
But every step India has taken against Bangladesh has turned into a blessing. To face the challenges of these steps, farmers, livestock owners, importers, producers and exporters of this country have opened new doors. In response to the stop on cattle export to Bangladesh, done purely for communal political reasons, farmers and livestock owners of Bangladesh have brought an unmatched revolution in the livestock sector. Bangladesh was once hugely dependent on Indian cattle to meet demand for beef and sacrificial animals. Now it is self sufficient. Farmers of this country had brought a revolution in poultry and fish production long ago. Great potential has also been raised in the dairy industry along with livestock farms.
During the previous Awami League government, a contradictory picture appeared. On one side there was loud boasting about self sufficiency in food production, and on the other, lakhs of tonnes of rice were imported. Because of the tricks of millers, farmers could not recover their production cost. Even in the peak season of bringing in the Aman harvest, the door was kept open to import poor quality rice from India, which crashed the market and pushed farmers into loss. For this reason the country’s food security has always been at risk. Behind this work ministers, bureaucrats and administration backed by Indian dominance. To them, Indian interest was more important than Bangladesh.
News recently spread on social media that India has bought the Deputy Commissioners of several districts of Bangladesh. However, there is no proven basis for such news. But the number of political leaders and bureaucrats brainwashed, or who sold their brains, by the Awami and Indian dominating cultural and political narrative is not small. For this reason there is no need to buy Deputy Commissioners here, or to appoint Deputy Commissioners through sleeper cells. Although the bodies of Sheikh Hasina and her aides were in Bangladesh, their minds and souls were stuck in Delhi.
Even as the economy struggled with oil and gas imports from abroad, Ms. Hasina gave India the chance to draw thousands of cubic meters of gas for one and a half decades through slant drilling from Bangladesh’s border in the Bay of Bengal. She had said that Delhi would never forget what she gave India. India has not forgotten. It seems their duty to protect their servant Hasina matters more than trade worth thousands of crores of taka and bilateral ties with Bangladesh. As an obedient and tested friend of Delhi, they got shelter in Delhi even after the fall. Sitting there, anti Bangladesh activity has now grown more than at any earlier time.
To create unrest in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, terrorist groups backed by India are being armed again. Attacks on tourists in Sajek and attacks on the military are, in a hidden way, part of India’s blueprint to put pressure on Bangladesh. Since losing Indian control over Bangladesh through the July uprising, BJP leaders of India have openly threatened to seize Chattogram, Feni and Rangpur. In this, they want to use the presence of Chinese companies and workers in Bangladesh’s development projects as an excuse for a threat to themselves.
It is not that India has no border with China. China also has a border with Pakistan. Pakistan’s bilateral and strategic ties with China are very deep. It is India’s threat that forced Pakistan to build a defense strategy with China. Threats cannot stop a party from the possibility of such a relationship. Threats can even make it stronger or faster. Because of India’s inter river linking project and reckless water aggression against Bangladesh, without considering international river law and bilateral interests, the Teesta Master Plan has become essential for Bangladesh.
Those who are not ready to ensure Bangladesh’s share of Teesta water will obstruct the Teesta Master Plan, and that is no surprise. But on the question of China, secret diplomatic moves to obstruct the Teesta project through China, using the strategic partner the United States, are also normal. Chances do not come again and again. On Teesta and Ganges water, Bangladesh has no room for compromise.
As mentioned before, many countries in Europe and Asia have banned Indian farm products because of harmful chemicals. In this reality, India should have used the chance to export rice to Bangladesh, its most traditional trade partner. Instead, is exporting rice with the cancer causing aflatoxin a mere carelessness or an unintentional matter? A simple linear calculation does not work in judging this. Bio weapons, conspiracy theories, the war loving economic theory of capitalism, and even the so called depopulation theory must be kept in account here.
To keep control over the world economy by any means, the corporate world, the Western imperialist deep state and their regional partners are doing everything possible, which is an extreme threat to all humankind. At this moment most of the nearly 9 billion people in the world are affected by some lifestyle disease. A magical control of the high tech and corporate world has been established behind human thought, way of life and the political and economic narrative. Capitalist control cannot be kept only through the Military Industrial Complex (MIC).
Because of the need to create some universal crises, a trillion dollar medical industry has grown along with the rise of health problems like obesity, diabetes and hormonal dysfunction, and of kidney disease, liver cirrhosis and cancer. Medicine companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars in profit each year from the diabetes industry and the cancer industry.
Bangladesh is one of India’s main trade and multi sided economic partners. Income from India’s medical tourism sector is much lower than its farm exports in the world market, but for Bangladesh it is almost equal. India’s medical tourism is now worth about 13 billion dollars, and most of it depends on Bangladeshi patients. India has set a target of earning 70 billion dollars from medical tourism in the next decade. In the same period, its farm export target is 100 billion dollars. This target cannot be reached without more Bangladeshi patients and easier visas for medical tourism.
Export of poor quality Indian rice to Bangladesh, whether needed or not, including costly basmati rice, carries cancer causing aflatoxin, kidney destroying ethylene oxide, tricyclazole and heavy metals. This will make more people sick with these serious diseases. Because Bangladesh does not have world class doctors and hospitals, most of those patients will go to India. By the next decade, at least 20 billion dollars a year will be spent in this sector. Nearly half of the remittance sent each year by the country’s 1.5 crore migrant workers will go to medical tourism, or treatment abroad.
In this way Bangladesh’s public health, security and economy are turning into a “bottomless basket.” Without effective steps and planning on these matters, sustainable development and national security cannot be ensured.
