- Bangladesh faced a severe famine in 1974, causing around 1.5 million deaths
- The famine resulted from floods, economic instability, governance failures, and war damage
- Food prices surged sharply, with rice prices rising 240 percent amid widespread hunger
Just a few years after independence in 1971, Bangladesh faced its first famine in 1974. When the famine struck, poverty and malnutrition were already widespread after centuries of colonial rule. Though the famine claimed around 1.5 million lives, it has largely been overlooked globally, apart from its use as a case study in Amartya Sen's 1981 work on the causes of famine.
The famine was not driven by a single cause. Instead, it resulted from overlapping crises such as environmental shocks, economic fragility, governance failures and global political dynamics, which converged in a newly independent nation still struggling to rebuild after war.
When Bangladesh emerged as an independent country in 1971, it inherited a devastated economy and badly damaged infrastructure. The war of liberation had destroyed transport networks, agriculture and industrial capacity, leaving the country struggling to restore normal economic activity even years later. The disruption led to falling incomes, rising unemployment and declining living standards across large sections of the population.
By 1974, a combination of environmental disasters and economic instability pushed the country into crisis. Severe flooding between April and July affected large areas, damaging crops and disrupting rural employment.
With the floods came widespread hunger, and prices of essential goods surged. A New York Times report said, “The price of coarse rice has increased by 240 per cent in the last year […] Thousands of farmers have sold their pots and pans, their bullocks, even their land to buy food, and are now forlorn squatters in the villages.”
In another report, The New York Times described feeding centres in Dhaka where thousands waited for just a single piece of bread. The Red Cross supplied milk and protein biscuits in an attempt to save lives. Despite these efforts, people continued to die of starvation. The report said three burial grounds in Dhaka were filled with bodies, while municipal authorities and social organisations were collecting an average of 25 bodies a day from the streets.
Although the floods led to unemployment and loss of income, the surge in food prices that drove starvation was linked to exaggerated expectations of future food shortages, which were overestimated and to some extent manipulated, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said in his book Development as Freedom.
Eyewitness accounts describe mass migration into cities as people searched for food. By late 1974, streets in major urban centres saw growing numbers of starving people and rising numbers of unclaimed bodies.
The humanitarian crisis was stark. Relief kitchens were established across the country, feeding millions at their peak, but allocations were often inadequate and corruption was widely reported.
The 1974 famine left deep scars on Bangladesh's political and economic thinking. It exposed structural weaknesses in food distribution, disaster preparedness and governance capacity in the early years of independence.
Globally, the Bengal famine of 1943 is more widely recognised, but the Bangladesh famine of 1974 remains one of the deadliest post-colonial humanitarian disasters in South Asia.
The economy and the country's overall infrastructure is once again in focus as Bangladesh heads into polls on February 12 after a student-led movement toppled Sheikh Hasina in August 2024.
Sheikh Hasina's party, The Awami League (AL) has been barred from contesting the crucial polls by the election commission after the interim government of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, banned all activities of the Awami League under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
