Bangladeshis have been enduring stratospheric food prices for almost a year now. The combination of Sidr and flooding all but ensured that our rice output would fall well below expectations. Given the global trend in rising costs of agricultural inputs and commodities, especially rice, (see today’s NYT article) it is more important than ever for the government to focus on boosting domestic production and move quickly towards free and fair elections.

Unless both of these things happen, the danger of food riots is something Bangladeshis have to start worrying about. This is because food riots, as sociologist Javier Auyero convincingly argues in the context of Argentina, do not occur in a vacuum. The two key ingredients of food riots are food based grievances within a large population and a capacity for organization of would-be rioters. Bangladeshi society qualifies on both counts. In Argentina, the Peronist party played a key role in organizing ordinary Argentinians, many of them slum-dwellers, to engage in food rioting with an eye to unseating their political opponents from positions of national power. They succeeded in pulling of a de facto coup after several rounds of rioting across the country. Our political parties are experts at organizing violence. They may start to take bolder steps in that direction in the not too distant future if the current administration keeps doddering on its various meandering roadmaps.