The consequences of famines, manifested in the form of short-run economic fluctuations, act as a good measure of the extent of vulnerability of a low-income agrarian economy like Bangladesh. Various hypotheses have been forwarded to “explain” famines, most of these seeking causes in natural disasters, food availability decline or fluctuations in “exchange entitlements”. The present study argues that these explanations, individually considered, constitutes an inadequate basis for analysing famines, and further contends that famines must be seen as simply an extension of poverty. Analysis of famines must therefore essentially emanate from various poverty-themes and the structure of the economy to which these themes may relate. The study attempts to make a prima facie case for the above approach, drwing largely from the experience of the 1974/75 famine of Bangladesh.

Current official policy in the industrial sector is directed towards building up private entrepreneurship through fiscal concessions, liberal provision of public resources and disinvestment of particular nationalised enterprises. In these circumstances it is essential to appraise the efficacy with which the private entrepreneurs have thus far handled public resources. This paper examines one aspect of this performance, the repayment of loans to public financial institutions (BSB and BSRS) by the private entrepreneurs. The results indicate that the loan repayment performance of private enterprises to both BSB and BSRS has been poor, with considerable accumulation of overdues in payment liability and its growth over time. This accumulation and build up of overdues is pervasive amongst all enterprises. Poor repayment performance does not differentiate between the size of enterprises, its location or the entrepreneurial class as a whole. Given the widespread nature of the default it is essential to seek a fuller understanding of the circumstances contributing to the poor repayment performance of private entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. This will provide the basis for a review of the validity and efficacy of the policy of channelling public resources and denationalisation of enterprises into private hands.

Labour use in agriculture is highly seasonal. The nature and implications of such seasonality are explored in this paper at a micro level using data from two villages in Bangladesh. It is found that rural unemployment due to seasonal factors is much greater than non-seasonal unemployment. As a result, poverty and food shortage is very much a seasonal phenomenon. The paper also analyses the implications of seasonality for the overall use of labour, forms of labour hiring and the role of non-agricultural activities.