“I bought two rotten breads.  I will give them for lunch,” Rahima, the mother of a three-year-old child, tells me in a sprawling slum on the outskirts of Chittagong.  “Do you think that is enough for a three-year-old?” I ask, noting that her son appears famished, and she looks hungry herself.  She tells me that she has another child at home.  The bread she is holding is supposed to provide enough nutrition for her, the son standing next to her, and her other child, for the entire day.  “I don’t know,” she says.  “It doesn’t depend on what I think, it depends on what I earn.”

For many families, the food situation is so dire that it is often not possible for the residents of slums to meet the minimum nutritional needs of their children.  Money determines who eats and who does not eat.  Adults are able to survive without much nutrition, but the lives of children are fragile and many factors end up determining their ability to survive into adulthood.  In the slums of Chittagong, the children have a constant uphill battle against malnutrition, disease, and ignorance.  Their lives are an ongoing crisis, defined by a lack of opportunity.

Rahima tells me that she begs to support her family. In her desperation to feed her children, she accepts whatever foodstuffs people offer, savoury or sweet, fresh or rotten.  “I earn by begging.  I get rotten food from people and bring it for my babies,” she says.  She is their only guardian and she does her best to ensure their development.  After having two children, her husband left her to raise them alone, without compensation or any other form of support.  “Their father left me.  You can consider him as dead,” Rahima advises.  She might be impoverished and starving, but she isn’t homeless – her children live with her in a small bamboo hut, which they rent for 800 taka (about $12 USD) per month.

“If you ask me about life here, I don’t know what to say,” says a man from a different slum, who has children of his own.  “In this slum, 80% of us are in a very dire situation. We eat once or hardly twice a day, either in the morning or at night.”  He lives with his family next to a railroad, trying to earn an income working odd jobs.  Until four years ago, he was involved in the slum’s drug business.  His modest income can not support the nutritional needs of his family.  “I have four members in my family. Our income is 200 taka per month. A potato is 32 taka, and five kilograms of rice is 100 taka, and that’s not even enough for one mouth for a month,” he says solemnly.  “After the money is finished, how do you expect us to survive?”

Poverty and food crises are typical of developing countries like Bangladesh, but the extremity of the squalor in slums is beyond the imagination of those from other parts of the world.  Images of starving children and adults are cliché, but the social and psychological impact of malnutrition on children is less visible.  Few realize how stunted children become when they go through life hungry, without the necessities for growth or advancement.

“A child’s world can be influenced by a plethora of aspects that shape his or her physical, cognitive, social and emotional development and maturation,” says Professor Varuni Ganepola, a psychologist at the Department of Social Sciences at the Asian University for Women in Chittagong. She explains that even the relations of starving children suffer from the lack of nutrition. “Children can suffer a loss of self-esteem and develop a poor self-concept,” Ganepola says.  “Loss and deprivation can affect the way he or she develops a sense of who they are in the way that they relate to their social world.”

Children living in the slums have to live without basic necessities, and this precarious state often creates both physical and psychological strain.  Some argue that the present food crisis in slums across Bangladesh paves the way for a bleak future for the entire nation, with thousands of children suffering daily due to malnutrition.  Academics and policymakers alike have concluded that the large number of children living in these impoverished places could be a great asset to Bangladesh if given adequate opportunity.  However, they become a liability when they have no opportunities and are faced with only bleak futures.

Despite the outspokenness of politicians, there is effectively no government supervision or intervention in the slums of Bangladesh.  Many are indifferent to the troubles faced by the country’s poorest citizens.  Simple solutions are ignored and proposals for broad change are rejected.  Thus, there is substantial nutritional deprivation across the country, especially for those who live at the bottom of the social ladder, the slum dwellers.

The father who lives in a slum beside a railway track tells me about the food he acquires for his family. “Rice, vegetables, and lentils,” he says.  “I can barely remember when I last ate fish and meat.”  If his family gains access to any special ingredients, like a savoury sauce or spice, they have cause to celebrate.  “Not even in Eid-ul-Azha can we eat meat,” he explains bitterly about the annual event when wealthier Muslims sacrifice animals and feast on the meat.  Such a diet lacking meat is common in most slum households.