Just because there is no famine, except for the seasonal rice scarcity in pockets of the country's northern region in winter, we are lolling over a false belief that there aren't any food problems as such. Actually, we need to demystify the notion that output increase per se means adequate food to eat, enough intake of calories and ingesting of the required nutrients for body nourishment, faculty growth and enhanced energy levels.

The hard truth is there are serious issues of starvation, underfeeding and malnutrition. Some statistics cited at the WFP-Daily Star roundtable on "What more can we do to reduce hunger and malnutrition", basically underscored the jobs cut out for the planners, government, opposition, NGOs and relevant international agencies. There is chronic malnutrition among children; their physical and mental growth between birth and first three years in particular is severely stunted. Are we not looking to generations enfeebled bodily and mentally?

Eight million children below five years are underweight. Infant mortality rate is 56 per thousand, but if we are to meet MDG goal it has to be brought down to 32.

Ninety-six per cent of our people miss out on standard calorie intake and 60 million go to bed haunted by food insecurity.

Another point. Our agricultural success is largely rice-based. Healthy diet with protein, even lentil, cannot be afforded by teeming millions famished on one meal a day.

Malnutrition comes in lethal doses with poor sanitation, squalor and acute potable water deficits, ironically in a country watered by 56 rivers. Our poverty is exacting too heavy a price from the future of the nation. That's where the alleviation measures need concentrating to make a difference.

The bottomline is as well as doing well in certain areas we have fallen into a trap of self-deceiving complacency. Unless we get out of it, sustainable success will elude us.