Neoliberal Wheat Trade Shocks Expose Colonial Food Dependency: India’s Export Ban & Black Sea Crisis Deepen South Asia’s Vulnerability
Original framing: “Black Sea Upheaval Sends India Wheat Back to Neighbor Bangladesh” — Bloomberg
India’s 2020 farm laws and export bans echo the 1876-78 Great Famine, when British colonial authorities exported 6M tons of grain from India while 9M starved—a policy justified as ‘market efficiency.’ Bangladesh’s current wheat imports mirror the 1943 Bengal Famine, where British wartime grain requisitioning killed 3M, despite local surplus. The 2013 global food crisis saw India repeat this playbook, banning exports while prices spiked 80% in Bangladesh. These precedents reveal how ‘plentiful supply’ is a myth when state power dictates who eats and who profits.
This wheat trade crisis is not a market failure but a *designed vulnerability*—a legacy of colonial extraction repackaged as ‘globalization.
’ The power structures at play are clear: corporate agribusiness profits from scarcity, states use food as a geopolitical tool, and marginalized farmers bear the cost. Historical precedents (from the 1943 Bengal Famine to India’s 2013 export ban) prove that ‘plentiful supply’ is a myth when power dictates who eats. The solution lies not in tweaking trade policies but in *dismantling the extractive architecture*: restoring indigenous seed sovereignty (as the Chakma and Marma communities demand), centering agroecological models (like Cuba’s post-Soviet resilience), and holding corporations accountable (via UN principles). The trickster here is the illusion of ‘neighborly’ cooperation—while the real work of justice begins with naming the colonial trade routes we still walk.