Sarpunti replaces hilsa at a Boishakh breakfast as prices soar, professor writes

A university department in Bangladesh decided to serve sarpunti instead of fried hilsa at its Pohela Boishakh breakfast in April 2026, because hilsa no longer fitted the budget. The story was told in an opinion column, "No hilsa, but there is sarpunti, sir", which Jagonews24 published on 13 April 2026, the eve of the Bangla New Year 1433. Its author, a professor in the Department of Social Work at Rajshahi University and a former dean of the university's Faculty of Social Sciences, used the moment to argue that the price of hilsa had turned a shared festival dish into a marker of class, and that conservation, river health and market management needed attention.

The column appeared in a week when hilsa prices in Dhaka, Khulna and the coastal districts were being reported as far above normal, when the government was running its annual Jatka Conservation Week, and when official figures showed hilsa production at its lowest level in eight years.

As every year, the professor wrote, his department's Boishakh celebration committee came to hand him an invitation to the Pohela Boishakh programme. He asked how many kinds of bhorta (mashed vegetable or fish relishes) there would be with the panta this time. At least ten, the organisers told him. Before he could ask anything more, one of them said there would be no fried hilsa this year: the budget would not stretch to it, so sarpunti had been chosen instead, and every guest would get a whole fried sarpunti.

He admitted that the words "No hilsa, but there is sarpunti, sir" left him downcast, but he tried not to show it. He agreed, saying that the Boishakh programme would not wait for hilsa, and asked the committee to put out batasha and kodma, the traditional sugar sweets, after the panta. The organisers left, he wrote, apparently pleased.

At first he thought the disappointment was his alone, since everyone in the department knew he was, in his words, mad about hilsa, so he said nothing in case colleagues laughed. Later, listening to the way his colleagues talked, he realised that they felt the same. In his view, a hilsa-less Boishakh in one university department carried a wider message about the economy, the market system and what he called the emptiness of consumer culture.

The professor did not give prices, writing only that good-quality hilsa for under a few thousand taka seemed a fantasy in the capital's supermarkets. News reports from the same days show what buyers faced.

On 3 April 2026 the news agency UNB, in a report carried by The Business Standard and The Daily Ittefaq, surveyed kitchen markets in Shantinagar, Motijheel, Malibagh, Rampura, Badda and Kuril in Dhaka. Hilsa weighing under 500 grams was selling at Tk 1,400 to 1,500, up from Tk 800 to 1,000. Fish of 700 to 800 grams cost Tk 2,200 to 2,300, and fish of a kilogram or more Tk 2,600 to 2,800 a kilogram. Traders said supply had fallen in recent days and might improve towards the end of April, while demand ahead of the New Year was also pushing prices up.

In Khulna, the Daily Observer reported on 13 April that a hilsa of about one kilogram was selling at Tk 4,000 a kilogram wholesale at Rupsha and at Tk 4,200 to 4,400 in retail markets. Medium-sized fish sold wholesale at Tk 2,500 to 2,700 a kilogram, and fish of about 500 grams at around Tk 1,900. Moinuddin, manager of Madina Fish, told the paper that supply remained very low and that he had sold only 30 kilograms that Monday. Traders linked the shortage to fishing restrictions in Bhola and Chandpur and to the two-month ban on catching jatka, which limited fish that usually came from Barishal, Char Dohani and Patharghata. Raj of A Bengal Fish said fuel shortages had kept many boats from fishing. Some buyers told the paper that the hilsa on sale had a reddish look, which they took as a sign of stored stock from earlier seasons, and one buyer at Rupsha, Abu Naser, alleged that dishonest traders create artificial shortages around the New Year; the report carried no response from traders to that claim.

On the coast the picture was the same. Reporting from Amtali in Barguna on 12 April, the Daily Observer said a shortage of fuel oil was keeping most fishing boats from going to the deep sea, so almost no sea hilsa was reaching the markets of Amtali and Taltali. River hilsa of one kilogram was selling at Tk 1,30,000 to 1,40,000 a maund (about 40 kilograms), fish of 800 to 900 grams at Tk 1,15,000 to 1,20,000, and fish of 600 grams at Tk 75,000 to 80,000. At the Patharghata fishing harbour, wholesalers were buying the few fish that arrived and sending them straight to Dhaka and other cities.

High prices before Boishakh were not new. In April 2025 The Daily Star found fresh hilsa of 450 to 500 grams selling at Tk 1,400 a kilogram at Karwan Bazar, fish of 550 to 650 grams at Tk 1,700 to 1,800, and cold-stored fish of one to one and a half kilograms at Tk 1,800 to 2,200. Sukkur Ali, who had sold hilsa at Karwan Bazar for 30 years, told the paper: "Every year, ahead of Pahela Baishakh, both the demand and prices of hilsa fish shoot up." A customer from East Rajabazar said: "Buying hilsa at this price is very tough for a middle-class family."

The columnist gave three reasons for the change. First, loss of river navigability, pollution and the effects of climate change were hampering the natural production of hilsa. Second, illegal catching of jatka, the young hilsa, and overfishing were reducing hilsa numbers. Third, in his view, the dominance of syndicates and middlemen in the market was pushing prices up abnormally. With low production and high demand, he wrote, sky-high prices had become the norm.

The official figures released that month support the first part of his argument. At a press conference at the Secretariat on 6 April 2026, Fisheries and Livestock Minister Mohammad Amin Ur Rashid said that hilsa production had fallen to 5 lakh (500,000) tonnes in fiscal 2024-25, which the daily Desh Rupantor reported as the lowest in eight years. According to the Department of Fisheries figures in that report, production had been 5.17 lakh tonnes in 2017-18, 5.32 lakh in 2018-19, 5.50 lakh in 2019-20, 5.65 lakh in 2020-21, 5.66 lakh in 2021-22 and 5.71 lakh in 2022-23, before falling to 5.29 lakh in 2023-24. Output had last been below 5 lakh tonnes in 2016-17, at 4.96 lakh tonnes.

The minister said river siltation, climate change, river pollution and mounting pressure on fish stocks had made it a great challenge to keep production steady, and mentioned a programme of river and canal dredging to clear silted channels. Asked about the fuel situation, he said there had been no major problem so far and that fuel was being supplied to essential sectors.

Dr Md Amirul Islam, chief scientific officer at the Chandpur river centre of the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI), told Jagonews24 on 7 April that production had begun to recover after the government took effective management steps from 2003-04; before that, he said, indiscriminate catching of mother hilsa and jatka had pushed output down to about 2 lakh tonnes. He named silt as a major threat, saying that about 6 billion tonnes of silt is deposited in the rivers every year and blocks the migration routes of hilsa, and he warned that industrial waste, plastics and chemicals were spoiling river and sea water. He noted that nowhere in the world had hilsa fry yet been produced artificially, so the fishery depends wholly on natural breeding. He declined to comment on the decline of large hilsa in the Padma and Meghna at Chandpur.

Hilsa (Tenualosa ilisha), known locally as ilish, belongs to the herring family Clupeidae and is the national fish of Bangladesh, according to Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia published by the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Its body can reach 60 centimetres, although most fish caught measure 35 to 40 centimetres, and a large hilsa weighs about 2.5 kilograms. Females grow faster and are usually larger than males, and the fish matures in one to two years.

The hilsa is anadromous: it lives in the sea and coastal waters and swims up the rivers to breed. Adult females release free-floating eggs upstream in the Padma, Jamuna and Meghna, and a large female may produce up to 2 million eggs. Banglapedia records a minor spawning season in February and March and a major one in September and October. The young grow in the river channels; within six to ten weeks they reach about 12 to 20 centimetres and are known as jatka, and at this stage they begin to move down to the sea. The fish feeds mainly on plankton such as blue-green algae, diatoms, copepods and rotifers.

Banglapedia lists the causes long blamed for the decline of the fishery in the upper rivers: reduced Ganges flow after the Farakka Barrage and the siltation that followed, heavy catching of jatka, disrupted migration routes, the loss of spawning and nursery grounds, river pollution, and mechanised boats in coastal waters that intercept fish before they can move upstream.

The fish matters far beyond the festival table. According to the figures in Desh Rupantor's report of 7 April 2026, hilsa contributes about 9.79 percent of the country's total fish production and about 1 percent of GDP; more than 80 percent of the world's hilsa is caught in Bangladesh's rivers, estuaries and sea, putting it first among 11 hilsa-producing countries; and about 6 lakh people catch it directly while 20 to 25 lakh are involved indirectly. In August 2017 hilsa was recognised as a geographical indication (GI) product of Bangladesh by the Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, the second after Jamdani sari, The Daily Star reported at the time.

Calls to stop jatka killing, which the columnist made, matched the government's own campaign that month. Announcing Jatka Conservation Week 2026, held from 7 to 13 April in 20 hilsa-rich districts with its opening event in Chandpur Sadar, the fisheries minister gave its theme as "Jatka dhora thamai jodi, ilishe bhorbe sagar-nodi" (If we stop catching jatka, the sea and rivers will fill with hilsa), Jagonews24 reported on 6 April. The ministry listed the measures then in force:

• Catching, transporting and selling jatka was banned from 1 November to 30 June.
• Hilsa fishing was banned for 22 days in the breeding season, with the dates set on scientific advice.
• All fishing in the Bay of Bengal and adjoining areas was banned for 58 days, from 15 April to 11 June.
• Six hilsa sanctuaries had been set up, with fishing stopped there at set times.
• Fishers received VGF food aid and help with alternative work, and a marine protected area of 3,188 square kilometres had been declared.

BFRI's Dr Amirul Islam explained that in five of the six sanctuaries all fishing is banned in March and April so that jatka can grow safely. The minister said the indiscriminate catching of jatka with current nets, behundi nets and other illegal gear was one of the main obstacles to higher production. Special "combing operations" to destroy illegal nets had been carried out for 30 days in January and February in 96 upazilas of 18 districts and for 15 days in March in 79 upazilas, with drives to continue until June.

The ministry also gave figures for the food aid. Each year 3,67,000 fisher families received 40 kilograms of rice a month for four months, a total of 58,720 tonnes, and in the breeding season 6,19,312 families received 25 kilograms each, a total of 15,482 tonnes. State Minister Sultan Salahuddin Tuku told reporters that, for the first time, 40,000 fishers were receiving a two-month package of 80 kilograms of rice, 12 kilograms of flour, 10 kilograms of oil, 8 kilograms of lentils, 4 kilograms of sugar and 16 kilograms of potatoes, worth about Tk 6,000, Desh Rupantor reported.

The columnist argued that the link between panta and hilsa was never as strong as it is now presented. In rural Bengal, he wrote, panta was eaten with whatever was at hand: green chillies, onion, lentil or potato bhorta, or small fish. Hilsa was a seasonal fish, not daily food. In modern city life, under the influence of the media and corporate culture, panta-ilish had become an icon, with restaurants selling Boishakh packages and offices holding special events, so that ordinary people came under financial pressure trying to keep up.

Reference works bear out the older picture. Banglapedia describes panta as plain boiled rice soaked overnight in water and allowed to ferment a little, the meal with which a farm labourer or fisherman starts the day, and describes a breakfast of panta with fried fish or vegetable curry, or with chira, gur and yoghurt. Its entry on Pahela Baishakh traces the festival to the calendar reform ordered by the Mughal emperor Akbar so that land tax could be collected at harvest time: the scholar Fatehullah Shirazi drew up the new Fasli San, introduced on 10 or 11 March 1584 and dated from Akbar's accession in 1556. The day's main custom was the halkhata, the opening of new account books by traders, who invited customers to share sweets. Banglapedia speaks of special foods and sweets, fairs and the dawn song of Chhayanaut under the banyan tree at Ramna, but does not mention hilsa.

The same point was made publicly ten years before the column. In April 2016 The Daily Star reported that the then Bangla Academy director general, Professor Shamsuzzaman Khan, had told BBC Bangla that eating hilsa on Pohela Boishakh was a recent practice. "Farmers usually have no extra money to have Hilsa to celebrate the New Year," he said, adding that the ritual had nothing to do with the ancient Bangla New Year. That year the government and social media campaigns urged people for the first time to leave hilsa off the Boishakh menu. Two days after the festival, The Daily Star reported that hilsa sales had fallen sharply: at Karwan Bazar a one-kilogram hilsa that had sold for Tk 2,000 to 2,500 three days before the festival was going for Tk 800 to 1,000, and retailers who had stocked cold-stored fish reported losses. One Dhaka resident told the paper that her family had eaten panta with rui fish and bhorta instead.

Sarpunti, also written sarputi, is one of the barbs (punti) of the carp family Cyprinidae. Banglapedia counts ten barb species in Bangladesh, nine of the genus Puntius and one of Oreichthys, and describes the olive barb (Puntius sarana, now often placed in the genus Systomus) as a fish with a moderately compressed silvery body, two pairs of barbels, a complete lateral line and a gill cover shot with gold. The species is native to rivers, streams, lakes and backwaters across South Asia, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand, and is popular in Bangladesh as a food and game fish; the IUCN assessed it in 2023 as of least concern.

Much of the sarpunti in today's markets is a related farmed fish. Banglapedia's entry on exotic fish says the rajputi, or Thai sarputi (Puntius gonionotus, now Barbonymus gonionotus), was brought from Thailand in 1977. It resembles the local sarputi, grows to about 20 centimetres, matures in a year in Bangladesh and is suited to small, shallow ponds and ditches; Banglapedia notes it is recommended for polyculture with other species.

The columnist accepted that sarpunti may not carry the taste or prestige of hilsa, but called it locally available, cheap and nutritious, and said it should not be looked down on as a substitute. Serving sarpunti with panta, he argued, was no insult to tradition but a way of reconciling tradition with reality: tradition is not one particular food but the joy of the festival and shared participation.

The professor saw in the episode a sign of extreme income inequality. One class spent thousands of taka on hilsa to celebrate Boishakh, he wrote, while a large section of people found it hard to get even an ordinary fish to go with their panta. This was not only an economic gap but a cultural divide, and a festival meant for everyone was gradually becoming class-based. Seen this way, he suggested, "No hilsa, but there is sarpunti" could be read as a symbolic protest: the joy of a festival depends on warmth, participation and equality rather than on expensive food, and an event that brings everyone together with sarpunti reflects the Boishakh spirit.

He also set out what he believed must be done. Conservation of hilsa needed effective steps: strict enforcement of the law against jatka catching, prevention of river pollution and protection of the natural environment. Market management had to become transparent so that prices could not be raised by creating artificial shortages. Encouraging the production and marketing of other fish would, in his view, make affordable food available to ordinary people. Perhaps, he wrote, future Boishakh tables would carry a spread of native fish, bhortas and village foods instead of hilsa, bringing back "the scent of the roots we have lost", because Boishakh is not only about eating hilsa but is the festival of the Bengali spirit.

Photo: Moheen Reeyad / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, UNB (via The Business Standard and The Daily Ittefaq), The Daily Observer, The Daily Star, Desh Rupantor, Banglapedia (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh), Wikipedia