Starvation deaths post-COVID are likely to zoom in India’s most vulnerable states and districts unless the center swoops in
TC Bureau: On September 28, 2017, 11 year old Santoshi Kumari died of hunger in one of Jharkhand’s remote districts after her family could not get hold of rations for months on end due to the failure to link their ration card to Aadhar. Roughly a year later, two brothers in Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) Khirkia village in Kushinagar district died of starvation after they had not eaten for days even as their mother, a widow, watched helpless. The two brothers simply could not secure work despite the MGNREGA promises. I recall reading a report on the brother’s deaths back then by India Spend and the story stayed with me, simply as a chilling reminder of how a rotting system can connive to kill the very people it seeks to protect.
Reports of at least 23 starvation deaths in Jharkhand over 2016-19 and a similar number in Uttar Pradesh have been a reality staring the center in the face for the a while now. It’s not as if these deaths did not occur in the past from time to time. States like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and UP have been notorious for years for horrific incidents that reek of governance lapses and failure with the worst consequences for India’s abjectly poor.
But civil society organisations have for a while now been screaming hoarse that technology-led solutions including linking of the ration card with Aadhar have exacerbated the situation in certain remote areas. Here electricity itself is a luxury and the vulnerable are unable to overcome all the hurdles to meet the new criteria. Inability to do so reduces their access to basic rations and the authorities connive to label the deaths as anything but what it is: hunger and starvation. We rank 103 out of 119 countries on the Global Hunger Index but turning a blind eye to our own glaring failures is what we as a nation do best.
This in effect is the pre-COVID situation. To get a better understanding of what to expect post COVID, I spoke to a few civil society representatives based in these spots – more in the field than those holding Webinars from the comfort of their homes. In a few conversations in the last few weeks, some of them painted a picture of the bleak lives they encounter that I too – like all of us – know exist but choose to turn a blind eye to.
In the state of Jharkhand, Pradan’s Binju Abraham, a Keralite by birth, who integrates their operations from Ranchi, that cover 10 districts and 3097 villages with a team of over 200 field workers, says that by their calculations, at least 2.6 lakh households face the danger of starvation in the coming months. He adds that the Right To Food activists will probably argue that those numbers are much higher.
Things are going to get much worse as migrant workers return. It is estimated that currently roughly only one lakh of 25 lakh-odd migrants of the state are back and with an unsuccessful migration due to the lockdown, with very little extra cash in hand. This means two things: one, there will be more mouths to feed as migrants continue to return. Two, most families won’t have money to invest for the coming crop season, leading to a fall in output. July, August and September are fraught with food shortages as it is in these parts.
The state government – usually somnolent – needs to step in to do two things urgently. One, it needs to buy grains from the center – although why the grains cannot be given for free by Food Corporation of India in the present emergency I cannot fathom – and ensure that it reaches even the remotest villages and is distributed even without the requisite documentation. Yes, some misuse may happen and a few households may get rations they don’t qualify for but that pales in significance to the horror of what may happen if this is not done.
Two, the state needs to kick start the MGNREGA – at a halt since mid-January for some reason – and ensure its net includes these vulnerable populations. In Jharkhand, the scheme typically offers only 30-odd days of work against the promised 100, resulting in the state spending far less on the scheme than other states. But unless some urgent employment opportunities are created, there is no way of putting some cash in the hands of those who need to buy basic rations in the present lockdown situation.
While what Abraham illustrates is for Jharkhand, similar stories play out in almost all of India’s more backward districts. If the Prime Minister wants to prevent the emergence of hotspots of a different kind, he needs to turn the spotlight on these regions by sending in special response teams from the center to ensure the state acts in time. Here, death is already a virus-free reality that looms large daily.
