The lull before the storm

Starvation deaths post-Covid are likely to gallop in India's most vulnerable states unless the Centre steps in

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 ration for months due to the failure to link their ration card to Aadhaar.
 

Roughly a year later, two brothers in  Khirkia village of UP’s 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 MGNREGA promises. I recall reading a report on the brothers’ deaths back then by IndiaSpend 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 Centre in the face for 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 been screaming hoarse that technology-led solutions including linking of the ration cards with Aadhaar 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 ration 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 was 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, Pro­fessional Assistance for Development Action’s (Pradan’s) Binju Abraham, who integrates its operations from Ranchi, says that by his calculation, at least 2.6 lakh households in Jharkhand face the danger of starvation in the coming months. Pradan's Jharkhand operations cover 10 districts and 3,097 villages with a team of over 200 field workers. He adds 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 around a lakh of the 25 lakh-odd migrants of the state are back and 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. As it is, July, August and September are fraught with food shortages 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 Centre – 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 into insignificance when compared to the horror of what might happen if this is not done.

Two, the state needs to kick-start the MGNREGA — halted since mid-January for some reason — and ensure its net includes these vulnerable groups. 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 cash in the hands of those who need to buy basic ration during the 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 special response teams from the Centre to ensure the state acts in time. Here, death is already a virus-free reality.

Details of recent hunger deaths in Jharkhand (2016-19)

• Table 1 (click here)
• Table 2 (click here)