Kolkata: Two tragic starvation deaths in the previous fortnight during the 76th independence day celebrations have rattled the state. Both the two deaths were reported from backward regions of West Bengal – one from Bhulabheda of West Medinipur district and the other from Kranti block of Malbazar in Jalpaiguri district.

The first incident involves the death of Sanjay Sardar died on August 3 due to malnutrition as he was left without food for days. The family has been in dire straits after he contracted tuberculosis in the month of June and Sanjay, a daily wage earner, could not go to work.

Though on paper there are schemes like Laxmi Bhandar and other schemes; however Sanjay didn’t have the required Scheduled Caste (SC) certificate, resulting in his family not receiving the stipulated Rs 1,000.

Based on a report by a Bengali news daily, a team from the Right to Food and Work Campaign visited Bhulabheda recently and surveyed the condition of people living there. In the fact finding report it is stated that the death of the daily wage earner should be seen in the context of the food crisis that has set in the area. Sanjay’s family admitted to the fact-finding team that getting even one square meal for a day was difficult for them. Moreover as the family didn’t have Aadhar card linkage with their ration card, they did not get the stipulated Rajya Khadya Suraksha Yojana (RKSY 2) ration which is monthly 1 kg of rice and 1 kg of wheat.

Sanjay Sardar was a migrant labourer who lost his job during the first lockdown, according to the report. After coming home in March 2020 he did not get any work in the village. Sometimes, he got paid as a farmhand but that was extremely irregular. While the family needed an Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) ration card, the government instead gave them a RKSY 2 ration card which is meant for relatively better-off persons. It should be noted that in AAY scheme, a family gets 35 kgs of rice and wheat and cereals.

The second starvation death occurred in a closed tea garden where a tea garden worker, Dinesh Orao, lost his life on August 13 due to malnutrition as he was left without food for months.

The name of the tea garden is Raj Project Garden. As the tea garden owner, Dharmendra Thakur arbitrarily closed the plantation on July 10, Orao’s family had been starving for months.

“The owner of the garden is singularly responsible for this death,” family members of the deceased told reporters.

It may be recalled that in the Malbazar area, a number of tea gardens including Nageshwari tea estate, Bagrakote tea estate, Kilkote tea estate and many other tea estates are closed, and this has resulted in widespread hunger among tea garden workers in the area.

Courtesy: Newsclick

The post Two Starvation Deaths in Fortnight Rattles West Bengal appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The most recent victim is 45-year-old Kaleshwar Soren, who died of hunger and destitution on November 11, in Mahuadanr village of Dumka district.

The children of families denied benefits due to lack of Aadhaar, with poor education, negligible access to health services and employment, are staring at a bleak future.
 

The post In the Absence of Aadhaar, Starvation Deaths Continue in Jharkhand appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A video grab of 26-year-old Feku, a resident of Khirkia village in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh. “CM-ji, my older brother died of hunger, please save me,” Feku said. He fell into a coma soon after and died in a government hospital at 5:30 a.m. on September 14, 2018. Pappu and Feku’s deaths are among the five reported from Kushinagar since April 4, 2017, that point to starvation as a possible cause, or at least a major factor.

Residents of Khirkia village in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh (UP), brothers Feku and Pappu, a year apart in age, died within 16 hours of each other on September 13 and 14, 2018.

Both had been starving and ill for several months, their mother Somwa, a 50-year-old widow, told IndiaSpend on September 25. She stood near a small tent under which a priest and several men were preparing a bhoj, a ceremonial meal, to commemorate the death by starvation of her two youngest sons. Some local politicians and the village head (pradhan) had donated food after her sons’ deaths.

Both men had had “a fever, and their whole body would shake”, Somwa recalled, squinting as the harsh sun hit her weathered face. The family had not eaten in days, and her sons had had lesions inside the mouth.

Somwa and her family belong to the Musahar community–a Hindu ‘Scheduled Caste’ traditionally occupied as rat catchers, or, as a popular belief goes, a caste so poor that they chase mus or rats for a meal.

Her sons’ deaths are blamed on different causes in various government documents–at first, the doctor told Somwa they had dengue; then, the chief medical officer said they had tuberculosis (TB); finally, their death certificates said they had died of cardiac failure. “I don’t know what they had, but no one at the hospital would listen to us,” Somwa told IndiaSpend.

The report from the district TB centre shows Feku did not have tuberculosis. The deaths of Feku and his brother Pappu are blamed on different causes in various government documents–at first, the doctor told Somwa they had dengue; then, the chief medical officer said they had TB; finally, their death certificates said they had died of cardiac failure.

Pappu and Feku’s deaths are among the five reported from Kushinagar since April 4, 2017, that point to starvation as a possible cause, or at least a major factor. IndiaSpend visited the district and its villages to investigate these deaths, and found that the lack of jobs and denial of subsidised rations under the public distribution system (PDS) have subjected large numbers of people to ill-health, starvation and death.

Meanwhile, the government healthcare system is not only failing to prevent these deaths, the government machinery is actually helping cover up these starvation deaths by ascribing other reasons.

Starvation deaths
At least 56 hunger deaths have been reported in India in the last four years, 42 of these in 2017 and 2018, according to a report compiled by IIT-Ahmedabad economist Reetika Khera and her organisation, Rise Up. Reports of hunger deaths are particularly frequent from two states: Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, which have reported 16 cases each.

Most starvation deaths have been traced to denial of ‘ration’ from PDS shops, which sell subsidised food grain to the poor who are registered with the government as falling below the poverty line (BPL), or denial of access to pension accounts for the elderly and widowed. Most of the victims belonged to disadvantaged groups such as the Dalits, Adivasis (tribals) and Muslims, Khera’s research shows, adding that the Musahars, who live mostly in UP and neighbouring Bihar, have been the worst hit.

Khera’s research checks out in Kushinagar.

Jobless in Kushinagar
While its economy is almost entirely dependant on agriculture and the sugar industry, Kushinagar lacks proper sources of irrigation. “Lack of infrastructure facilities, like, entrepreneurs, skilled labourers, capital, technology, power sources, transport and communication facilities etc; socio-economic backwardness and lack of political-will are responsible for backwardness in (sugar) industrial sector (sic),” a 2016 report by the Indian Institute of Geographers said. The report noted six sugar mills in Kushinagar, but when IndiaSpend visited, only four were working. These are concentrated in two of the 15 blocks, Hatta and Padrauna, so job opportunities are limited to a small area.

The effects of muted economic activity are evident from the most recent Census data–65% of the district’s population has no work (termed non-workers), 14% of the people have not worked for over six months (marginal workers), and only 19% have worked for six months and longer (main workers).

The effect of this overall failure is felt most by the rural population, who constitute 70% of Kushinagar’s population, and acutely so by marginalised communities such as the Musahars. As many as 91% of Kushinagar’s Musahars depend on physical labour as they have no land of their own to cultivate, according to a 2016 report by the German development organisation, AWO-South Asia. The Musahar community earns Rs 9,105 per year while all the other communities in Kushinagar record income levels of more than Rs 36,000 per year.

The health indicators of Kushinagar’s Musahars are not encouraging. Their infant mortality rate is 82 per 1,000 live births, more than twice the Indian average of 34 deaths. As many as 89% of Musahar children are not born in hospital, and only 19% of the Musahar community in Kushinagar have access to healthcare services, according to AWO-South Asia statistics.

Of all Kushinagar residents, 25% of the male population and 28% of the female population had below normal body mass indices in 2015-16, as per the fourth National Family Health Survey. And within these, the poorest and most marginalised are the worst affected.
Take the case of Feku and Pappu.

Somwa and the villagers of Khirkia, mostly  populated by Musahars, alleged that Pappu and Feku had died of hunger. Just two months ago, the brothers had returned from Punjab, where they had gone to seek work, as villagers frequently do. They returned with little money, Somwa said, though she did not know why. Neither brother had found work in Khirkia, not even under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

Somwa, a widow since 20 years, would get 35 kg of ration under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, which provides highly subsidised food to the poorest among BPL families. Feku and Pappu, who lived with her, were enrolled on her card. Often, the family would buy only some of Somwa’s entitlement because they could not afford more. Even when they could, the total entitlement of 35 kg was not enough to feed three people for a month.

“The biggest problem is that none of us was given any jobs under MGNREGS,” Somwa said, “I get 35 kg a month but without a paying job, I don’t have money to buy it. And who can live on that much anyway? Especially with three people in the house?”

Somwa’s home is a 30-sq-ft hut where once she lived with her sons. Sticks and a few bricks make up a patchy roof. “When it rains the water floods the house,” she said. A tiny makeshift wooden bed sat at one corner. A gas cooker lay in the middle, unused.

After her sons’ deaths, local politicians and the village pradhan donated some grain to her. “They came and handed me grain as if I’m a beggar,” Somwa said, perturbed. “I used to work as much as I could–as a labourer, on someone’s farm, anywhere I could get work privately. Sometimes I would have to ask neighbours for leftovers. That’s how I tried to feed my family, but…” her voice trailed off and she pointed speechlessly at her run-down empty hut.

Other villagers also complained that no one had received work under MGNREGS for years, leaving many unable to buy PDS ration or food from the open market. “If we get work for a few days, it’s not through MGNREGS. Every adult in the village has a job card, but no pradhan hires us saying there is no work to give,” said Ram Raj, 40. “Outside, if we work for one day, for eight hours of work, women get Rs 50, and men can sometimes make Rs 300, but the work is sporadic at best.”

In nearby Rakwa Gulma Patti village in Seowrahi block of Kushinagar, where a 40-year-old Musahar woman named Sangeeta and her 10-year-old son Shyam had died on September 7, 2018, villagers allege nepotism in how MGNREGS jobs are given out.

The MGNREGS job card of Birendra Singh, the late Sangeeta’s husband, was issued in 2017 but is entirely blank. “The pradhan gives MGNREGS work only to special people,” he said, implying family and friends or those who will give a kickback to the pradhan in return for work.

The job card issued to Birendra Singh under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is completely blank. Other villagers also complained that no one had received work under MGNREGS for years, leaving many unable to buy PDS ration or food from the open market.

This is the norm throughout Kushinagar, said Congress member of legislative assembly (MLA) Ajay Kumar Lallu. “The job card is a showpiece. What is happening is that instead of benefiting the poor, labourers, Dalits like it was supposed to, the MGNREGS scheme is being misused by the officers like pradhans–they get job cards in the name of their family members and friends, and give jobs to only these people, so the money gets transferred into the family itself,” he said.

The village pradhan, Savita Devi, was not available to comment and reportedly never stepped out of her house. “I do all of Savitaji‘s work, and you can say she keeps records in the house,” her brother-in-law Punnu Verma told IndiaSpend, grinning widely, adding that their family owns a jewellery shop and makes about Rs 5 lakh a month.

There had been no jobs available to give under MGNREGS, Verma said, sitting among several tall and robustly built men like himself. He alleged that the Gram Sabha (the forum that decides what work should be undertaken under MGNREGS) demanded a commission of 5% on any job demand the pradhan would raise. He added that the MGNREGS wage rate, Rs 175 per day, was too low and should be increased to attract more people to demand jobs under the scheme.

Despite numerous calls to the office of Satish Singh, the district programme coordinator for MGNREGS, IndiaSpend was unable to reach him. On two occasions, Singh’s mobile phone was answered by a man who said he was an assistant and that Singh was in a meeting and would call back, but he never did. The additional district programme coordinator (APO), Parveen Kumar, said the state government was doing the best it could with the resources at hand. Nevertheless, he agreed that the MGNREGS daily wage should be increased, and the time taken to transfer payments to workers’ accounts reduced from the current 14 days, which, he said, is too long for the very poor who “live hand to mouth”.

“There has been delay more than that at times, sometimes two months or two-and-a-half months,” he said, “What happens is that our labour budget falls short and we have to get more work done. At that time, we have to ask the Centre for more money. There is a time delay in getting the money from the Centre.”

The delay in MGNREGS wages does deter people from demanding jobs, but other factors are at play, too, said Lallu, the MLA. Earlier, digging of drains, soling of structures (building the bottom-most hard layer), building of mud roads, etc. was done through MGNREGS, but not anymore, he said. For example, after using mitti (soil) to build a mud road, if building the pavement requires cement, work may get held up as the government may have put a stop to pakka works that year. “For this reason, a lot of work is incomplete, and people are afraid to take it on,” he said, explaining why many people are not getting jobs under MGNREGS.

A torn social security net
The ration shop at which Khirkia’s residents buy their food is more than 2 km from the village. Lacking any means of transport, they walk the distance and back. The owner, Ram Prasad, agreed that the amount of ration allocated is not enough. “[I]n 35 kg, I would say three to four people can eat for about 15 days at most. When they don’t get to eat, they get weak and fall sick easily. But the amount of PDS ration is not for me to decide,” he said.

The National Food Security Act, under which all programmes to provide subsidised food are administered, is riddled with petty corruption, said Lallu.

The legislator is referring to the state government’s initiative whereby people can apply for new ration cards online through the website fcs.up.nic.in. After applying for rations on the internet, during the time it takes for the administration to send them a permanent ration card, people get a printed slip with their ration card number and names of those registered for PDS.

“Now the names on these [online ration card] lists can change daily. You go to the office and pay Rs 200, the person on the computer will put your name, then three days later someone else’s name can be put, and yours is gone,” Lallu said.
One such bungling cost Subhash Singh of Amvivari village his life. The poor, upper-caste farmer, his wife and their four children–three daughters and a son–lived in the depths of poverty ever since Singh had mortgaged his 10 khattas (one khatta equals a quarter hectare) of farmland to pay for the weddings of two daughters.

The villagers said he was a proud man, and “never let anyone know of his problems or that he wasn’t able to buy rations”. Singh’s family were on the ration list but he had been unable to get the paper slip to prove this, his wife, 45-year-old Chanda Devi, told IndiaSpend. “He would run back and forth from the ration shop to the pradhan, begging them to give him food because we hadn’t eaten in days. What really worried him the most was that the children were hungry,” she said. “He was always tense. Always worried and too proud to ask anyone for help. Once, I got some saag-roti from a neighbour and fed our children, but he didn’t eat.”

Then, on April 3, 2017, Singh complained of chest pain and collapsed, frothing at the mouth. Concerned villagers collected money to take him to hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The linking of all benefit transfers with the Aadhaar biometric ID system is meant to remove the problem Singh faced. However, Ram Prasad, the ration shop owner of Khirkia village, was not optimistic. “I don’t think biometrics will help. It will only cause more problems because there are hardly any telephone towers here and there will be a network problem, and people will have to keep coming back until the network is available.”

Recently, the government distributed gas cylinders to some households, including Somwa’s and Ram Raj’s in Khirkia. “The first month is free, so I guess we will all use it. I don’t know when I’ll get work next so by next month there will again be no gas in the house,” said Ram Raj.

No basic facilities
With no toilets in their huts or in the area and having never heard of Swachh Bharat, Khirkia residents routinely fall ill. Chhotey, 20, had been admitted in the district hospital for several days when IndiaSpend visited. With his brother unable to find work, Chhotey was the sole earner in a house of four–his mother, his brother, and his sister-in-law Mamita who was alone in the house while her husband looked for work.

“Chhotey has a fever, and it won’t break,” Mamita said. “My husband took him to the hospital, and they say he has TB, but he wasn’t coughing nor have any of us gotten sick living in the hut with him.”

When he was well, Chhotey would take up odd jobs at local construction sites or farms, “wherever he would find it”. With Chhotey in hospital, Mamita worried for her family’s future. “We got ration on the September 7, but it is finished,” she told IndiaSpend on September 25, 2018, “I don’t know now how we will get food.”

The complete absence of basic facilities was evident in Rakwa Gulma Patti village, too, where 40-year-old Sangeeta and 10-month-old son had died on September 7, 2018. The news channel NDTV showed the villagers alleging malnutrition while the government said the mother and son had died of diarrhoea and food poisoning. The post-mortem report accessed by IndiaSpend does not state either and lists the cause of death as unknown. The medical officer had reportedly sent the viscera for further testing, but no one could tell us when the results would come.
Sangeeta’s husband Birendra repeated a now-familiar story of penury, and alleged that government medical authorities had been callous in dealing with his sick wife and child. “She started complaining of a horrible stomach ache early in the morning after we ate some food she had gotten from a nearby farm–a karela [bitter gourd], raw with a little salt, and roti,” recalled a gaunt, sunken-eyed Bijendra. “I asked the pradhan to call an ambulance and we took her to hospital at 7 a.m. The doctor came at 10.30 a.m. He gave her an injection and then said he would give her a drip. That was administered several hours later.”

The two had died in an ambulance on the way to another hospital that they had been referred to. The post-mortem report records Sangeeta’s time of death as 2 p.m. on September 7, 2018–the same day she was brought in.

The remainder of the family, three girls–Laxmi (10), Sita (2), and Suna (10 months)–sat by their father, unsmiling, listening once again to the circumstances that had led to their mother and brother’s deaths.

Laxmi had also fallen sick along with Sangeeta and Shyam. She had not eaten much on the day she was admitted, and had survived, but had spent a week in hospital. She recalled that her intravenous fluid drip had been changed several times but not much else done by way of treatment or nourishment.

Birendra Singh and his daughters Sita, Suna and Laxmi. Birendra’s wife Sangeeta and 10-year-old son Shyam had died on September 7, 2018. Villagers say they died of malnutrition, while the government said the mother and son had died of diarrhoea and food poisoning. The post-mortem report accessed by IndiaSpend does not state either and lists the cause of death as unknown.

The only way to reach the village is through a labyrinth of dusty roads where huge stones and overgrown trees block the path at every second turn. One shabby toilet is shared by the entire village. The only toilet in the village has no discernable plumbing. A pit toilet, it has no means of flushing, and the villagers empty out the faeces into a nearby river every few days. A tank is affixed to the wall on the outside, of whose purpose the villagers had no idea.

“The toilet is according to the specifications given by Modiji‘s scheme,” said Punnu Verma, “The specs say there must be a tank so I have made one–the government gives Rs 12,000 to make one toilet. What more could I have made?”

The nearest district hospital, over an hour away, is understaffed and understocked to the extent that Birendra was asked to buy paracetamol from a private pharmacy.

Rakwa Gulma Patti has one water pump for its 150-odd residents, and many complained that they could not extract fresh water from it. “Sometimes a fish or a rodent dies inside the well, and no one knows until the smell becomes impossible to ignore, and the colour of the water turns yellow,” Rajalaxmi, 30, said. This water is used to bathe, wash clothes and sometimes to drink and cook. “When we have money, most of us try to avoid taking water from the pump,” she said, adding that they sometimes buy bottled water from a kirana store just outside the village. “We have complained to the pradhan, but no one listens,” Rajalaxmi added. At the time IndiaSpend visited the village, the water extracted from the pump was a dark yellow with dirt floating on top.

Rakwa Gulma Patti village has one water pump for its 150-odd residents, and many complained that they could not extract fresh water from it. At the time IndiaSpend visited the village, the water extracted from the pump was a dark yellow with dirt floating on top.

Several villagers had fallen sick from urinary tract infections and/or developed kidney stones. The district hospital was not equipped to handle these cases, and villagers sought out private healthcare as and when they could afford it.
“Four people are sick with kidney stones, my father is among them,” said Rajinand, 25. The district hospital referred his father, Rudal Prasad, to Gorakhpur’s Baba Raghav Das Medical College. Rajinand accompanied his father there but was sent away unceremoniously by the security staff.

Threats of violence against the kin of those who are ill are frequent, the villagers alleged. Sangeeta’s mother said when she realised her daughter and grandson had died, she had told the ambulance driver. “He said keep quiet, or I’ll throw you out of the car,” she said.
The poor of Kushinagar, especially the Musahar, feel neglected by the government but helpless to do anything.

In Feku and Pappu’s case, despite the medical reports disproving the TB hypothesis and the lack of any other plausible cause of death, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath denied the men had died of hunger.

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging it. And here, the UP government has already failed.

(Avantika Mehta is a New-Delhi based writer and editor.)

Courtesy: India Spend

The post In A UP District, Death From Hunger, As Governance, Social Security Collapse appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Like him, 13 others died of starvation in Jharkhand over the last 10 months, according to the latest available data from the Right To Food (RTF) campaign, an advocacy group. They should have all benefited from Antodyay Anna Yojana (AAY), the food ration scheme meant for the poorest of poor in India.
 
In most cases, the Jharkhand government denied that deaths were caused by starvation (You can read those denials here, here and here). The state food and supply minister Saryu Roy has accused food activists, who see a link between starvation and these deaths, of “playing politics”.

 
IndiaSpend spoke to medical experts and social activists and found that the government response does not take into account two factors involving the links between malnutrition and starvation:
 

 
As the following table shows, in half the cases of starvation deaths reported from Jharkhand between September 2017 and July 2018, the deceased did not get the ration promised under the public distribution  scheme (PDS) and AAY.
 
The reason can be traced to the complications arising from the government mandate that ration cards and bank accounts be linked to Aadhaar, according to RTF campaigners. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification number issued by the Indian government to every citizen and declared mandatory for various government welfare schemes.
 

Source: Right To Food Campaign
* Cases where Aadhaar-related failures clearly contributed to starvation
 
Compulsory linkage of Aadhaar, ration card continues, despite govt claims
 
In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Digital India, the Jharkhand government in July 2016 transitioned to a “paperless” public distribution system (PDS), linked to individual Aadhaar numbers, as TheWire.in reported on July 18, 2017.
 
This system has two requirements: One, each person’s ration card has to be linked to their Aadhaar card; and two, each time a person wants ration under PDS, she must have biometric authentication done at a ‘point of sale’ machine, which then calculates eligibility. These machines are installed at PDS shops, where the dealer is supposed to authenticate each transaction.
 
In the two months after this Aadhaar-PDS linkage rule, in Ranchi district, ration-card holders received only 49%, or less than half, of their entitlement, according to an analysis of government data in July and August 2016 by development economist Jean Dreze.
 
The denial of foodgrain in Jharkhand has been reported before (here, here and here) and contested.
 

View image on Twitter

Hemant Soren

 

@HemantSorenJMM

 

 

@roysaryu ‘ji, Hope you take note of the story of this elderly woman. #UshaDevi lives in Ranchi, has #Aadhar & #RationCard & hasn’t received her entitled grains from #PDS dealer in last #6MONTHS. A widow with both her sons dead, she can be ‘face’ of next #hungerdeath. @DC_Ranchi

9:00 PM – Jun 9, 2018 · Ranchi, India

•  

  22

•  

  See Hemant Soren’s other Tweets

Twitter Ads info and privacy

 

 

 
In October 2017, the Jharkhand government claimed that Aadhaar is not mandatory for collecting foodgrain under PDS. However, district administrations in the state continue to adhere to the mandatory Aadhaar-ration card rule, according to RTF activists. This happened in Birhor’s case as well.
 
“Whatever the food minister or others may have told the media, the Jharkhand government never retracted its policy of compulsory linkage of ration cards with Aadhaar,” Dreze, also a visiting professor at Ranchi University, told IndiaSpend.
 
Activists are demanding that Aadhaar be delinked from all social-security schemes, including pensions, to save the poor from distress. Swati Narayan, an activist with the RTF in Ranchi, believes that the Aadhaar-ration integration requirement is behind the trail of starvation deaths in Jharkhand.
 
“The Jharkhand government needs to immediately universalise the rural ration eligibility from 86% to 100% of the population to ensure that no family is left out,” she said. “Additionally, excluded families should be immediately paid compensatory food security allowance for the last one year at least to prevent more horrific deaths due to starvation.”
 
Food and supply minister Roy insisted the 14 deaths were not related to starvation. “(They) can be attributed to the lack of ration cards, which is due to the lacunae in the government system, but they are not starvation deaths,” he told IndiaSpend. “RTF activists are hyper-ventilated (sic) people who are motivated against BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] governments. I have not seen them commenting on the starvation deaths in Delhi.”
 
On July 27, 2018, three sisters were found dead under unexplained circumstances in Delhi’s Mandawali area. They possibly died of malnutrition or starvation, their postmortem reports said.
 
Given the inequalities in India’s population–India’s top 1% have 73% of India’s wealth–it is the government’s responsibility to provide food and nutrition to the marginalised, said Anjali Bhardwaj, an activist with the RTF in Delhi. “In Delhi and Jharkhand, the political will is lacking,” she said. “They may promise a lot of things, but on ground, the ill-thought move of PDS-Aadhaar linkage is starving people.”
 
Shamika Ravi, research director, Brookings India and a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, countered that the emphasis should be on resolving systemic problems, not discrediting Aadhaar.
 
“Any exclusion error or case, where a person is being denied their benefits, is unacceptable and absolutely unjustified,” she told IndiaSpend. “However, the focus should be on strengthening the Aadhaar system. There are exclusions, yes, but what is still not clear to me is at exactly what stage is the problem (occuring)? Is it a problem at the point of authentication? Or there is a problem in how the PDS programme is linked with Aadhaar? Aadhaar has become a favorite whipping boy of many activists, but we need to identity the exact pain points and work on strengthening them.”
 
Dreze concurs partially with Ravi. “If Aadhaar is to be used at all for welfare schemes, it should be restricted to cases where it serves a clear purpose and where Aadhaar seeding can be done in a reliable and non-coercive manner,” he said. “Aadhaar-based biometric authentication should never be made compulsory.”
 
Starvation deaths must be established by social, medical history, not autopsy: Activists
 
In June 2018, the Jharkhand government made an autopsy a must for starvation deaths. But campaigners say this is not a fail-proof method for determining if death was caused by hunger.
 
“Historically, if post-mortems/autopsies have found a single grain of rice in bodies, they haven’t been classified as starvation deaths,” said Dipa Sinha, assistant professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi.  “In Odisha, people have eaten mango kernels as they didn’t have anything else to eat. So, officially, they may not be starvation deaths medically, but I would classify them thus. In Jharkhand, the government has been hiding behind technicalities to absolve itself of responsibilities, but we cannot miss the fact that denial of food leads to chronic malnutrition.”
 
Narayan pointed out that the medical and social histories of those living in starvation zones are more important than autopsies to fix the reason for death. “After one year of screaming, the Jharkhand government has finally changed its definition of starvation, but has done little else,” she said.
 
In March 2018, the Jharkhand government set up a nine-member committee which was supposed to define parameters by which starvation deaths can be established officially. However, the committee has missed its second deadline to compile the report and make it public, as the New Indian Express reported on July 31, 2018.
 
“From what I know, the committee has analysed information and (is) almost done with its report,” Jharkhand minister Roy said. “It will release the final report very soon. However, I cannot comment on the exact date as it is an autonomous committee and they will take their own time and decisions.”
 
There is no need to set up a committee to define starvation as a lot of literature and research already exists on the subject, said NC Saxena, former secretary of the erstwhile Planning Commission and former commissioner of a Supreme Court-monitored committee on food and hunger. “In my experience, in Jharkhand, the government usually under-reports starvation and malnutrition levels,” he said. “They should rather focus their energies on collecting proper data and on how severely malnourished children and people can be identified and intervened (with).”
 
Malnutrition and infections: A two-way causal association
 
In September 2017, an 11-year-old girl Santoshi died allegedly due to starvation. She and her family did not get foodgrain because their Aadhaar cards had not being linked to ration cards. In response to criticism over Santoshi’s death, Amit Malviya, incharge of the BJP’s information technology cell, cited a district official’s report and claimed that her death was due to malaria, and not starvation.
 

Amit Malviya

 

@amitmalviya

 

 

11-year old girl in Jharkhand died because of malaria and not because her family was denied ration. DC’s report enclosed. Fact check anyone?

1:19 PM – Oct 17, 2017

•  

  1,088

•  

  1,643 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

 

 

 
However, experts told IndiaSpend that malnutrition and disease are so interlinked that it is hard to separate the two. Undernourished children principally die of common infections and immune defects, according to this 2016 paper.
 
“Lack of adequate nutrition or undernutrition leads to infections which can be life-threatening,” said Bhavna Dhingra, a pediatrician with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal. “However, these infections can reduce the appetite of children, which severely affects the already precarious nutrition situation.”
 
Giridhara R Babu, an epidemiologist and additional professor at the Public Health Foundation of India, explained how malnutrition works to weaken the body: “In the shorter term, malnutrition leads to weight loss due to depletion of fat and muscle mass, including some of the organs. In the long run, prolonged decreased dietary intake leads to a reduction in functional energy reserves and changes in body composition.”
 
Starvation itself rarely results in death which is usually caused by infections among those lacking in malnutrition, said Nehal Vaidya, a pediatrician from Bhuj, Gujarat.
 
“In case of a reported case of child malnutrition, where a child has stayed hungry for many days, first, a clinical assessment should be done to analyse the child’s body and hunger and then the appropriate intervention should be done and the parents should be counselled on how to feed the child,” she said. “However, in rural and urban areas, lack of infrastructure is a big problem. You need specialist doctors, paediatricians, nutritionists and public health experts to deal with such cases.”
 
Severely malnourished children in state-run malnutrition treatment centres (MTCs) in Jharkhand showed poor recovery, most demonstrated poor weight gain, and a high number of illnesses were reported post- discharge, according to this 2018 paper which examined the efficacy of an MTC in Jharkhand. Malnourishment at an early age can have long-term consequences, affecting an individual’s motor, sensory, cognitive, social and emotional development, as IndiaSpend reported on July 22, 2017.
 
There is a 90% shortfall of specialists (surgeons, obstetricians & gynaecologists, doctors, and paediatricians) across community health centres (CHCs) in Jharkhand, according to the Rural Health Statistics 2017. Other than specialists, India is short of doctors in general. India’s doctor-to-population ratio of 1:1,674 is 75% lower than Argentina and 70% lower than the US, as IndiaSpend reported on November 16, 2016.
 
The CHCs constitute the secondary level of health care and provide specialist care to patients referred from primary health centres, four of which feed into each CHC, serving roughly 80,000 people in tribal, hill or desert areas and 120,000 on the plains.
 
(Devanik Saha is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. He also works as consultant with Policy & Development Advisory Group, Delhi)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post Did Aadhaar Glitches Cause Half Of 14 Recent Jharkhand Starvation Deaths? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
New Delhi: Three minor girls died due to starvation in East Delhi. The news came to light when their mother Beena brought them dead to a hospital on Tuesday morning. For three days she couldn’t speak and when the cops questioned her about how the kids died, the mother who seemed mentally unstable could only mutter, “give me food.” Their father Mangal Singh, a rickshaw puller, has remained untraceable since last Saturday.
 
Medical reports confirmed that the three sister Mansi (8), Shikha (4) and Parul (2) died due to starvation as their post mortem revealed that there was no trace of fats in their bodies and their stomachs were empty. They were suffering from gross malnutrition.
 
The Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan (DRRAA) released a statement following the incident demanding better access to food and detailed enquiry into the deaths of these girls.
 
Full text of their statement:
 
DRRAA is shocked and saddened by the news of the deaths of 3 minor girls in Mandawali, East Delhi due to starvation. As per media reports, the post mortem has confirmed that the children aged 2, 4 and 8 died of starvation. While further details about the circumstances are awaited and the Abhiyan is also in the process of doing a fact-finding report, the issue of lack of food security and social security of the poor and marginalised in Delhi is undeniable.
 
The situation is especially dire for children, the elderly and the homeless- who are the most vulnerable. The Abhiyan has repeatedly stressed the need to seriously strengthen the framework of food security and remove barriers which prevent people from accessing it. Making food security conditional upon peoples’ ability to produce identity proof/residence proof/ Aadhaar etc. is inhumane and a violation of the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution.
 
The Abhiyan has repeatedly highlighted the large scale exclusions being caused due to insistence on furnishing of id proof/address proof and Aadhaar. In fact, even in the ongoing case in the Delhi High Court, proof of how children, homeless and elderly have been left out of the purview of the National Food Security Act has been furnished before the court.
 
We demand that the Central and the Delhi government immediately put in place the following measures-
 
1.       There is an urgent need to establish community kitchens across Delhi which provide hot cooked food. The kitchens must not turn away any person desirous of food. Several states have put in place systems to provide hot cooked meals at very nominal costs or free of cost.
2.       End quota system and universalise the Public Distribution System
3.       Provide pulses, oil and sugar to all ration cardholders, which was also a poll promise
4.       Provide eggs, fruits and milk for children every day through the mid-day meal scheme and ICDS in schools and anganwadis. Further universal coverage for ALL children under 6 must be ensured through ICDS without any conditionalities.
5.       Immediately implement maternity entitlements across all districts of Delhi
6.       Implement and operationalize all the grievance redress and accountability provisions in the NFSA Act, including- carrying out of periodic social audits (S. 28) and setting up of State Food Commission (S. 16). The government has failed to put in place this statutory framework despite repeated directions from the Supreme Court and the Delhi Court. Lack of accountability systems means peoples complaints of denial of food security remain unaddressed. Had the State Food Commission, which is an independent oversight body, been set up, it would have been the appropriate body to lead the inquiry into the deaths.
7.       No untested mechanisms like home delivery of rations should be brought in. Disruptions in the Public Distribution System (PDS) cause extreme hardship and exacerbate vulnerabilities of marginalised households. Earlier this year, the Delhi government had made Aadhaar based authentication through Point of Sale devices mandatory for all ration shops. This had led to a large exclusion of the poorest and marginalised families from their right to food. Government figures showed that nearly 4 lakh cardholders were unable to access their rations.
8.       Aadhaar or Aadhaar enabled biometric authentication must not be made mandatory for any food security or social welfare programme. The mandatory requirement of Aadhaar has been the cause of several starvation deaths in Jharkhand.

The Abhiyan demands that a detailed inquiry into the deaths of the 3 minor girls must be undertaken. The inquiry committee must include independent experts and doctors. The inquiry must also examine whether or not the family was covered by the following food security/ social welfare programs-
 
1.       Whether the family received ration under the Public Distribution System?
2.       Whether the children below the ages of 5 years were enrolled at the Anganwadi? A team from the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan which visited the family’s house in Mandawali today found that the Anganwadi was located just 10 meters from the house.
3.       Whether the eldest girl aged around 8 was enrolled in school and was receiving the Mid-day Meal in school?
4.       Whether the mother was receiving any support/treatment for mental health issues that she was facing as per media reports and the testimony of neighbours

If the family was left out of the purview of these programs, the inquiry must examine the reasons for their exclusion. The inquiry must fix accountability and ensure that officials who were in any way responsible for the exclusion of the family from these programs are held responsible.
 
These starvation deaths highlight the alarming situation of distress and food insecurity in the capital of India. Immediate steps must be taken by the Delhi government and the Central government.
 
Signed by:
Anjali Bhardwaj, Amrita Johri, Koninika Ray, Dipa Sinha, Aysha Khan, Sudeshna, Krishna Bansal, Rajender Kumar, Anwar ( Dilli Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyaan)
Medha Patkar, Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)
Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, NAPM
Prafulla Samantara, Lok Shakti Abhiyan; Lingraj Azad, Samajwadi Jan Parishad & Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, NAPM Odisha
Dr.Sunilam, Adv. Aradhna Bhargava, Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, Rajkumar Sinha, Bargi Baandh Visthapit evam Prabhavit Sangh, NAPM, Madhya Pradesh
P. Chennaiah, Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya Vruthidarula Union-APVVU, Ramakrishnam Raju, United Forum for RTI and NAPM, Meera Sanghamitra, Rajesh Serupally, NAPM Telangana – Andhra Pradesh
Dr Binayak Sen, Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL); Gautam Bandopadhyay, Nadi Ghati Morcha; Kaladas Dahariya, RELAA, NAPM Chhattisgarh
Kavita Srivastava, People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL); Kailash Meena, NAPM Rajasthan
Sandeep Pandey, Socialist Party; Richa Singh, Sangatin; Arundhati Dhuru, Manesh Gupta, NAPM, Uttar Pradesh 
Gabriele Dietrich, Penn Urimay Iyakkam, Madurai; Geetha Ramakrishnan, Unorganised Sector Workers Federation; Arul Doss, NAPM Tamil Nadu 
Sister Celia, Domestic Workers Union; Maj Gen (Retd) S.G.Vombatkere, NAPM, Karnataka 
Vilayodi Venugopal, CR Neelakandan, Prof. Kusumam Joseph, NAPM, Kerala 
Anand Mazgaonkar, Swati Desai, Krishnakant, Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, NAPM Gujarat 
Vimal Bhai, Matu Jan sangathan; Jabar Singh, NAPM, Uttarakhand 
Dayamani Barla, Aadivasi-Moolnivasi Astivtva Raksha Samiti; Basant Kumar Hetamsaria and Ashok Verma, NAPM Jharkhand 
Samar Bagchi, Amitava Mitra, NAPM West Bengal 
Suniti SR, Suhas Kolhekar, Prasad Bagwe, and Bilal Khan, Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, Mumbai NAPMMaharashtra 
Faisal Khan, Khudai Khidmatgar; J S Walia, NAPM Haryana 
Guruwant Singh, NAPM Punjab 
Kamayani Swami, AshishRanjan, Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan; Mahendra Yadav, Kosi Navnirman Manch; Sister Dorothy, Ujjawal Chaubey, NAPM Bihar 
Bhupender Singh Rawat, Jan Sangharsh Vahini; Sunita Rani, Domestic Workers Union; Rajendra Ravi, Nanhu Prasad, Madhuresh Kumar, Amit Kumar, Himshi Singh, Uma, NAPM, Delhi

The post Delhi food activists to launch fact-finding mission for Delhi starvation deaths appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Saurav Roy/ Hindustan Times
 
Jharkhand: In 2017, The Jharkhand government patted their backs with a full-page ad for saving Rs. 225 crores and 86 crores by cancelling ‘Fake’ Aadhaar cards and old age pensions. They ended up depriving the poorest of poor of necessary food which has since resulted in many starvation deaths in the state.
 
The death of a young girl Santoshi Kumar in 2017 due to starvation had riled the country. Many did not even think it was possible to die of starvation in a country with stuffed granaries. Even though the news created a stir, the on-ground realities haven’t changed. Access to the Public Distribution System is abysmal and Aadhaar based biometric machines constantly fail, often leading to poor Indians dying of hunger.
 
The Right To Food Campaign has released many fact-finding reports with annexures which delve into the complexities of the failure of the state government in providing the right to life to its residents. It details shocking negligence and corruption to deny basic human rights to the most marginalised.
 
In a table released by the group before they held a protest on July 13, they detailed how 16 people died of starvation in the country since 2017. In states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha, entitlements were denied to people consistently which led to their death by hunger.
 
Details of starvation deaths

*Cases where Aadhaar-related failures clearly contributed to starvation.

 
The process of justice has been slow and the people responsible for this negligence and crime have not been arrested, much less fired.
 
The stories of many victims of Jharkhand are eerily similar.
 
On 23 January 2018, 30-year-old Lukhi Murmu of Dhawadangal village of Hiranpur block in Pakur (Jharkhand) succumbed to prolonged undernutrition and exhaustion. She lived with her 14-year old sister Phulin in extreme poverty. Their meals usually comprised solely of rice and they even had to sleep hungry at times. The sisters’ deprivation worsened over the last four months when they were unable to access their ration from the Public Distribution System (PDS) due to Aadhaar-based biometric authentication failure.
 
Etwariya Devi, a 67-year-old widow, passed away on 25 December. She did not get sufficient food and nutrition over a long period of time. She used to live with her son Ghura Vishwakarma, daughter-in-law Usha Devi and their children. The family routinely faced a shortage of food and nutrition. None of the members of the family ate on the night of 24 December as there was no grain in the house. The family was denied ration from October to December 2017 and she did not get her pension for the months of November and December.
 
Ruplal Marandi, a 62-year old villager of Bhagwanpur in Mohanpur block of Deoghar district in Jharkhand, died of hunger on 23 October 2017 (though the investigating team of the BDO Ashok Kumar and accompanying Doctor have declared it a natural death and denied possibilities of post-mortem.) The deceased was living with his daughter Manodi Marandi and daughter-in-law. According to Manodi, “there was not a single grain to eat at home”, and they did not receive any rice from the rations shop in the past two months (September and October). The ration dealer, Dharmdev Choudhary, refused to give ration because the fingerprint was not working in the biometric machine.
 
A 64-year old widow, Premani Kunwar, died of hunger and exhaustion on 1 December in Danda Block of Garhwa district (Jharkhand). Till September 2017, she received her old age pension in her State Bank of India (SBI) account in Danda branch. Thereafter, without her knowledge, her pension amount was redirected to the SBI bank account of Shanti Devi in Piprakala branch (22 km from Danda). Shanti Devi, who died 25 years ago, was the first wife of Premani Kunwar’s husband late Mutur Mahto. Following the release of the fact-finding report on Premani Kunwar’s death by the Right to Food Campaign, UIDAI conducted an inquiry on 8 December. Its report acknowledges that Premani Kunwar’s old age pension had indeed been credited to Shanti Devi’s account which was linked with Premani Kunwar’s Aadhaar on 10 October 2017. The report also acknowledges that Premani Kunwar did not receive her ration for the month of November 2017, even though the dealer authenticated her biometrics in the POS machine for that month and also made an entry of 35kgs in her ration card. The issue of denial of ration was discussed at length in an earlier press release of the Right to Food Campaign on 7 December 2017.
 
Recently in June, 58-year-old Shanti Devi succumbed to hunger in Jharkhand because her ration card was not processed. All the borrowed rice she and her two daughters-in-law had procured was not enough for the family of five including three children. Her two sons, working in different states, were unable to earn any money that could be sent home for six months. After surviving on a little bit of rice and its starch, she allegedly breathed her last on Sunday after not having eaten for three days.
 
Following the hunger death of Santoshi Kumar in Simdega in September 2017, the Food Ministry issued a notification which states that even in case of failure of biometric authentication or lack of Aadhaar, ration dealers to give PDS rations to eligible households. The Food Ministry and UIDAI keep referring to this notification to claim that no one now denied of their entitlements due to Aadhaar. However, on the ground large-scale exclusion from public services continues due to Aadhaar. It may be recalled that last month a woman of Garhwa also died due to hunger and exhaustion as her household could not access its PDS ration to biometric authentication failures. The repeated denial of food entitlements in Jharkhand’s PDS also exposes the lack of seriousness in the state government towards addressing the issues in the delivery of ration.
 
How the systems deliberately worked against them-
 
1.  Lukhi Murmu constantly denied ration due to biometric failure
 
Lukhi Murmu’s household was issued an Antyodaya ration card under the National Food Security Act. In around June 2017, this ration card was converted into the “Priority” category without the family’s knowledge. This reduced her household’s monthly grain entitlement by 15 kg (the ration card also includes names of two of their other sisters). The household did not receive any PDS foodgrains since October 2017. Lukhi Murmu was too weak to go to the ration shop, which is about a kilometre away from their house. Phulin went to the ration shop a few times, including the day her sister died, but always returned empty handed as she was unable to authenticate herself in the ePOS machine. One of their other sisters also went to the ration shop once, but the dealer did not give her any rice too (only Lukhi Murmu and Phulin’s Aadhaar number is seeded with their ration card, and not the other two sisters’).
 
The Deputy Commissioner’s report argues that Lukhi Murmu could not have died of hunger as she had some land, two cows and paddy in her house at the time of her death. Lukhi Murmu did possess these assets, but that does not preclude her death due to starvation. Government officials argue that the family could have sold its land, cattle or paddy for food. However, the deterioration in Lukhi Murmu’s condition was gradual and there was no way for her family to predict her death.  
 
As per the ration dealer’s testimony to the local administration, no one from Lukhi Murmu’s household came to the PDS shop in the last four months. However, to the Right to Food Campaign fact-finding team, the dealer admitted that Phulin came to collect her household’s rations but was turned away due to biometric authentication failure. Local officials claim to have given instructions to all the dealers in Pakur to also give PDS rations to households that are unable to authenticate themselves through Aadhaar. However, the dealer claimed to have not received any such instruction.
 
2.  Etwariya Devi denied ration due to machine failure and denied pension
 
Etwariya Devi’s family not own any land, except a small piece of land on which their dilapidated kutcha house stands. Ghura Vishwakarma works as an unskilled labourer under contractors in other states. Usha Devi works as an unskilled labourer in local agricultural works. The family routinely faced a shortage of food and nutrition. None of the members of the family ate on the night of 24 December as there was no grain in the house.
 
The family was heavily dependent on 25 kg grains, entitled under the Priority Household card under National Food Security Act. It did not get ration in October, November and December (till the death of Etwariya). In October, Usha Devi’s (who collected the ration every month on behalf of the family) fingerprint did not work in the POS machine. In November, the dealer said that he had not been allotted grain for that month and in December, the dealer said that the POS machine was not working and had to be repaired. In the last three months, the shortage of food was severe for the family.
 
Etwariya was a pensioner under the Indira Gandhi Old Age Pension Scheme. She last received her pension from the local Pragya Kendra in October. Pension amount of Rs. 600 was credited in her account on 7 December. She went to the Kendra on 4 December and a transaction of Rs. 503 was made in her account. According to the CSP Anil Chowdhary, the internet connectivity broke right after she authenticated her fingerprint and the money was not credited to the CSP’s account. As a result, he did not give her the money. Similarly, on 8 December, a transaction of Rs. 600 was made, but she was not given the money as the internet connection again broke. The CSP claims to have received the money in his account on 19 December. When asked why did not give the money to Etwariya before 25 December, he said that she did not visit the Kendra again. The CSP deposited Rs. 1200 back in her account on 26 December.
 
In the morning of 25 December, Etwariya Devi saw the dealer cross in front of their house and she went after him shouting “ruka na dealer babu”, but the dealer did not stop. Another person of the dealer’s household was also crossing and he stopped after hearing Etwariya’s shouts. She asked him to give her the ration (“rationiya da na babu”), but he said that she would get grains the next day. The dealer visited their house on 25 December after Etwariya passed away and gave 30kg of rice to the family. On 27 December, Usha Devi got 30 kg rice after she authenticated her thumbprint in the POS machine, but the transaction was made for 50 kg. The dealer also transacted 5 litre kerosene oil on her card, but she did not get oil. She said the family did not have any kerosene oil when Etwariya died and they had to keep the body in the dark for the whole night of 24 December.
 
People said that the dealer did not distribute ration in August 2017. As per the dealer, he was not allotted any grain for that month. They also said that the dealer did not distribute ration as per the transaction made in the POS machine. In October, he had transacted twice the monthly entitlement of grains and kerosene on most of the cards, but had distributed ration and oil only for a month. Many people complained that they did not get ration in November. Similarly, in December too, the dealer transacted twice the monthly entitlement of grains and kerosene on most of the cards, but distributed only half of it (corroborated by the online transaction list for October and December). The people also said that the dealer did not give the printed receipt to cardholders and cut 400-500 grams from each person’s monthly entitlement.
 
3.   Ruplal Marandi denied ration as machine failed to authenticate fingerprints.
 
Ruplal Marandi lived with his daughter Manodi Marandi and daughter-in-law. According to Manodi, “there was not a single grain to eat at home”, and they did not receive any rice from the rations shop in the past two months (September and October). The ration dealer, Dharmdev Choudhary, refused to give ration because the fingerprint was not working in the biometric machine.

Whatever Manodi and the daughter-in-law earned from daily wages was the only means of living. For the past many days, they did not get any work because of Diwali and the incessant rain, and there was no single rupee at home. For two days the family did not light the hearth because they had nothing to cook. There was some puffed rice (mudhi) at home, which the family was surviving on. Ruplal’s condition deteriorated with hunger and he died.

4.   Premani Kunwar denied ration even after biometric authentication and her pension was redirected

The bare two-room dilapidated kutcha house of Premani Kunwar stands witness to her death amidst abject poverty. In the absence of PDS grain, she had to borrow rice from her neighbours to survive. There is no doubt that Premani lived in a state of semi-starvation. It is now well established that she did not receive her grain entitlement for August and November and her pension for September and October. Premani’s death is a grim reminder of how vulnerable people like her routinely experience uncertainties in accessing their lifelines owing to complex systems like Aadhaar. Premani Kunwar’s son, Uttam Mahto has clearly testified in a video as well as a written statement that his mother died due to starvation. However, as per the report of the Block Development Officer of Danda, Uttam Mahto testified to his mother’s death due to illness. This exposes the local administration’s attempt to cover up the actual cause of Premani Kunwar’s death.

Further, the administration lodged complaints against the local whistle-blowers who drew attention to Premani Kunwar’s death due to starvation. It filed FIRs against Birendra Chowdhary, Pramukh of Danda, Kalicharan Mahto and Sushma Mahto for “causing disruption of a government inquiry and for instilling fear in the government inquiry team”. It is also alleged that they tore government documents in the process which the defendants have denied.

According to a news report published in the Economic Times on 23 December, as per the report of the local police, Premani Kunwar, along with her youngest step-son, Sunil Mahto had “fudged her Aadhaar card” to avail Shanti Devi’s family pension. Shanti Devi’s account was being credited with a monthly family pension amount of Rs. 849 from the Coal Mines Provident Fund. As per the report submitted by the Branch Manager of Piprakala to the Inspector of Garhwa Police Station, Shanti Devi’s account was operated by Premani Kunwar and her family members. It further states that a sum of Rs. 30,000 was withdrawn in the name of Shanti Devi on 6 November 2017. The police arrested Sunil Mahto on 13 December for this withdrawal.

The reports of UIDAI and Economic Times leave many pertinent questions unanswered. As per the UIDAI report, the name in Premani Kunwar’s Aadhaar (UID no XXXXXXXX7606) was changed to “Shanti Devi” on 23 September 2015. This report fails to explain how, despite this change, Premani Kunwar continued to receive her pension in her Aadhaar linked bank account till September 2017. There is also no explanation of how a bank account could be opened in the name of Shanti Devi in 2007, given that she died over two decades ago. The KYC of Shanti Devi’s account was last updated on 7 December, just a day before the UIDAI team’s visit. This draws suspicion on the complicity of bank functionaries, among others, in the fraudulent withdrawal of money from this account. The bank manager of the Piprakala branch of SBI refused to share with the Right to Food Campaign fact-finding team the KYC documents that were used to open Shanti Devi’s account. There is also no explanation from UIDAI on how UID no XXXXXXXX7606 was linked with bank account numbers of Premani Kunwar as well as Shanti Devi.

These issues highlight the vulnerability of the Aadhaar-bank integration system. Recently, a massive scam of opening Aadhaar-linked Airtel payment bank accounts of Airtel network subscribers without their consent was unearthed. In 2016, ICICI Bank opened accounts of around 6000 NREGA workers in Boram block of East Singhbhum district without their consent and linked them to their Aadhaar. Shell accounts have been used to siphon off NREGA wages, as a recent investigation in Mahuadanr Block (Latehar district, Jharkhand) revealed. A Member of Parliament also recently became a victim of fraudulent withdrawal after fraudsters used the OTP sent to the MP’s mobile to authenticate Aadhaar-based online transfer of fund.

No Food Security or accountability in this country-
Improper implementation of the National Food Security Act and frequent failure of the complex Aadhaar-based biometric authentication (ABBA) system in the PDS are depriving many poor families of food rations that are essential for their food security. The facts indicate that all these deaths are hunger and undernutrition deaths, but the Government is denying this and citing other causes. This is a camouflage of the government departments to disown responsibility and avoid accountability.

As in the cases of previous deaths due to starvation in Jharkhand, the government has denied the role of Aadhaar integration with welfare programmes or administrative lapses that led to the denial of entitlements. It has instead been harassing the surviving members of the families suffering from starvation.

Disruptions in the delivery of ration and pension in Jharkhand continue unabated. For those living on the margins, denial of such crucial entitlements leads to the violation of mere right to life.
 
Right to Food Campaign Jharkhand condemned this response and demanded that:

• The State Government must take concrete actions for the enactment of all Supreme Court orders on the right to food.
• The State Government must clarify about the orders which deny ration on account of Aadhar seeding and biometrics, and the government should release a white paper to reveal how many people in the state are denied ration due to these reasons.
• If any unconstitutional order is passed by any Government Officer on these processes, such officers must be held accountable for the same and the Government should take strict against such officers.
• The faulty Aadhar and biometric system in the PDS, which denies food to large numbers of poor and hungry people, must be corrected immediately.
• Immediate dismissal of the ration dealer of Sonpurwa and registering FIR against him for embezzlement of PDS grain and tampering of PDS records.
• Immediate shift to “offline” delivery of PDS entitlements.
• Transfer of all ration shop licenses from private dealers to Gram Panchayats or self-help groups.
•  Introduction of pulses and edible oil in the PDS.

“More children under the age of five die in India than anywhere else in the world. A recent estimate puts this figure at over 1.5 million children a year—over 4,500 child deaths a day. A third of these could have been averted if children did not go to bed hungry night after night. These figures suggest that over 3,00,000 children die every year in India because of hunger. And for many children who escape death, the poverty of their parents means that hunger remains an unremitting part of their lives. Hunger does not stunt only the body, it also affects the brain. The result: An entire generation of children born into poverty with stunted intellectual development which traps them in the same poverty their parents lived with. A state of poverty which will ultimately kill them well before their fellow citizens who did not go hungry during childhood,” wrote Vikram Patel, a Pershing Square Professor of Global Health at Harvard Medical School and affiliated with the Public Health Foundation of India and Sangath.
 
“While it is plausible that the middle-aged people in desperate situations in Jharkhand and elsewhere did not die of acute starvation, it is more likely that their premature deaths were written into the scripts of their lives because they starved as children. It does not matter how fast our economy is growing when tens of millions of our children (and their families) go to bed hungry. Stunting due to hunger and its consequences on premature mortality is a major reason for the pathetic position India occupies in the human development league table of the world. It is also holding back the prospects of an entire generation of our children to survive and escape poverty. That it should be so prevalent, 70 years after Independence and with our food granaries stuffed, is nothing short of a national shame. As many other and much poorer countries have shown, eradicating hunger and stunting can be addressed but to do so will need action on an emergency scale. Only then will Indians stop dying of hunger,” he wrote in The Indian Express.
 
This report is a compilation of RTFC’s reports on different starvation cases. It has been edited for relevance.

Read Also : https://sabrangindia.in/article/savitri-devi-one-more-name-added-starvation-death-toll-jharkhand
 

The post Sordid tale of starvation: How govt negligence caused deaths by hunger in Jharkhand appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: HT
 
New Delhi: Jharkhand has seen the worst neglect of human rights in the last year. The death toll related to starvation and government apathy has been steadily increasing. The Right to Food Campaign (RTFC) is organising a protest on Friday against the injustice meted out the rightful citizens of India. The protest will be held at Jharkhand Bhavan, New Delhi on July 13 at 2 pm.
 
“With an alarming number of starvation deaths and lynchings, the mere right to life is under attack in Jharkhand. Over the past ten months, at least 13 persons have succumbed to hunger in the state. Denial of social and economic entitlements contributed to the destitution of the victims’ families. In at least seven cases, Aadhaar-related failures were directly responsible for the denial of these entitlements. Instead of taking action against functionaries whose lapses have led to these deaths and measures to improve food security in the state, Jharkhand government has denied hunger as the cause of these deaths and absolved itself of any blame. Since March 2016, 13 persons have been lynched to death – most of who were Muslim – in the state. The perpetrators of this violence roam free. To protest against these injustices, the Right to Food Campaign is organising a protest,” the invite by RTFC said.
 
Read Also – 
Savitri Devi: One more name added to the starvation death toll in Jharkhand
Jharkand’s Poor Struck Off Ration Cards, Pensioners List, declared ‘Fake’
Jharkand”s Rickshaw Puller Dies of Hunger: Jharia
Jharkhand citizens issue statement against attack on right to life
 

The post Protest against starvation and govt apathy in Jharkhand on Friday appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 

Ranchi: A group of 52 people comprising of academics, activists, representatives of people’s organisations and other concerned citizens have released a statement condemning the recent starvation deaths, communal lynching and violence, attempts by the government to forcefully acquire land and repression of voices of dissent in Jharkhand. They have made demands from the ruling government for the state. The signatories include social activists like Kavita Srivastava, Xavier Das, Amitava Ghosh, Jean Dreze, Ankita Aggarwal, Aloka Kujur and Afzal Anis.
 
The statement:
Since 2014, people of Jharkhand have faced severe attacks on their mere right to life by the Raghuvar Das led BJP government. The government has been trying to acquire land of Adivasis and Moolvasis against their wishes that will directly affect their livelihoods. On the other hand, there is also a direct attack on the people’s freedom to religion leading to the killing of Muslims and Adivasis in the name of ‘cow protection’. At the same time, there is a negligible focus on welfare programmes such as the Public Distribution System and social security pensions that has led to a spate of starvation deaths in the state in the recent past.”

At least 12 persons have succumbed to starvation since September 2017. The immediate causes of these deaths include denial of subsidized rice due to the absence of a ration card, cancellation of ration card not linked with Aadhaar and failure of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication at the ration shop.

It is true that some starvation victims were also ill, but they would probably not have succumbed to the illness if they received adequate nutrition and medical care. Denial of social security pensions and absence of work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) further contributed to the destitution of the starvation victims and their families. For every person who has died, hundreds other languish with hunger, undernutrition and illness.

While the starvation deaths expose the lack of political commitment of the state government towards people’s welfare, the various tactics used to acquire one of the biggest assets of people, land, are also telling of its anti-people motives. Despite widespread protests against amendments in the land acquisition act, the government kept pressing for the amendments which have finally been approved by the President. The most crucial amendment is the waiving off of social impact assessment (SIA) for government acquisition for specific ‘public’ purposes such as setting up schools, colleges; railway line and electrification and so on. For such purposes, the government empowers itself to forcibly acquire even fertile multi-crop land.

Social and environmental impact assessments are to be done by independent agencies and their reports are to be placed before the concerned Gram Sabhas for consent.  Waiving off the assessments will make it easier for the government to acquire land without people’s consent. And it is only a matter of time before the government uses this amendment to acquire land for private institutions of education, health etc.

The state government has also marked common lands of Adivasis and Moolvasis (such as rivers/rivulets, village roads, ponds, places of worship, burial grounds and so on) as part of “land bank” without the consent of the respective Gram Sabhas. The bank consists of 20.56 lakh acres of land across the state.  Of this, 10.56 lakh acres are already earmarked for corporates with whom the government signed MoUs during Momentum Jharkhand. And 81 per cent of this area falls in the Fifth Scheduled Area.

Forceful acquisition of land will have a direct impact on the livelihoods of the Adivasis and will literally violate their right to life. Not to mention, this is also a direct attack on the Adivasis’s constitutional right to self-governance.

The government is also repressing voices of dissent. Damodar Turi, convenor of Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan, was arrested on 15 February 2018 on charges of being a member of the illegally banned Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti (MSS) and for celebrating the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

There are also growing incidences of communal violence in the state. At least nine persons were lynched in the name of religion or cow protection in the last four years. Recently, two Muslim youths, accused of stealing buffaloes, were killed by a mob in Godda. In June, Nagri and Bero blocks of Ranchi also witnessed communal violence.

We expect opposition parties of Jharkhand to stand with the people against the continuing attacks on their right to life. We demand the government to immediately address the following demands:
 

• Universalise coverage of the Public Distribution System and social security pensions and ensure adequate work under NREGA in all the villages
• Remove mandatory linkage of welfare programmes with Aadhaar
• Withdraw amendments made in the land acquisition act
• Stop creating a land bank
• Notify rules of Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (PESA) and implement the act in its true spirit.
• Release Damodar Turi and others implicated falsely along with him
• Ensure communal harmony in the state and ensure equality and justice for minorities
• Ensure criminal action in all the cases of lynching and mob violence in the state.

 
झारखंड में भूख से लोगों की मृत्यु, लोगों के सामाजिक और आर्थिक अधिकारों के उलंघन, अल्पसंख्यकों के विरुद्ध हिंसा, प्राकृतिक संसाधनों का जबरन अधिग्रहण और जनता के पक्ष में उठने वाले आवाज़ों को दबाए जाने के विरुद्ध शोधकर्ताओं, एक्टिविस्ट्स, जन संगठनों व अन्य चिंतित नागरिकों द्वारा जारी किया गया वक्तव्य. 
 
अधिक जानकारी के लिए स्टेन स्वामी (8409102157), प्रेम वर्मा (9835514004) अथवा सिराज दत्ता (9939819763) से संपर्क कर सकते हैं.
 
झारखंड में जीने के अधिकार पर बढ़ते प्रहार
2014 से रघुबर दास सरकार द्वारा झारखंड के लोगों के जीने के अधिकार पर प्रहार बढ़ गए हैं. सरकार आदिवासियों और मूलवासियों की इच्छा के विरुद्ध उनकी ज़मीन का अधिकरण करने की कोशिश कर रही है, जिसका सीधा प्रभाव उनकी आजीविका पर होगा. दूसरी ओर, लोगों की धर्म की स्वतंत्रता पर भी प्रहार हो रहे हैं, और गौ संरक्षण के नाम पर मुसलामानों व आदिवासियों को मारा जा रहा है. जन वितरण प्रणाली व सामाजिक सुरक्षा जैसी जन कल्याण योजनाओं को नज़रंदाज़ किया जा रहा है, जिसके कारण हाल में कई लोगों की भूख से मौत हुई है.

पिछले दस महीनों में झारखंड के कम से कम 12 लोग भूख के शिकार हुए हैं. ये मृत्यु मुखतः निम्न कारणों से हुई हैं  – राशन कार्ड न होना, आधार से लिंक न होने के कारण राशन कार्ड रद्द होना एवं  जन वितरण प्रणाली में आधार–आधारित बायोमेट्रिक सत्यापन की व्यवस्था काम न करना.

यह सच है कि कई भूख के शिकार लोग बीमार भी थे, पर अगर उन्हें समय पर पर्याप्त पोषण व स्वास्थ्य सुविधा मिलती, तो उनकी भूख से मौत नहीं होती. सामाजिक सुरक्षा पेंशन व नरेगा का काम न मिलने से मृतक व उनके परिवारों की आर्थिक स्थिति और भी दुर्बल हो गई. ये लोग राज्य में भूख, कुपोषण और बीमारी से ग्रसित सैंकड़ों लोगों के चंद उदहारण मात्र हैं.

लोगों के जीने के अधिकार पर हमला उनकी आवीजिका के स्त्रोतों – जैसे ज़मीन – को छीन कर भी हो रहा है. भूमि अधिग्रहण कानून में संशोधनों के विरुद्ध व्यापक विरोध के बावजूद राष्ट्रपति ने इन संशोधनों को अपनी मंजूरी दे दी है. इनमें से सबसे महत्वपूर्ण संशोधनों में से एक है सरकार द्वारा स्कूल, कॉलेज, रेलवे लाइन, विद्युतीकरण जैसे ‘सार्वजनिक’ उद्देश्यों के लिए भूमि अधिग्रहण की प्रक्रिया में सामाजिक प्रभाव मूल्यांकन की बाध्यता को समाप्त करना.

स्वतंत्र संस्थाओं द्वारा सामाजिक व पर्यावरण प्रभाव मूल्यांकन किया जाना है एवं इनकी रिपोर्ट ग्राम सभा के समक्ष अनुमोदन के लिए रखी जानी है. इस बाध्यता को समाप्त करने के बाद सरकार के लिए लोगों की सहमती के बिना उनकी ज़मीन अधिग्रहण करना आसान हो जाएगा. और शायद इसका फाएदा स्वास्थ्य और शिक्षा से जुड़े निजी कंपनियों को मिलेगा.

राज्य सरकार ने ‘लैंड बैंक’ के लिए बिना ग्राम सभाओं की सहमती के आदिवासियों और मूलवासियों की सार्वजनिक ज़मीन (जैसे नदी, सड़क, तालाब, धार्मिक स्थल आदि) चिन्हित करनी शुरू कर दी है. राज्य भर में अभी तक लैंड बैंक के लिए 20.56 लाख एकड़ ज़मीन चिन्हित की गई है, जिसमें से 10.56 लाख एकड़ ज़मीन के प्रयोग के लिए निजी कंपनियों के साथ समझौते भी हो गए हैं. इस ज़मीन का 81 प्रशिशत क्षेत्र पांचवी अनुसूची क्षेत्र में पड़ता है. यह आदिवासियों के स्वशासन के संविधानिक अधिकार का सीधा उलंघन है.  

सरकार उसके विरुद्ध आवाजों को भी दबा रही है. 15 फ़रवरी 2018 को मज़दूर संघर्ष समिति का सदस्य होने व रुसी क्रांति की वर्षगाठ मानाने के लिए विस्थापन विरोधी जन विकास आन्दोलन के संयोजक दामोदर तूरी को गिरफ्तार किया गया था.

राज्य में साम्प्रदायिक हिंसा भी बढ़ रही है. पिछले चार वर्षों में धर्मं या गौ रक्षा के नाम पर कम से कम नौ लोगों को पीट पीट कर मारा गया है. हाल में भैंसे चुराने के आरोप में गोड्डा के दो मुसलमान नौजवानों की ह्त्या हुई. रांची ज़िले के नगड़ी और बेड़ो में भी साम्प्रदायिक हिंसा हुई है.
हम आशा करते हैं कि झारखंड के सभी विपक्षी दल लोगों के जीने के अधिकार पर लगातार हो रहे प्रहार के विरुद्ध आवाज़ उठाएंगे.

हम सरकार से निम्न मांगे करते हैं:
       जन वितरण प्रणाली और सामाजिक सुरक्षा पेंशन का सर्वव्यापीकरण हो और हर गाँव में नरेगा का पर्याप्त काम खुले
       सभी जन कल्याणकारी योजनाओं में आधार की अनिवार्यता समाप्त हो
       भूमि अधिग्रहण कानून में संशोधन वापस लिए जाए
       लैंड बैंक बनना बंद हो
       पेसा कानून की नियमावली जारी की जाए और इस कानून को सही भावना के साथ लागू किया जाए
       दामोदर तूरी और उसके साथ झूठे आरोपों के लिए बंधक बनाए अन्य लोगों को तुरंत रिहाई मिले
       राज्य में साम्प्रदायिक सौहार्द व अल्पसंख्यकों के लिए समानता और न्याय सुनिश्चित हो
       राज्य में साम्प्रदायिक हिंसा फैलाने वाले लोगों के विरुद्ध कानूनी कार्रवाई हो
 
Signatories
Adeep Kumar (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Afzal Anis (United Milli Forum, Jharkhand)
Aloka Kujur (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Amitava Ghosh (Concerned citizen)
Anjor Bhaskar (Independent consultant)
Ankita Aggarwal (Right to Food Campaign)
Anmol Somanchi (Independent researcher)
Arvind Kumar (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Aseem Shrivastava (Concerned citizen and Environmentalist)
Ashok Verma (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Basant Hetamsariya (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Bharat Bhushan Choudhary (Samajwadi Jan Parishad)
Binod Kumar (Concerned citizen)
Debmalya Nandi (Concerned citizen)
Devika (Concerned citizen)
Gautam Mody (New Trade Union Initiative)
Jag Narayan Mahto (Samajwadi Jan Parishad)
Jean Dreze (Development economist)
Jharkhand NREGA Watch
Jothi SJ (Udayani Social Action Forum, Kolkata)
Kavita Srivastava (People’s Union for Civil Liberties)
Koninika Ray (National Federation of Indian Women)
Kumar Sanjay (Social Worker, Jharkhand)
Leo A Singh (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Mahendra Singh (Van Jeevan Grameen Vikas Samiti Sanstha, Latehar)
Manoj Kindo (PRADAN, Ghagra)
Md. Shadab Ansari (Advocate)
Mira Shiva (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan)
Pranjal Danda (Concerned citizen)
Praveer Peter (Solidarity Centre, Ranchi)
Prem Verma (Jharkhand Nagrik Prayas)
Rajendra Kumar (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Rajendran Narayanan (Assistant Professor, Azim Premji University, Bangalore)
Sadique Jahan (Social Worker, Jharkhand)
Sajha Kadam, Jharkhand
Sakina Dhorajiwala (Concerned citizen)
Samajwadi Jan Parishad, Jharkhand
Saroj Humroz (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Satish Kundan (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Shariq Ansar (Fraternity Movement)
Siraj Dutta (Right to Food Campaign)
Stan Swamy (Bagaicha)
Sunil Kujur (Concerned Citizen)
Swati Narain (Right to Food Campaign)
Taramani Sahu (Jharkhand NREGA Watch)
Uma Gupta (Assistant Professor, University of Delhi)
Umeshwar Prasad (Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Gumla)
United Milli Forum, Jharkhand
Vishwanath Azad (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Vivek (Right to Food Campaign)
Xavier Dias (Editor, Khan Kaneej Aur ADHIKAR (Mines minerals and RIGHTS)
Ziaullah (Association for Protection of Civil Rights)

The post Jharkhand citizens issue statement against attack on right to life appeared first on SabrangIndia.