When a group of activists and organizations in Rajasthan filed a petition against the starvation deaths in Orissa and other parts of the country despite the fact that the country witnessed overflowing godowns of food grains which were unmanageable by the department of Food Corporation of India, not even them would have thought that this issue would be so important that hunger deaths still persist and entitlements for poor are still being ‘managed’ by the powerful elite in the villages. The Supreme Court issued notices to 6 Indian states to file their affidavits and update it about the action taken by their respective governments in this regards. The Supreme Court was hearing a very important petition filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties on the issue of Starvation deaths all over the country. The petition said that “ a large number of starvation deaths are occurring even though the government ‘s godowns were overflowing with food grains. This was a flagrant violation of the 1962 famine code which provides that ‘in times of famine, every healthy person who present himself for work as part of “food for work” scheme would be provided with work. All dependents, aged or unhealthy people, must be provided with gratuitous relief’. The petition argued that right to life under article 21 of the constitution includes right to food.” It is important to notice that the capacity of FCI godowns in India was to keep the food grains about 16.5 million tonne and as per January last year’s record the godowns had more than 45.7 million tones. The spending on the maintenance of these godowns was going to be difficult task. Experts say that it is not that we are over flowing with our food grain but also a grim fact was that some of the FCI godowns have rotten foodgrain more than 5 years old due to highly incapable system and an indifferent bureaucracy.

     Now Supreme Court accepted this petition and gave notices to 6 states to file their affidavits and how they would identify the BPL ( Below Poverty Line) people as well as functioning of the various government schemes for the poor. There is ‘Antyodaya Anna Yojana’ which gives food grains of 35 kilogram per month to the poorest of the poor. The rice has to be sold at the price of Rs 3 per kilogram and wheat at the price of Rs 2.50 per kilogram. Apart from this Kerosene is also supplied to the BPL people at the rate of Rs 10/-. The total subsidy provided for the BPL families on the food grain is about Rs 4,150 per tonne against the incentive provided to exports of food grain to foreign national, which is about Rs 8,300 per tonne. The case continue in the court while we must not live in illusion that the entire right to food case will resolved with one petition in the Supreme Court. There are number of issues of policies and misgovernance apart from the selected programmes targeted by the campaign people because right to food concept in the international treaties is not a charitable phrase but a bigger term related to right over productive resources, right to get minimum wages, social security and Land reform. Unless the issue is dealt with seriously, right to food as being envisaged in parts and charitable term, would defeat the purpose of it.

     In between the change in the government at the center has been rightly attributed to the failure of the anti-poverty programmes in the villages. Farmers in many parts of India like Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha and Karnataka, committed suicide due to indebtedness and bad crop. The dependency on Monsoon has again proved fatal and regions like Marathwada and Vidarbha are facing severe drought. Drought and indebtedness created an unprecedented situation in the country. On the one hand there was ‘feel-good’ factor due to bumper crop and high production in the farm sector and the other side was equally dark where people were dieing of hunger.

     Poor Areas Civil Society ( PACS) programme has been active in 100 poorest districts of six Indian states of Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar, Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatishgarh and Jharkhand. The aim of these programmes is to strengthen civil society in these areas particularly working on Self Help Groups, Panchayati Raj and Natural Resource Management. It was interesting to see how things were working in these areas and how PACS partners were involved in it. It might have been possible during the study that many partners were not visible or were not available because the time of stay at one district was too short and our aim mostly was to investigate the problems of the area we visited and come with a survey, find out what was happening to the abovementioned programmes. So investigation and survey took time. Secondly, the choice of the places we visited was random and based on convenience, though we tried our best to make the study of contrast but time factor involved in this played a big role and we confine to districts near by. While in Uttar-Pradesh we visited Chitrakoot and Mau, Madhya Pradesh, Panna and Chhatarpur, Chhatisgarh had Raipur and Rajnandgaon, Jharkhand Deoghar and Dumka. However both in Bihar and Maharastra we covered three districts of Buxur, Champaran and Madhubani all in Bihar and Yawatmal, Nanded and Aurangabad in Maharastra to get a better picture of the situation existing there.

     Public Distribution System is in a complete mess in most of the states. There have been complaint regarding wrong entitlements to the people. Those who don’t deserve the Below Poverty Line ( BPL) card have got it while poor landless agricultural workers still look for it. In states like Bihar and Chhatishgarh, the PDS shopowners have not lifted their entitlements from the block. Much of the ration returned to the central pool. In many parts of Uttar-Pradesh particularly Mau and Chitrakoot, the PDS shopowners who are referred as Kotedars are the most powerful people in their areas and embezzle funds with the support of the Senior Marketing Inspectors and other related officers. This report consists two fact findings from both Mau and Chitrakoot as how the Food for Work programme has been mismanaged by the corrupt officials and the rice was sold in the open market. In Mau, the corruption was over 10 crore rupees not only for food for work programme but also for drought relief and other related programmes. In Chitrakoot, poor labours had to pay the price for the tug of war between two powerful political rivals of former member of Parliament. None of the places showed the Supreme Court directives which says that every rationshop must have painted the prices, entitlements and quantity of the ration. There were posters and other notices in some of the shops in Chhatisgarh and Maharastra and Madhya Pradesh but Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand shows dismal picture. While interestingly in Bihar, the PDS shopowners also came from rural poor backward and other marginalized communities, in Uttar-Pradesh and elsewhere kotedar remains powerful upper elite of the village.

     In the Chitrakoot district of Uttar-Pradesh we found that people were paying Rs 11.50 per liter for kerosene ( 1.50 above the normal price for PDS). The ration shops are opened just a day in the month and that too not every month. People are told that the ration supply is not regular. It is clearly indicative that the ration in the name of poor goes in the black market. The biggest challenge before the government was to identify the BPL people and 5 Indian states identified about 36 lakh families for the same. But the fact is that it is the people with muscle power who have become BPL members and not the poor who deserved that. In Bakta Bujurg village of Chitrakoot’s Pahari Tehsil, a villager told us that he knows many people who owe about 40 bighas of land and have the BPL card and landless people like him have never been given the card. A report published by Tata Consultancy Services (as reported in Times of India, Lucknow) 46 % of wheat, 49% rice and 36% of sugar was diverted to other areas. According to report imperfect targeting has led to exclusion of eligible households. According to World Bank report the prices at the PDS exceed 10-14% in different states including UP. UP state has 90.32 lakh families Below Poverty Line and 16.37 Lakh people for Antyodaya.

     Traveling to these areas we found some atrocious tales of exploitation. Bakta Bujurg, which has a population of 4500 people, does not have water resources and women use saline water for the drinking purpose. They have to dig a pit and the water comes in drops, which they would fill in their pitcher. In normal time it takes about two hours to fill a bucket. The women then purify the water through cotton or a 'chhanni'and then make it useable for drinking. When I asked the villagers whether they ever asked politicians for this and their reply is that during election this village is divided on the caste line. ‘We will always vote to our caste man, come what may.. Whether we get water or not but we cannot leave our caste, but after the elections everything is okay in the village and we are united.’ says a village head. I am surprised as why they are narrating this to us. Why do you need our help when you are not ready to change? But then the villages in India wont change that easily and one reason is false pride of caste. But because it is the women who have to face all the problems in the village and they are eager to break the cycle of bondage.

     Much has been written and said about strengthening the Public Distribution System and its relationship with the anti-poverty programmes. When the new government took over, one cry from the left parties was for universal public distribution system. One does not know much about how universalisation will help when targeted failed. Secondly, most of the ration shop are not lifting grains for obvious reasons. For example in Bihar and Uttar-Pradesh, most of the landless agricultural workers get 5 kilogram of rice or wheat in lieu of their work per day. There is little dealing in cash which most of them required. We must understand that the value of cash is utmost in the villages and they pay more and get less in kind to get cash. None of these poor agricultural workers would opt to buy food grains from the shops because they need sugar, kerosene as well as other necessary items. Hence if we are talking of existing PDS which is already not serving the needs, it is no point. We must make it inclusive of other products and target it as usual currently. In the Bhopal Convention on right to food, this issue came up aggressively and Dalit groups have their reservation for Universalisation of PDS which they alleged would be appropriated by the high caste Hindus in the villages. A reminder of grim reality that still persists in our heavily agrarian rural population.

     Second focus of our report was Mid Day Meal being served to the students. Supreme Court made it clear to the state government that they must provide mid day meals to the students as it would be another way to fight hunger. According to studies done by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, the number of students have arisen due to meal being provided in the school. There was another argument by the supporters of mid day meal theory that it helps over come the caste prejudices. So the issue before us was to see the quality and quantity of the meal, and whether it led to caste inclusion or not. Unfortunately, the without even generalizing the things, situation looked the other way round. While in Madhya Pradesh we found a number of cooks belonging to upper backward classes who don’t fact untouchability, in Maharastra, there were Dalit cooks in their schools. In Panna district of Madhya Pradesh we found that children did not eat food being provided at the school because the cook belonged to an oppressed backward community. It was good to see that a number of women cook were also employed by the schools. While the issue of cook might not have triggered caste conflict but the quality and quantity of food left us ponder whether such a food should be allowed to be distributed. Two things are clear in this entire process of distribution of food in the school. One is that it is rice only without any cereal or souse which the children eat out of compulsion and secondly that too is creating more hunger among them. Providing one spoon of rice to the hungry children in the villages is not only a shame but also show our concern for the poor people. Most the schools in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur and Panna districts did not have the proper places to cook meal. Several centers under Integrated Child Development Programme reflected how children are treated. These schemes are providing employment to people but are unable to extract commitment from them to serve the poor. Many schools were not even opened till we reached there around 10 am. Students particularly the girls from backward communities cleaned their classrooms. A majority of students did not have roof over their heads. Local activists informed that the teachers enroll more teachers to get greater entitlement of ration because at most of the places the ‘Patila’ used for cooking rice could not have accommodated food for over a dozen students. The situation in Maharastra was a bit better, while in other states like Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhatishgarh, the less said the better. In UP rice in the name of mid day meal is distributed to students through the kotedars. It is a rare sight if the rice is distributed every month. In chitrakoot, we visited to a school which did not get the rice for two years and despite complaint nothing happened. Since the kotedar belong to powerful community of the village, local teachers don’t want to take him on for the fear of retaliation. Jharkhand and Bihar are now taking pilot scheme for Mid Day Meals in several districts and one does not know how would they be implemented.

     One of the major anti-poverty programme is said to be ‘Food for Work Programme’ in which rural poor from the marginalized communities are guaranteed 30 days employment in a year. Now the new government has promised to extend it to 100 days. The scheme might be very genuine but it has been a victim of corruption in the local panchayats and governments. Under this scheme, the rural poor were given 5 kilogram of rice/wheat and Rs 30 in lieu of his/her days work. But the bone of contention in this scheme is the kind part which has never been given on time. Normally, it reaches in six months if the people are ready to fight. Due to corruption many Panchayats don’t take up next work unless the old dues are fully paid and hence the developmental process is halted. Secondly, the kotedars and local officials related to blocks have been interfering in the matter and it is difficult for any one in the village to make a complaint against the erring persons for the fear of reprisal. In Fatehpur Mandav block of Mau district of Uttar-Pradesh, about 75 gram pradhans gave us a letter of the corruption in distribution of the ration resulting in our action against the corrupt officials. The matter went to the Commissioners of the Supreme Court of India and finally the officials were booked. Though, this reflects the power of Civil Society yet in the rural India, it is sharply divided on the caste line thus undoing all the good work of others. The most unfortunate part of this episode was that as soon as there was a government change in Uttar-Pradesh, the caste alliances began to reformulate and hence the honest officer who was responsible for this expose became victim of this. The powerful Yadav lobby worked against the Dalit official, who was shunted from his posting mid way against all the norms.

     The Employment Guarantee Scheme ( EGS) in Maharastra also came under our scrutiny. Nothing was visible in Nanded and Yawatmal when we traveled there, while in Aurangabad, a number of people including representatives of Zila Panchayat complained against the same that there is no mechanism for the political leadership of the
Zila Panchayat to monitor and check the mal-practices in the scheme. The argument was that though the scheme was laudable yet it has not been able to benefit the masses. It promise to give employment to all able bodied rural poor with in the 10 kilometer radius of their homes yet the farmers of Marathawada, who are facing drought for the third consecutive year remains workless during the year. The people’s representatives informed us that the depart for EGS does not have any proper procedure to follow. It not only lack transparency but also there is no say of either the Civil Society Organisations or the Panchayats. In fact the entire work is done on professional contractual basis without understanding the aims of schemes. The contractors pay bribe to the authorities and get the projects. Most of the people working under the EGS are contractors own labours and hence people in the villages remain workless during the year. The government might make tall claims regarding the funds allocated for EGS but unfortunately in the absence of proper evaluation and monitoring, the entire system has collapsed.

     Those people who feel that Self Help Groups are nothing but a deceiving exercise by the powerful elite will have to think twice before making the allegation. Nodoubt that our beaurocracy continue to discourage women and we have shown in our reports how women were forced to replace their SHG after three years when they wanted a loan for starting a tubewell in village Bandha of district Chitrakoot. Today we can see the green fields in Bandha village being taken care by the women folks. SHG’s rate of interest is definitely higher than that of available interest rates in the market and therefore unfair to rural women but they have given women a new identity and voice. For many of them had not ventured out of their houses and spoken to Bank officers. Now, they sit together and plan for the future of their children.

     Actually, right based approach is rule based as it is the authorities who are the main victim of the violation of the rule of law. It is the failure of the government and its nodal agencies to implement rule of law. The abovementioned cases are actually rule based where the entitlements and procedures are clearly laid downs. PDS, Mid Day Meals, Integrated Child Development Schemes, Food for Work programmes or Employment Guarantee Schemes, implementation of minimum wages act, all of them have become victim of the misgovernance, corruption and nepotism.

     Unfortunately, a much bigger issue of violation of right to food is related to right over the natural resources. It is equally complicated as we face a tug of war between the forest department and the revenue department and poor Adivasis becoming the major victim of the same. No doubt India’s forest cover has drastically come down forcing the environmentalists and ecologist to lobby for it yet it would be the travesty of truth if deforestation is linked to Adivasis who could be used as nature’s partner in sustainable development. When the situation is not controlled by the government, the erring officials goes berserk in their way to please their bosses but the innocent people fall prey to another gang of people whose only concern remain ‘condemning’ the international agenda while always being the part of the same. In Panna district, forest department uprooted hundreds of Adivasis from their land under the pretext that they were living in the forest area. Regrettably, the forest department failed to resolve its crisis with the revenue department. The village Panchayat failed to take any stand because a number of its upper caste members became the member of ‘Joint Forest Mangement’ programme, therefore completely ignoring the tribal claims on their habitat. The Joint Forest Management programme failed in not only Uttar-Pradesh but also in Madhya Pradesh because it could not provide a platform to the Dalit, Adivasis and other marginalized. It became a platform of the rural elite with a few of their chums under the identity ‘reservation’. In many places we found not only government schools running in these so-called ‘intruded’ areas but also government pumps. One does not know how the state government constructed a school in forest area which now house forest department workers.

     The stones and diamond mines of Panna are famous all over the country. The government give smaller lease to poor people of Madhya Pradesh but the fact of the matter is that the diamond mines have exposed the vulnerability of the rural folks. The illusion to get a diamond bring them from their homes but that never happen. There is no social security here as most of the people are working at their own. Some of the contractors sub lease their mines and hence it has become contractual. It is painful to see the entire family working in these mines without getting anything. Labour laws and minimum wages act are openly as well as frequently violated in these mines which are a threat to the environment. If complaint of child labour have been coming to us from various quarters.

     In Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh which is a temple town, the mining industry has played havoc with the people of Katahara village in Laundi Tehsil. The tribal displacement continues in this area despite no objection of the village Panchayat yet in the same forest area mining continues unabated against all rules and regulation of the forest department. The village Panchayat has given a note in writing that the mining be closed as the rock blasting has nightmarish experiences for the villagers and many children and women who go out to defecate sustained injuries. Many houses and huts were gutted in the water that flows if it rains carrying the entire soil over the village. The villagers have developed various kinds of ailments including tuberculosis and hearing problems. The village pond which was build last year has been destroyed and over it the trucks and bulldozers of the mining mafia rules. There are no labour laws in the area and yet it goes uninterrupted.

     Right to food has been constantly related to right to water. And if we are unable to manage water in near future, the situation would go out of hand. A war like situation is visible in Marathwada region of Maharastra. The drought has added to the woes of farmers and if something drastic is not done, one fear, Marathwada may become one of the violent regions of the country and the victim would naturally be the poor Dalits, who have earlier faced wrath of the powerful Maratha people.

     In our reports we have not only brought the important failures of the state but also highlighted successful civil society initiatives. It is important to highlight the success stories and knowledge generated from them. Like the private initiative of Maratha people in village Yesgaon-III, is remarkable because this uprooted village has not yet recognized because the people decided to buy land and construct the entire village as a private initiative. In Yesgaon I and II people have been given land in lieu of their lost land for a dam built there but among all the three the private initiative is much better then the other two. The villagers, ofcourse, are enlightened and are able to feed themselves while elsewhere their condition remains worrisome.

     In Madhya Pradesh, Chhote Ram Dubey, Sarpanch in Ajaygarh Tehsil of Panna district has provided cemented road to entire village. There is electricity in the village as well as water connections are being distributed to all the villagers. Such bold initiatives need to be replicated by others and unless we highlight them, it would not be possible for others to follow. The DPIP programme of Madhya Pradesh government was better organised with the help of civil society organizations. Training organizations like Samarthan were visible in Panna, though unfortunately we could not find much of the organizations in other parts of the state. While the visibility of NGOs in Uttar-Pradesh is very well, though the people’s perception amount them was not necessarily positive. The reason might be that the NGOs work in the respective field with a selected people while people who are getting regularly marginalized in the absence of any protective mechanism are feeling left out.

     Therefore, it is important for NGOs and CBOs to channalise the energy of the people in constructive development through better management techniques. Unless, NGOs strengthen civil society ( I am deliberately using two different terms), they would be regarded as another government machinery which has been thoroughly discredited at the moment as far as developmental work is concern. More so because the development pursued is double standard which has separate meanings for separate target group people. For instance the water woes of Dalits would be doubled in Aurangabad if it is not managed properly because water scarcity would make it double potent weapon to introduce new ways of hierarchical system which do not allow freedom to drink water. In the forest, it the Adivasis who are not only forced into ghettoisation due to urban onslaught on their life style but also the treacherous ways of the officials which ultimately through them in the hands of so-called ‘revolutionary’ forces.

     While traveling to nearly 14 districts of India in three months period was hectic yet a very learning experience to make future strategies regarding the food security and natural resource management. For instance, the district like Mau, Chitrakoot, Panna and Yawatmal the PACS programmes were visible. In Mau the networking was basically meant to strengthen the Panchayat system while in Chitrakoot we had the same thing though the Panchayat leaders complained that they don’t much about the same. In Panna, Samarthan’s work was visible in certain areas and in the form of wall writings they looked much ahead of their counterparts in other parts of the country. Such symbolic things are equally necessary to strengthened and highlight a programme. It would be great if the PACS initiatives, which are laudable and must be utilized to best of its intentions, include the marginalized communities in their decision-making and make right-based approach an important instrument to get the laws implemented. The marginalized communities have been maltreated not only socially but also by the government and therefore PACS kind of initiatives have double responsibility over its shoulder to rectify the old mistakes and prejudices towards them as well as empower them economically by using their energy constructively.

     We need to find answer to these issues as why the tears of poor don’t shake us. Five years after the World Food Summit in Rome when our heads of state had promised that the poverty of the country would be reduced to half by 2015, we need to ask our political class as what has it done in the past five years to reduce the poverty. Unfortunately, they don’t have much to say on the issue, as they will only have destruction to narrate. Today
What we are witnessing is that it is not the elimination of poverty but poor who are facing extinction. A country where the godowns are still over flowing with grains and which is exporting grain at a much lower price then for its poor people, starvation deaths are reminder of flaw in our system. It also reminds us that a freedom does not have any meaning for those who die of hunger. It is a betrayal of freedom and freedom movement for which our leaders fought forgetting their religious and caste identities. Internationally, removing hunger and poverty is one of the main agenda of the Millennium Development Goals ( MDM) as defined by the UN Secretary General Koffi Annan. Time has come when all of us wage a war against hunger and malnutrition to fulfill these goals set out by the world leaders as well as the United Nations to save the lonely planet from chaos and destruction.