IN Sonebhadra district of UP 18 children of Ghasia tribe died due to starvation in the past one year. These deaths occurred in Naibasti hamlet of Rupgaon village. Of these, four deaths occurred in the last four months.

The government may not accept starvation deaths, but a report submitted in July by the Deputy Chief Medical Superintendent of Sonebhadra says that 14 children died in Naibasti hamlet of Rupgaon village because they were regularly eating the leaves of chakwadi (a local poisonous grass) and wild, poisonous mushrooms. The families of children did not have anything to eat. The report further states that another 18 malnourished children are starving and are on the verge of death.

Around 50 Ghasia families landed up in this village after being displaced from their settlements in the villages inside the forests five years ago. For the last four years the families have to survive on wild and poisonous grasses like “Chakwar”, wild mushrooms and extremely poor rice. The adults somehow manage to survive the ill effects of the poisonous intake but the little children are unable to tolerate the poison and succumb to death within couple of years. People simply said that they have no other place to go and they would improve only if they were allotted land by the government.

Former IAS officer NC Saxena, who has been appointed commissioner by the Supreme Court on “right to food”, also wrote a letter to the government in September, pointing out that those who died did not have ration cards. (Source: Rajiv Ranjan Jha, Times News Network – Monday, October 20, 2003 and UP Agrarian Reform and Labour Rights Campaign Committee).

In Palamu District of Jharkhand : A report by a team of Delhi School of Economics, Right to Food Campaign and Gram Swaraj Abhiyan has confirmed starvation deaths in the Manatu block of Jharkhand's Palamu district.

The fact-finding team, which toured the Kusumatand village in Manatu from June 24 to 26, identified at least three persons who died due to starvation. Kusumatand is a hamlet of about 75 houses on the outskirts of the Manatu panchayat. Most of the villagers here are landless tribals who migrate to the Rohtas district in Bihar for working as labourers during “work season” every year. Two of those who died of starvation were women and all the victims were landless agricultural labourers. (Source: Dipak Mishra, The Times News Network-Thursday, July 18,2002).

In Baran District of Rajasthan : 40 tribals, most of them children, starved to death over a span of a month. It was a probe by the People's Union for Civil Liberties that uncovered the horrifying details of the starvation deaths in the Baran district of Rajasthan. Cultivation has ceased here for the area is reeling under its fifth successive year of acute drought. The local tribals have been reduced to dire poverty. Desperately short of food and driven by hunger, the tribals have turned to eating a wild grass called sama. This grass is hard for humans to digest. As a result, the tribals, especially children, have developed severe digestive ailments, resulting in death.

In Rajasthan, the government claimed that the tribals prefer eating wild grass and that the deaths were caused by poor hygiene and disease. Government officials are busy defining starvation to prove that these were not starvation deaths. Starvation death is agreed only when there is no food materials in the victims stomach. After all the victims had poisonous grass in their stomach. How can it be treated as starvation??!!

There are several government relief schemes for the rural poor. Reporting from Baran, Bhavdeep Kang writes in Outlook, “Given the large number of central and state food aid schemes, it is hard to understand why the Sahariyas [the tribe that has been worst hit by hunger and starvation in Rajasthan] are in the plight they're in today. There are special provisions for the old, infirm, pregnant and lactating mothers, school-going children and infants. There are food-for-work programs run by the village panchayat [village-level government] to provide employment. Even the World Bank sponsors a poverty alleviation scheme in the district. On paper, no one needs to go hungry. Ground reality is starkly different.”

While the failure of the PDS has often been attributed to corruption and poor implementation, P Sainath, author of the book Everybody loves a good drought writes that the PDS has “wilted under policies aimed at dismantling it. Part of the ‘doing away with subsides’ theme.” He calls for examining the issue of hunger-related deaths against a larger canvas of the string of anti-poor steps taken by the government post 1990.

Sainath argues that while the government is cutting down on subsidies to the poor in the country and denying grains to them at prices they can afford, it is subsidizing the export of wheat by over 50 percent. “The export price of wheat is even less than the BPL rate of that item in many states. India is exporting lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of tons of rice at Rs 5.65 a kg. In Andhra, a government sells rice to people in drought-hit regions at Rs 6.40 a kg,” he points out. (Source: Sudha Ramachandran, “India: Politics of Starvation”, Asia Times, November 12,2002).

In Yavatmal District of Maharashtra : It is reported that 35 Kolam tribals died of starvation in June 2003 by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti which filed a complaint to the State Human Rights Commission on this. Maharashtra Human Rights Commission has issued notices to the top government authorities to file an affidavit by October 20. The complaint alleged that the starvation deaths of tribals were caused due to the non-implementation of various directives on the right to food issued by the Supreme Court in a writ petition in 1991. The petitioner has held Maharashtra Chief Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, tribal development minister Madhukar Pichad, food and civil supplies minister Suresh Jain, Yavatmal district guardian minister Vasant Purke and top bureaucrats and party respondents personally and severally responsible for the starvation deaths of the 35 tribals.

It is said that around 3.5 lakh Kolam tribals in Yavatmal district were living in the most neglected and isolated areas, known as ‘Kolam pods’, which were deliberately kept away from the mainstream of society. It is demanded that the respondents had failed to provide the people with food, work and clean drinking water, leading to their deaths. And, that the respondents were responsible for denying the right to food to tribals living below the poverty line. (Source: PTI, September 25,2003)

In Southern Cachar district of Assam : At least 35 workers on tea plantations have died of starvation and disease since employers locked them out six months ago over a wage dispute. The Hindustan Tea Company in northeastern Assam closed operations and declared lock out in June at the Hatticherra and Subong tea gardens in the southern Cachar district. “Up to 35 workers have died of hunger and disease since June with no source of income, while hundreds of others, including women and children, were virtually staring at death”.

“Hundreds of children and elderly people in both the gardens were passing agonizing days with no warm clothes or woollens to keep away the winter chill, “said Amar Mahali, a labour union leader of the Hatticherra tea estate. Food and medicines are a distant dream for the people with most of the families literally starving.” Assam Government announced that the lock out is illegal. Source: AFP28-Dec-2002

Starvation deaths are also reported from Sabarkantha district of Gujarat and Wayanad district of Kerala.