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In nuclear India, 50,000 starve in Orissa

BHUBANESWAR: For all those who take pride in India’s nuclear status and technological progress, here’s some food for thought - nearly 50,000 people in Orissa are starving and need emergency feeding, say officials.

Time could be running out for the 49,187 people, most of whom are from Kalahandi district. If help does not reach on time, they might die.

And that is the official status. The figure may underrate the real rate of starvation in this eastern coastal state but is indicative of the desperate conditions in which the people of the state live.

The data, available with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s office, was collated after painstaking effort, an official told IANS.

Under the new management information system, started in February, all ‘panchayats’, or village councils, in the state are involved in the task of tracing people who might be in need of urgent help.

On the 2nd and 16th of every month, each panchayat meets to discuss if anyone in their region is suffering from hunger, malnutrition or severe poverty.

In a step-by-step approach to the problem, the meeting - attended by representatives of each village, panchayat chiefs and officials - sends a report to the block development officer (BDO).

The BDO in turn prepares a summation, with the help of health officials, and submits it to the sub-divisional officer, who forwards it to the district magistrate.

The report then travels to the special relief commissioner and finally to the chief secretary and chief minister.

According to the most recent report, of the 49,187 people in 30 districts who are on the verge of starvation, 42,081 are from Kalahandi, 5,416 from the western district of Subarnapur and 813 persons from Nabrangpur in south Orissa.

“The people included in the lists are mostly older people who need emergency feeding,” Kalahandi district collector of Saswata Mishra told IANS over the telephone.

“We have sought special allotments from the state government under the emergency feeding programme,” he said.

Besides the elderly, most are agricultural labourers, said another official.

“The number of people needing emergency feeding would be much more,” Jagdish Pradhan, president of Sahabhagi Bikash Abhiyan, told IANS.

The situation had worsened since last year with drought and unemployment, he said.

Orissa’s western districts of Kalahandi, Koraput and Bolangir are considered to be some of the most economically backward areas of the country.

Hunger deaths were first reported from Orissa in 1965-66, when a drought in Kalahandi and Koraput districts led to a famine that claimed around 1,000 lives.

Unfortunately, the situation has not improved over the decades. People in the region continued to die from hunger over the years even as the country made rapid stride in other fields.

In 1985-86, a district official in Koraput district admitted that 200 people had died of starvation in Kashipur region.

In 1988-89, another 300 people died in the state but the government said hunger was not the cause.

Only last year, there were 345 starvation deaths in Orissa. Once again, the government refused to accept hunger as the cause and put the blame on a series of other reasons, including disease and snakebites.

This year has kept to the pattern.

Local media has reported 100 cases of starvation. Besides, they have also reported instances of extreme poverty forcing parents to sell their children.

Not surprisingly, the government denies it all. —IANS

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