The following article, written by a close supporter of the New Socialist Alternative (CWI -India), is based on a very recent visit by her to the Raichur district of Karnataka that has been in news lately due to reports of malnutrition related deaths among many children. Raichur is among the most backward districts of Karnataka and also its most neglected area with a large section of the population coming from marginalized communities. It is not as if the district is not resource rich. For instance, while most of the power supply to Bangalore comes from Raichur district, but the people of this district hardly get 4 – 5 hrs of power supply daily!
This form of deliberate discrimination of a region by the successive governments of Karnataka and priority only to its IT capital in the name of development (read destruction), have had severe consequence on the northern districts of Karnataka like Raichur. Raichur is still a very feudalistic society, dominated by big landlords and continues to have such highly casteist and discriminatory practices such as the Devadasi system. Raichur was also in news in 2009 when heavy floods in northern Karnataka destroyed livelihoods of many people, who are even today not compensated for their losses.
While the present communal–casteist and neo–liberal BJP government is busy looting the public exchequer or mired in one scandal after another, the biggest corruption scandal of all i.e., the human tragedy unfolding before our very eyes in districts such as Raichur continues to be ignored. All this merely reaffirms the extremely skewed model of development under capitalism benefiting only a few at the expense of the majority. The crying need of the hour is the lack of a genuine mass political alternative representing the interests of the workers, peasants, the oppressed castes, landless and the poor to challenge capitalism and landlordism and raise the banner of Socialism under democratic control of the masses as the only real alternative before the people.
Editor
A severe malnutrition crisis threatening the lives of thousands of children in the state of Karnataka has only recently begun to filter into the mainstream media. The data of the Women and Child Welfare department of the government itself shows the deaths of 2689 children in the last two years in Raichur district alone due to malnutrition. Meanwhile, another 78,366 children are recorded as malnourished in the district, of which 639 are severely malnourished. This is a pattern that exists across many districts of North Karnataka with high infant mortality and also malnutrition.
The reason for such a wide malnutrition crisis can be best understood by visiting the areas that have been worst hit. Some of these villages in Raichur have had multiple starvation deaths with several children badly malnourished. The people living in these villages facing a malnutrition crisis are mostly laborers doing agricultural or construction work, the availability of which is not dependable. Most of the families belong to extremely marginalized communities such as Dalits and tribals, and the implications of their castes only makes them even more vulnerable. Those who have small plots of land also find that due to water drying up (due to overexploitation on underground water by rich farmers), agriculture is no longer tenable. They now need to dig very deep to find water for irrigation and there is some evidence this water is contaminated with fluorides. Using this water destroys the productivity of the land and high fluoride content in the water also contributes to the severity of the health problems faced by the people.
If the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is at all implemented in the villages, the villagers have received at most 15 days of work through this scheme, which is supposed to guarantee 100 days of work per year. Therefore the daily combined income of the family is often Rs. 100 which can hardly provide a nutritious meal for an entire family. The government public food distribution system (PDS) has completely failed the people of these areas. Ration stores do not even sell food at subsidized prices to those with Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards, and a shocking number of houses that fall under the BPL category have either been issued Above Poverty Line (APL) cards or are without cards. They claim officials do not issue them BPL cards unless they bribe them.
Perhaps the most deplorable failure is that of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) which is actually meant to combat child malnutrition. The anganwadi (ICDS) workers are no longer provided food grains, pulses, vegetables or milk and eggs to cook for the children. Even more scandalously, they are being provided with four sets of packets – one consisting of “kurkure” – corn puffs, and three packets of instant food powder with different flavors. The children can not eat the food prepared out of these packets because it makes them vomit and have severe diarrhea. Several parents have in fact claimed that their children were eating properly, but the diarrhea that overtook them after they began eating the packet food interfered with their ability to absorb the nutrients or hold down the cooked food they received during meals at home.
The amount of actual food grain received by the anganwadi (ICDS) centers is pathetic. They reported receiving between 25-30 kgs of rice and a few kilos of dal per month for a population of around 1000 people per center. This food is supposed to be distributed to pregnant and lactating mothers as well as used in the meals prepared for children at the center. Thus each mother only receives a glass full of rice and one small cup worth of dal (lentils) per month. This isn’t sufficient for even a single day’s meal. Several children have severely stunted growth and developmental problems resulting from not having received milk during the critical period after pregnancy, and the malnourished states of their anguished mothers have a role to play in this.
The final nail in the coffin of this disaster is the apathy of the governmental public health system. Apart from the lack of access to hospitals in many of these areas, when people travel to district hospitals requesting help, they are often turned away by doctors who criminally neglect them by either saying they can do nothing to help (which is factually incorrect in the case of malnutrition), or by demanding money for help. When help comes, it is usually in the form of a of a few multivitamin tablets at best. These children often face complex and permanent health issues ranging from weak hearts to non-functional limbs and severe neurological underdevelopment, as a result of undernourishment. The underlying cause of around 50 % of deaths of children under the age of five is malnutrition. This phenomenon is not specific to Karnataka, with 42.5% of children underweight across the nation.
A few people movement campaigners have taken up the issue and a lawsuit has been filed against the State of Karnataka, and attempts are being made to get the media to cover the issue. However, the people in these villages have received very little help despite several media people and some government officials visiting the area. Eighteen year old Nagaraj of Markam Dinne village was suffering from a combination of severe malnutrition and diabetes, which had caused the onset of gangrene in his foot. When reporters visited him, he had stopped taking insulin shots due to a lack of funds. This continued after pictures were flashed all over TV and newspapers of his mother carrying his bare boned frame. He died soon thereafter. Likewise, in Malledervaragudda village, two year old Mahalakshmi, at a weight of 3.5 kgs, and five year old Anjaneya who weighed 5 kgs, died within two months of each other. Both were severely underweight, with severe diarrhea, and could neither hold themselves up nor communicate. The death of one child was not able to galvanize the local authorities into providing support to ensure the second child did not die in the same manner. Politicians have, as usual, treated the matter with extreme callousness.
The problems faced by the people of Raichur are not specific to the area but are endemic to large swathes of rural and urban India. In Raichur one sees all the welfare mechanisms that are supposed protect the people is falling apart. In the context of a world destroyed by the ravages of greed and global warming, with natural sources of water drying up and lands and food polluted by toxins, a large number of people who have lived sustainably off land for centuries find it difficult to sustain themselves and their families. Only a socialist state that provides free nutrition, health care and quality education for all its citizens and restricts the accumulation of private capital and power is essential for a life of dignity for all.
Kaveri Indira