| From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 44, Dated Nov 08, 2008 |
|
| ENGAGED
CIRCLE |
|
malnutrition |
|
Weight Listed
Madhya Pradesh
has just become the hunger capital of India. SHRIYA MOHAN
brings back desperate stories from the heart of Incredible !ndia. Photographs
by SAYANTAN BERA
HUNGRY
EYES
A UNICEF weighing scale hangs on the doorway of an anganwadi in
Khandwa, used periodically to monitor the weight of children below
six. A child stares with an empty bowl, waiting for food to be served.
The scales are often fudged here to make children seem fatter.
|
“Lal lal
tomatar khayenge
Lal
Lal hojayenge
Lal bus mein bethke,
Anganwadi jayenge
Anganwadi dur hai,
Jana bhi zaroor hai
Mummy papa ayenge,
goli biscuit layenge,
Hum sab milke khayenge!”
(We will eat red tomatoes making us red, we will go to the Anganwadi in
a red bus, the anganwadi is far, yet important to go, mother and father
will come with chocolates for us, we will all eat together!)
CHANTING ECHOS reverberate as infant voices bounce off four dilapidated
walls. Twenty children — ranging from age two to six, sit on stony ground,
some on bare bottoms, seeming comfortably used to the dark, musty anganwadi
at Roshni Village, Khandwa.
Khandwa lies in south-west Madhya
Pradesh. The grandiose Indian dream
here is very different: Hum sab milke
khayenge! — sung thrice to the beat of
clapping hands. Every child’s dream
here is the fundamental access to food.
There is no dream beyond: Probably because
it takes a minimal level of calorie
intake to fuel a dream inside your head.
Raja Ram is 18 months
old. He was released a month ago from a Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre
(NRC) in Khandwa. His reflexes are damaged and he mostly just stares with
his mouth open. He can’t walk like other kids. Severely malnourished when
he was admitted, he was also suffering from tuberculosis. At the hospital
he was given packets of ready-to-eattherapeutic- food (RUTF), which is
made in France. Each feed equals 500 calories. When he was discharged
10 days later, he was sent home with 20 packets of the same. When his
mother, Lakshmi Bai, is asked what she will do when the packets are exhausted,
she smiles and says, “Nothing. We can’t afford anything else. He will
go back to eating dry roti.”
LEFTOVERS
 Savitri
Bai in Mohalkhari, a small hamlet in Khandwa, had five children
a month ago. Today, she’s left with three. Her two sons, Chottu
and Sagar, were four years and six months old respectively, when
they died. Chotu was severely malnourished, suffering with diarrhoea.
Sagar, who was born underweight, had pneumonia. Savitri borrowed
32 kg of wheat, agreeing to return one-and-half times the quantity
in three months. In MP, food insecurity makes living a constant
struggle.
BULGING
BLUE
At the Mohalkhari
anganwadi, the children are happy to have three-year-old Saguna
back from
the NRC. She was admitted for severe malnutrition and everyone thought
she would die. She spent two weeks at the centre, and was fed packets
of French ready-to-eattherapeutic- food (RUTF) which ensured an
intake of 500 calories each feed. She was discharged 10 days ago
with takeaways of the RUTF. She has 10 packets left, after which
she will have to fight to survive again. Her bulging belly and sagging
arms and legs speak of a harsh truth — Saguna will never walk. |
Raja Ram’s story is
the story of hundreds of children here. In the last four months, Khandwa
alone has had 62 malnourished
children’s deaths.
Out of 1.078 crore children in Madhya Pradesh, 60 percent suffer malnourishment.
Seema Prakash, founder of Spandan,
an NGO working actively on Khandwa’s
malnutrition issue, says, “Most children
discharged from the NRC relapse severely
because no permanent solution is offered
to them. If malnutrition affects a child
below two years, his chances of survival
are usually very low.”
WHEN THE Right to
food campaign (RFC) submitted a list of 325 malnutrition deaths across
four districts in Madhya Pradesh to draw the attention of the government
to the seriousness of the issue, the response they got was a flat denial.
Malnutrition, the government said, cannot be a cause for death; the cause
was, in fact, other related illnesses. According to the UNICEF, 2.1 million
deaths occur every year in India of children who are under five, half
of which are due to under nourishment. Thirty percent of new born in India
are born with low birth weight.On
October 14, 2008, the first-ever India Hunger Index was released along
with the global Hunger Index by International Food Policy and Research
Institute (IFPRI). It found that India ranked 66 among 88 countries in
the index where Madhya Pradesh had the most severe level of hunger in
the country, placing India between Ethiopia and Chad.
A
DAY AT A TIME
 Dhyan
Singh and Sudki Bai live at the edge of Ratapani Sanctuary in Bhimkoti
village, cultivating forestland. They have seven children, out of
whom three are malnourished and suffering from malaria. Six-month-old
Mangal is severely malnourished, weighing 4.4kg. Dhayn Singh’s ration
book doesn’t have a single entry. He is cheated every time by the
ration shop owners, like many others. Instead of getting 20 kg of
wheat that he is entitled to, he gets only 15 kg to feed his family
of nine.
EYES
WIDE SHUT
Baby Bipin
is 18-months-old, suffering from high fever for the last two weeks.
His parents are  both
daily wage labourers in Budani. He has not yet even gained the basic
balance to sit up like others his age. He lies all day with his
eyes wide open and his face is infested with flies. He has stopped
eating even the odd roti he used to eat. His mother, Rajvati, says,
“The doctors wanted him to be urgently admitted, but who has the
time? I have chores to do,” she says. At Kairi Chauka, children
dying is normal. Families have 10 children, because often only half
survive. |
Bhimkoti village in
Budani. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s constituency,
barely 100 km from the city of Bhopal. There is neither an anganwadi,
nor any food supply here. The 50 families live on daily wages that pay
Rs 60 to 70 a day per person to till the fields or work on the construction
of the new railway track. But mostly, work is available only for 10 to
15 days a month, often forcing a family of seven to live on less than
Rs 1,400 a month. The tribals call the CM ‘paon wale bhaiya’ because he
knocked door-to-door in Budani, asking for votes before he came to power
in 2003. Ninety percent of households in Budani have severely malnourished
children.
In Sheopur district, Sidshri is a 14-
month-old boy who has sagging skin and
boils on his body. His parents are part of a
displaced community that was evicted
from the jungles of Vijaypur, 40 kilometers
away. Earlier they had food security,
because the soil was fertile. Now, the
displacement area looks like a refugee
camp. The land is uncultivable. Sidsri’s
mother, Shanti, is trying to hush his constant
wailing. Their kitchen is spotlessly
empty. Speaking about her husband, she
says, “He has gone out in search of work,
so he can get something to eat — anything
he can find. If he comes back with
nothing, we’ll go hungry another day.”
YOUNG ACHING SMILE
 Four-year-old
Swati has stopped eating food altogether. With constant fever and
growing weakness, her reflexes are slowly getting damaged. Her parents,
both daily wage labourers took her to the nearest regional health
centre at Abdullagunj, which was 40 kilometres away, because the
doctor at the village PHC had been on leave for months. She was
diagnosed as, “Underweight, but not malnourished" inspite of
her being 10 kg only, instead of 14. This is a commonly seen denial
at all government hospitals in MP.
WINDOWS OF HOPE
At the Nutritional
Rehabilitation Centre in Khandwa, Yamuna Bai from Dhol village,
40 km  away,
is admitted with her eight-month-old daughter Sangeeta. She walked
alone for 10 kilometres before finding transport to bring her here.
Sangeeta is malnourished and sick with diarrhoea. Most women from
Dhol don’t take this bold step because they lose labour wages. The
doctors prescribed Sangeeta to stay for a week longer, but Yamuna
Bai insists on going back to her five children and husband, waiting
for her return. She has household chores and wages to earn that
are far more important. |
The story is the same
across all of Madhya Pradesh. Khandwa, Budani and Sheopur, all speak of
families dying silent deaths andthe failure of state machinery to tackle
this national calamity.
SACHIN JAIN, convenor
of the right to food campaign, suggests a few solutions to ensure damage
control: “First, birth registration and standardisation of weighing scales
should be made compulsory to enable accurate calculation of age-is-to-weight
ratio. Secondly, Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) should take
complete responsibility and fix accountability for this issue at top levels.
Thirdly, the public distribution system needs a revamp with more monitoring.
Finally, the packaged food at anganwadis should be replaced by fresh dal,
roti, vegetables, milk and eggs.”
A
REFUGEE HOME
 The
displaced village of naya palpur, Sheopur district, equal the nightmares
of a desert. With barely a foot’s depth of top soil, more than half
of the land here is uncultivable, playing havoc with the household
food security. Without any fertile land, many villagers work in
the nearby areas as daily wage labourers. The local anganwadi remains
locked and has not received any supplies for the past three months.
Almost every family has a malnourished child or two, playing in
the barren land. |
As we walk out, children
are playing outside an anganwadi that’s been locked for months now. They
take turns jumping across handmade barricades, each one jumping higher
than the other. One of the boys says, “Once in three months food is supplied
here, but now it’s sold. I don’t remember when we had it free last.” Children
have an amazing way to disconnect from reality and still live in a world
of their own. Occasionally you hear a faint clap or laughter, and you
don’t need more reinforcement to tell you that even in these cruel times,
hope still lives. •
|
