Not even half a plate

IN 2000, what do poor women in India eat? And how much do they eat? Has anything changed for them even as India ostensibly leaps into the cyber-age? Every now and then, official government statistics provide a sobering view of the reality that the majority of urban citizens fail to see. This is the reality in many homes in India's villages - of lack of food, of the inability to buy food that is available, and of insufficient food to feed the entire family. In such a situation, following an unbroken tradition of centuries, millions of women choose not to eat at all, or eat very little, to ensure that their children and husbands get enough.

The mid-term review of the Ninth Five Year Plan acknowledges the growing burden of poverty on women in particular. It admits that almost half the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe population in the country falls below the poverty line. It also admits that, even though foodgrain production has risen from 175 million tonnes per year in the 1980s to 206 million tonnes in the 1990s, the availability of foodgrain - especially for the poor - has actually fallen.

For instance, an estimated 36 per cent of wheat that is meant to go out to the less privileged through the public distribution system (PDS) never reaches the people for whom it is intended. Similarly, 31 per cent of the rice and 23 per cent of sugar that should be in the mouths of people fails to get there. Even the grain and sugar distributed through the system of targeted PDS, that is aimed specifically at people living below the poverty line, is not picked up from ration shops.

The reason is apparent: poor people do not have the money to buy grain even at subsidised rates. What this means in terms of nutritional levels of poor women can well be imagined. In my travels through some of the drought-affected districts in Andhra Pradesh in July, I heard the same story repeated in village after village. Women said they went hungry as much as three times a week. Sometimes they left for work in the morning after placing some chilli powder in their mouths and drinking some water - which was often contaminated with fluoride. On other days, they made a watery gruel with a little bit of grain and ate that before leaving their homes. That was their only "meal" for the day. Hunger was a constant companion, specially during the dry months when there would be no grain in the house. Against this reality, the Government's scheme of providing "drought rice" at Rs. 6.40 per kg seemed almost ludicrous; perhaps it provided some solace to people who earned not even a fifth of the Government- stipulated minimum wage but it certainly did not bring any grain into their cooking pots.

Contrast this with stories of more shopping malls being constructed in our cities, the increasing varieties of food available to urban consumers even if the prices are steep. While the poor cannot buy their rations, even Government-run fair price shops are selling foreign-made biscuits that cost more than five times the local brands. Yet, someone must be buying these products as they continue to appear on the shelves.

Similarly, as fruit sellers battle the police and municipal corporation in a city like Mumbai for space to sell their wares, in fancier fruit shops people can buy kiwi fruit from New Zealand, apples from Australia, melons from South Korea and succulent black cherries and peaches - at 10 times the rates of locally grown fruit. Yet, the very fact that these perishable items are available in abundance must mean that there are enough people with the money to buy them.

The difference in the availability of food and the ability to purchase food is the most vivid illustration of the growing distance between the two Indias - that of the cities and rural India.

Is there anything that can be done apart from changes at the policy level? Even if ordinary people cannot induce economic change that reduces these stark and growing inequities in this country, can something be done to create awareness of the differences that exist so that those with enough and more do not delude themselves that their India is all of India?

The American writer and feminist, Ms. Barbara Ehrenreich, who has written extensively about the American middle class, makes some interesting observations in an article she wrote last year in the weekly magazine In These Times on whether feminism can survive class polarisation. She writes that there is a need to "make sharing stylish again and excess consumption look as ugly as it actually is. Better yet, give some of your time and energy too."

The increasingly consumerist society in our cities has numbed our sensibilities to the needs of the poorest. They have virtually disappeared over the horizon. Occasionally, when there is a drought or a flood, we see images that remind us that more than two-thirds of India lives out there somewhere. But we know less and less about how people in that India live, and die. And we care in diminishing proportion to the size of the problem.

When we were children, our mothers told us not to waste food because we were constantly reminded that there are millions of people in this country who have nothing to eat. Are such stories told any more, I wonder.

KALPANA SHARMA

E-mail the writer at ksharma@vsnl.com

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : What are they protesting about?
Next     : Crossing borders