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The writing on the wall of Panchayat Bhawan in Khera village of Banda is clear: Bhookh.
Hunger stalks rural inhabitants of Banda and they have been struggling to get food through government agencies.
Shiv Devi is one of the few women who visit the Panchayat Bhawan every morning to get ration card but returns dejected by noon. “If we are denied food we are set to die of hunger,” she said.
The frustration of villagers finds expression on the walls of Panchayat Bhawan where someone scribbled ‘Bhookh’ (hunger) in red, which has turned blackish due to vagaries of time.
No one knows who the writer is but everyone admitted that the writing was clear on the wall. “If we do not get food, we will die of hunger if not of coronavirus. And continued apathy of government officials should be blamed for this,” Shiv Devi said.
The situation has been aggravating with each passing day and people have now been surviving on charity but there are scores of people who are forced to sleep empty stomach.
Shiv Devi has a family of seven, including three children. She cannot afford to get a full meal every day as the extra roti consumed could mean that her children would sleep half fed.
She and 17 other families of the village are nomads and their livelihood is dependent on ‘pheri’ i.e. selling small household tools and delivering services to nearby villages. They used to earn between Rs 200-250 per day but due to lockdown, their income has vanished.
They survived for a few days on savings but once that was gone, they opted for government ration. A local non-governmental organisation (NGO) told them that they were entitled for free ration even if they did not have ration cards and that their provisional cards would be made at Panchayat Bhawan.
However, Panchayat Bhawan officers told Shiv Devi that since they were nomads and moved around villages, they were not allowed ration from public distribution system (PDS). When local NGO Vidya Dham Samiti intervened, the officials made a provisional ration card but they were yet to hand it over to her.
“Every morning I come here to enquire whether my ration card has come and the official answer is invariably negative,” she said.
After deciding that enough was enough, the villagers have decided to stage a dharna from May 20.
In a letter to the chief minister through SDM (Nairaini, Banda), seven signatories said that if they did not get ration, they would protest at their homes by banging ‘thalies’ and clapping for five minutes so that the prime minister could hear that people battered by government apathy would die of ‘bhookh’.
Bundelkhand has been infamous for drought and utter negligence by successive governments even though thousands of crores of rupees is pumped into the area under different packages. What is impressive in the region is the resilience shown by the poor and marginalised to survive in this difficulty. They migrate, work as labourers in hazardous stone quarries and mines and in turn send money to their families back in Banda village for their survival.
As India fights against coronavirus, the marginalised section is in a state of flux. While many of these families are supported through government schemes, at least 30 per cent of the families do not come under any social security benefit scheme such as PDS, MGNREGA and pension. Nor do they have a functioning bank account. Meaning, relief announced by the government is not going to reach a lot of people.