By Jose Kavi
New Delhi: Food rights activists in India have welcomed the Supreme Court questioning the federal government for cancelling around 30 million ration cards belonging mostly to Dalits, Tribals and other poor communities.
“I hope the government will respond to the Supreme Court order urgently and take a substantive measure to tackle the gravity of the situation from the perspective of poor, Dalits, tribal and starving population,” Sister Sujata Jena, a member of the Right to Food campaign in Odisha, eastern India, told Matters India on March 18.
The member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary was responding to the apex court on March 17 terming the cancellation of the ration cards as a “very serious” matter.
The court has also asked the government to respond to allegation made in a petition by Koili Devi, represented by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, that such cancellations had led to starvation deaths across the country.
Jesuit Father Irudaya Jothi, another food rights activist in West Bengal, eastern India, asserts that starvation death is a crime and shame “in the land of plenty.”
According to Father Jothi, India produces more than enough to feed all its citizens. However, the food grains are not distributed equally according to the need. “One wonders if the newly passed farmer bills would lead India to a danger level with regard to food consumption in the years ahead,” he told Matters India.
The government cancelled the cards solely because they could not be biometrically linked with Aadhaar (base), the world’s largest biometric identification system. The 12-digit unique identity number is given to Indian citizens, based on their biometric and demographic data.
Despite the validity of Aadhaar being challenged in the court, the federal government has pushed citizens to link their Aadhaar numbers with a host of services, including mobile numbers, bank accounts, and a large number of welfare schemes such as the Public Distribution System that uses the ration cards.
Father Jothi finds the Aadhar a major hurdle for the poor to avail subsidized food distributed under the Public Distribution System.
“There are many reasons for the hardworking rural poor being left out of Aadhar card, some bad eye sight, some have no money and facilities to go for over grown cataracts removal, no thumb prints to enumerate a few,” explained the Jesuit priest who has been working at the grassroots for years.
He said he and Right To Food activists applauded the commendable and untiring work of Gonsalves to bring justice to the poor.
Sister Jena, who has worked among migrant laborers, especially during the nationwide lockdown in the wake of coronavirus pandemic, wonders how the poor could survive without work. “Indeed, it is too crucial a question for the government to consider the survival of the poor post pandemic, but the national government is too insensitive to the whole matter.”
She expressed the hope that the government would “respond to the Supreme Court order urgently and take a substantive measure to tackle the gravity of the situation from the perspective of poor, Dalits, tribal and starving population.”
The activist nun, who now serves as the deputy director of the an institute that trains the poor for civil service examinations, wants the government to immediately implement countrywide free distribution of ration to all unconditionally, linking no technical mandates for them.
“In addition, the government should roll out cash relief to the poor and migrants who ever since lockdown are struggling to mitigate their basic needs. This should be treated as the basic human rights necessary to protect the life and dignity of these people,” Sister Jena asserted.
Sameet Panda, co-convener of RTF Odisha, finds the apex court move as “a small opening” to rectify the havoc created by the mandatory Aadhaar for PDS. Such a mandate, he says, goes against the Supreme Court judgment on aadhaar.
According to him, more than 1.9 million people n Odisha lost their PDS entitlement after the Aadhaar was made mandatory for individual PDS beneficiaries.
One tribal woman died of starvation in Odisha’s Nayagarh. “I hope to see the court will direct to restore the cancelled ration cards and all those died of hunger their deaths will be acknowledged and will get justice,” Panda told Matters India.
In West Bengal, the intake of food reduced to half compared to pre lockdown period among vulnerable groups suchh as tea garden laborers, Beedi workers, Zari workers, sex workers, domestic workers and daily wage workers, Father Jothi explained..
“One in five household goes to bed hungry and more than half of this population had a decreased intake of pulses,” said the priest who wants the government to try to reach out and “save our citizen instead of arm twisting and extracting the poor.”
According to the Jesuit, a political will is required to resume the midday meals in schools and hot cooked food for below 6 years in the Integrated Child Development Services centers.
He wants the government to increase the food distribution to the vulnerable groups after the pandemic and ignore the proposal of the National Institution for Transforming India to reduce the number of ration cards in villages and towns.
Such a proposal betrays either a lack of knowledge of the status of poor or indifference to them, Father Jothi added.
The PDS scheme was first started on January 14, 1945, during the Second World War, and was launched in the current form in June 1947. The introduction of rationing in India dates back to the 1940s Bengal famine. This system was revived in the wake of acute food shortage in the early 1960s, before the Green Revolution.
Today, India has the largest stock of grain in the world besides China. The government spends $10 billion rupees a year, almost 1 percent of GDP, yet 21 of Indians remain undernourished.
As of 2011, India had 505,879 fair price shops, constituting the largest distribution network in the world. Under the PDS scheme, each family below the poverty line is eligible for 35 kg of rice or wheat every month, while a household above the poverty line is entitled to 15 kg of food grain on a monthly basis.