It's not hunger. It's mass murder

Endemic hunger and chronic poverty is arguably the most serious challenge facing a country like India. More than 320 million Indians go to bed without food every night. This is a figure for normal years with good rainfall. The causes of food insecurity are deep-rooted. It is related to poverty, illiteracy, discrimination and neglect. Ultimately, it is a story of failed governance — global, national and local. Also the proportion of people facing food insecurity in India is higher than the proportion defined as income-poor or below the poverty line. But the worst affected in this republic of hunger are the adivasis (tribals) — forcibly divorced from their habitat, in the name of ‘development’, and left to fend for themselves.
Taking cognizance of the plight of adivasis in rural India Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS) conducted a research on food security in tribal areas of Rajasthan and Jharkhand, over two years. The outcome of the research, a report, ‘Political Economy of Hunger in Adivasi Areas’ was released by Ashis Nandy. The report is an exhaustive study of the realities of food security situation in tribal areas of Rajasthan and Jharkhand. According to the report a staggering 99 percent of the families surveyed were facing chronic hunger. Over a quarter (25.2 percent) had faced semi-starvation during the previous week of the survey while 24.1 percent faced it for the entire month preceding the survey. This means, over 99 percent of the adivasi households had lived with one or another level of endemic hunger and food insecurity during the whole previous year. Moreover, out of 500 sample adivasi households surveyed in Rajasthan, not a single one had secured two square meals a day for the whole previous year. Overall, a staggering 99.8 percent of Adivasi households said that they could not get two square meals even for a single month of the previous year.
The proportion also shows a high dependence on jungle food, in absence of proper food, by adivasis. During the survey 23.2 percent said that approximately one-fourth of their diet consisted of jungle food in the previous one year while 8.4 percent said that 75-100 percent of their previous year’s diet was jungle food.
Protein (pulses and animal products) consumption was found terribly low in the diet of adivasis. Less than one percent were able to eat some pulses or animal products during the whole previous year — a clear case of widespread malnutrition. A study of the monthly break-up of protein consuption among adivasis suggests that 86.7 percent of Adivasi households in Rajasthan and Jharkhand either could not eat any pulse and animal product or did eat for hardly three months in the year. This means that at least 86.7 percent of Adivasi households were suffering from severe protein deficiency and were vulnerable to disease and death. Severe protein deficiency among Adivasi children is responsible for very high infant mortality rate in these areas and this problem has now assumed alarming proportions.
The report severely criticises the development policies of the government and holds such anti-people policies responsible for the state of adivasis. It says: “While the benefits of economic growth and industrial development have substantially gone to the rich sections of the society living in cities and towns, the ecological price of that progress has largely borne by vast swathes of rural India, specially the adivasi areas.” Indeed, a quick review of the major stories on hunger in the media in the last 25 years suggets that almost all the ‘hunger hot-spots’ of India lie in the adivasi areas and almost every starvation victim is an adivasi. The government would like us to believe that hunger in tribal areas is because of occasional droughts and collapsed public distribution system (PDS) in these areas. But the collapsed PDS or drought are are not even the tip of the ‘hunger iceberg’ in the adivasi areas. The germs of the malady lie much deeper. The core of the problem lies in the structural changes in adivasi economy in the five and a half decades that have depleted and destroyed the traditional livelihoods and food systems of these communities. Says Ashis Nandy, “Talking about PDS is just escaping the reality. Even the argument of destruction of livelihood is only a part of the reality. The problem is that the tribals have been forced into a very Western concept of ‘moneytised’ economy that they are not able to cope up with. They were poor, but we have made them destitute. Indian economy is slowly preparing to make them extinct. One third of the tribal population has already scattered. It’s time we gave them their environment back.”
The survey also tries to find out the primary reasons of such poor state of food security among tribals through their own perception of it. A staggering 90.6 percent of the households said that their food security had weakened in comparison to what it was 2-3 decades ago. Also 54.9 percent identified decline in availability of minor forest produce due to deforestation and degradation of forests as the most important factor responsible for weakening of their food security.
For this, the report clearly blames the model of development adopted by India after Independence. It says: “Immediately after Independence, the Nehruvian development paradigm embarked on building “temples of modern India”. The social and ecological costs of development, fairly well documented by now, were largely borne by country’s adivasi communities in terms of physical displacement, destruction of sustenance base and gradual alienation from natural resources... It is the same adivasis whose survival base has been sacrificed at the altar of ‘national interest’ and ‘greater common good’… Whether it is mining or construction of big dams and mega power projects, protection of forests or conservation of wildlife, adivasis bore the brunt. The crisis has been further aggravated by the policies of globalisation and economic liberalization. Not only the promised ‘trickle-downs’ dried up midway but it is the same adivasis, dalits and the poor who have been asked to pay the price of Structural Adjustment Programmes, reduction in fiscal deficit, financial prudence, a steep reduction in food subsidy and other social sector allocations etc.”
The presentation of the report was followed by a lecture, ‘Myth of Development’ by eminent political scientist and writer Prof C. Douglas Lummis. Lummis says the three biggest myths of development are: “(i) The belief that development stems from the desire of the underdeveloped to be developed. (ii) The word ‘development’ accurately describes itself. (iii) Through the process of development the gap between the rich and the poor can be leveled as in due course of time the poor will catch up.” “The problem is we depend too much on this word called ‘development’ without understanding what it is. It is a very deceptive word. It is just a metaphor. It makes facts like poverty, starvation and forced labour forgettable. They say with development the poor will catch up. My question is when will this catching up begin. The gap between the rich and the poor is only getting wider and wider. Actual development is non-violative progress of people where the one going through the process of development is grateful to have developed,” adds Lummis. He also critcises the Western outlook towards ‘underdeveloped’ countries and the policies of ‘liberalisation’ and ‘globalisation’. He says, “Another myth about development is that where there is poverty, people are underdeveloped and through the process of development it can be done away with. This is exactly what you call ‘Modernisation of Poverty’.”
To this Ashis Nandy adds, “Why we have not been able to address our problems is because we are ready to overlook them in the garb of development. We no more want to call ourselves poor. We call ourselves developing. This is a distortion of development. Referring to sustenance, rural development etc has become fashionable. No one refers to development directly. I hope this fashion of development dies out soon, because the West, from where we borrow our concept, was developed much before the concept of ‘development’ came on earth.”


NOTE: The best part of the conference was undisputably Prof Lummis lecture on development. Out of all the lectures I have attended in my entire life (right through college and the profession), this was the first one that didn't bore me out and I was awake through it. Here is how Lummis explains the western idea of development: "Before Japan, China and India took the path of globalisation they were clubbed, by the US and Europe, as underdeveloped nations. The resons cited for clubbing them together as underdeveloped were: they didn't have a robust telecommunication system, they didn't have super malls and high rises, and they didn't have super highways. This is like, I am a rabbit and so I divide the animal kingdom into halves: rabbits and non rabbits. Tigers, lions, alligators, all become rabbits." The conference was also full of pseudo-intellectuals who would ask questions just for the heck of it, without understanding head or tail of development economics. Like one 'intelligent' man was measuring social equity and well being in terms of per capita income. Another one had no idea that the gap in between the poor and the rich was much wider in the US than in most countries.