JOIN USThe supreme court has rightly slammed the government for its deeply flawed approach to dealing with hunger and starvation in the country. It has questioned the government’s declaration of just 36 per cent of the population as falling below poverty line (BPL) and its use of figures thrown up by the 1991 census to determine BPL status for extension of foodgrains to the poor under the PDS, rather than more recent figures that would put a much larger number in the BPL category. It has also admonished the government for fixing the cutoff for BPL status at Rs 20 and Rs 11 per capita daily income for urban and rural areas respectively. In essence, the court has rapped the Planning Commission on its knuckles for downplaying the extent of poverty, starvation and other related issues through its fudging of figures. The apex court has raised questions that have troubled many of us for some years now: Why is it that a country that claims to be an economic powerhouse, which boasts of bumper crops and overflowing food silos still has people dying of starvation? India is a rich country. There appears to be no shortage of foodgrains. Why does it then have the largest number of malnutritioned people in the world? Why are we exporting grains or allowing it to rot in godowns when people are dying of starvation?
In a bid to reduce its spending on subsidies for the poor, the government has been fudging figures on the number of people it regards as poor. It has been able to do so easily by drawing on census statistics that are two decades old, when India’s population was smaller.
Another ruse to play down the starvation and hunger crisis in the country is to simply deny it. Some years ago when reports of starvation deaths in Rajasthan emerged, officials denied it by going into technical details and definitions. A starvation death, they said, is when there is no food material found in the stomach. Pieces of wild grass were found in the stomachs of the dead tribals, thus they had not died of starvation, the officials gleefully pointed out. Whether through fudging definitions, facts or figures the government is denying the starvation crisis. The apex court has asked the Planning Commission for an explanation for its use of outdate data. It must keep up the pressure on the government to mend its ways.