As Daya Bai continues hunger strike, symbol of endosulfan victims' struggles passes away

Even as Daya Bai, the 81-year-old social activist, continues her hunger strike to get justice for endosulfan victims of northern Kerala, another long-term sufferer of the substance’s ill-effects died in Kasargod on Sunday.

Devaki Rai, a 75-year-old woman who was an “emblematic figure” of all the families and caretakers of endosulfan victims, breathed her last recently.

The news of her death was known only after actor Kunchacko Boban announced it on a social media post. Boban had met Rai and her family in 2015 at Enmakaje, Kasargod, when he was working on a Malayalam film based on the plight of endosulfan victims ‘Valiya Chiragulla Pakshikal’.

Read | Daya Bai refuses to end 2-week-long strike in Kasargod

“No more sufferings…Sheelavathi Chechi and Devaki Amma!! More peace and Happiness in the Heavens Devaki Amma…you will always be the epitome of Motherhood for me,” Boban posted with a file picture of the Rai sitting next to her bedridden daughter Sheelavathi, who was an endosulfan victim and had died a couple of years ago.

Rai was one of the many mothers of endosulfan victims who struggled to care for and protect their adult children, especially girls who suffered through the ill-effects of endosulfan, and while the parents went out to eke a living. Devaki ‘amma’ used to leave a knife and a stick near her daughter’s bed for the latter’s protection when she went out for work.

One of the more crucial demands of Daya Bai, who had been fasting in protest in front of the government secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram since October 2, is state-sponsored daycare for endosulfan victims so that the parents can at least go to work to make ends meet.

“Buds schools in the district (special school for victims of the poisonous chemical) could admit only children up to the age of 18. Parents of grown-up endosulfan victims are struggling as they could not go out for work. Though projects like model rehabilitation centres were announced years ago, they remain in the ‘initial stages’ only,” said Endosulfan Victims’ Action Council leader Ambalathara Kunhikrishnan.