Why doesn't hunger make headlines during a pandemic?

There is a dearth of official data, but non-official surveys, anecdotal evidence and reports suggest people are losing work

How does Doritos, an American brand of flavoured tortilla chips, become newsworthy in India during a ferocious second wave of the coronavirus pandemic?

The short answer – It happens when India’s junior home minister, G Kishan Reddy, donates packets of Doritos as relief material for ‘Covid Warriors’. Last weekend, the “chips” were received by Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Adesh Kumar Gupta, who promptly took to Twitter to announce that the BJP unit will not only distribute the “food item” to the hungry but also to municipal corporation employees and police officers.

Doritos as food aid is a telling illustration of the unreal times we live in.

Hunger is real. It is here, in the nation’s capital, and everywhere else, but it seldom makes headlines amid the overwhelming stories of death and disease unless there is a quirky angle.

In February this year, I met Radha (not her real name), a 29-year-old woman in Lal Gumbad basti, a slum in South Delhi. Radha is a mother of three and her youngest was born last year. She used to work as a domestic helper but is now jobless. Delhi is under lockdown again and work has dried up. Her husband, a daily wager, also has little work. The pandemic has depleted the family’s savings and the young mother tearfully told me she could not offer milk and fruits to her children. “We only eat potatoes and chapati.”

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“The hunger story during the second wave is almost invisible in the public and political discourse. Migrants walking down the highway last year shook everyone, even if fleetingly. But malnutrition and hunger don't lend themselves to such graphic images and are hardly being talked about,” says Dipa Sinha, Assistant Professor (Economics) at Delhi’s Ambedkar University and part of the Right to Food Campaign which has been seeking to focus public attention on the growing hunger crisis in the country.

The invisibility of the ongoing hunger crisis in the country in the wake of Covid-19 also stems from the dearth of official data. But there have been non-official surveys, anecdotal evidence and reports that more and more people are losing work and becoming jobless and household budgets are tight, leading to cuts in food intake.

According to the State of Working India report 2021 of Azim Premji University, nearly half of India's formal salaried workers moved into informal work between late 2019 and late 2020 and the poorest 20 per cent of households lost their entire incomes in April and May 2020. The report points out that households “coped by cutting back on food intake, selling assets, and borrowing informally from friends, relatives, and money-lenders.” Even more worryingly, 20 per cent reported that food intake had not improved even six months after the (2020) lockdown.

Over two-thirds of the respondents reported that in October 2020, the quantity of food they were able to consume was less than what it was before February 2020, before the onset of the pandemic, according to The Hunger Watch survey which tried to gauge the hunger and precarious livelihood situation of nearly 4,000 marginalised households in 11 states in October 2020. The respondents came from cities and villages in equal number.

According to this survey brought out by the Right to Food Campaign and the Delhi-based Centre for Equity Studies, not only did people forego food items such as eggs and meat, there was also a reduction in the quantity of staples consumed. People spoke about skipping some meals, going to bed hungry and buying food on credit.

Disturbingly, the slide back in nutrition started before the onset of the pandemic. The fifth National Family Health Survey (2019-2020), released last December, tossed up troubling data. In 13 of the 22 states and union territories for which data is available, stunting in children under 5 years had increased since the last survey (NFHS-4) in 2015–16. Wasting had gone up in 12 states and union territories. Many states had the dual burden of both wasting and stunting. Data about the remaining states, including populous Uttar Pradesh, are still awaited.

Clearly, hunger was already on the rise prior to Covid-19; the pandemic has made it much worse.

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Activists point out that delivering mid-day meals to all school children everywhere has run into challenges despite official directives. Anganwadi workers are distributing dry rations in many states but there is no growth monitoring. So, we shall not know Covid's impact on child nutrition for quite some time.

Dipa Sinha says the very existence of hunger is shameful when there are 100 million tonnes of grain that can be distributed. The Right to Food Campaign has said that the record export of foodgrains at a time of widespread hunger and distress due to Covid-19 exposes “the government’s apathy towards the people”.

The central government has a relief scheme – the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) for economically weaker sections. This provides an additional 5 kg of food grains but only for two months (May and June) to those who already have ration cards.

Informal workers and migrant labourers form a specially vulnerable group. Recently, the Supreme Court directed the central and state governments to provide dry ration to all migrant workers in view of the second wave of Covid-19. The apex court pulled up the Union and state governments for being "very slow" in the registration of unorganised workers.

Activists say there should be a universal public distribution system that provides every individual with 10 kg grain, 1.5 kg pulses and 800 gm cooking oil for at least the next six months. They add that anganwadis should provide nutritious, hot cooked meals, including eggs, and midday meals should be resumed at schools while following all safety guidelines on distancing, sanitisation, etc. Children’s growth must be monitored and there should be nutrition counselling and additional supplementary nutrition for severely malnourished children.

All this may sound like a tall order. But ignoring the worsening hunger situation is not an option. Hunger must make headlines, and not only when munchies are being doled out as food relief.

(Patralekha Chatterjee is an independent journalist and columnist.)