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SLEEPING STARVED | Indians remain locked in hunger months after lifting of Covid-19 lockdown – survey
Months after India ended its lockdown, thousands of its citizens remain locked in hunger and poverty. Many of them are more destitute now, often going to bed with empty stomachs.
These were the findings of the Right to Food Campaign (RTFC) and the Centre for Equity Studies’ Hunger Watch released earlier this month. The survey* was conducted in 11 states in India namely Uttar Pradesh; Madhya Pradesh; Gujarat, Rajasthan; Maharashtra; Chhattisgarh; Jharkhand; Delhi; Telangana; Tamil; Nadu; and West Bengal** from September to October 2020 or five months since the government ended its March to May 2020 lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19.
Government must expand solutions to hunger
While RTFC recognized that the government was able to address hunger amid the lockdown via free rations and alternatives to school and child care center meals in the form of dry rations and/or cash transfers, it said the survey showed that state efforts remained insufficient.
"While this support from...government programs has been crucial, the staggering levels of hunger witnessed during the Hunger Watch also showed the inadequacy of these schemes," RTFC, a member of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition, said in a recent statement.
"Many are left out and even among those who did get the entitlements, the overall consumption was still lower than what it was before the lockdown. This calls for strengthening and expansion of these schemes," it added.
RTFC said survey results showed that Indians were suffering from "serious" hunger as 62% of the respondents had incomes in September and October 2020 that were lower than what they were receiving during pre-pandemic times.
About 43% of the respondents said they had no income during the lockdown months of April and May and only 3% of them were able to go back to earning salaries at pre-lockdown rates.
The survey, carried out via interviews using smart phones, had 3,994 respondents. Majority (82%) of them were either Dalits or people belonging to the lowest caste in India; Adivasis or indigenous Indians; and other educationally and/or socially disadvantaged groups collectively called other backward classes.
More than half (55%) of the respondents were women, while nearly half (48%) of them were slum dwellers. Forty-five percent were daily wage laborers, while 18% were farmers.
Seventy-nine percent of the respondents had incomes less than Rs 7,000 per month (US$ 95) before the lockdown; 41 percent of whom were earning less than Rs 3,000 monthly (US$ 41).
The RTFC said that "while the data being presented may not be representative of the district, state or country, they tell a story of deprivation of thousands of households in similar situations."
Many borrowed money to buy food, others went to bed hungry
In the same poll, the RTFC noted that 45% of the respondents said their need to borrow money to purchase food had increased in September and October 2020.
Meanwhile, 71% of the respondents said the nutritional quality of the food they were consuming had worsened during the same period.
Seventy-three percent said they had reduced their intake of vegetables; 71% cut their consumption of eggs and other non-vegetarian items; 64% ate less pulses; and 53% reduced their intake of cereals.
About 56% of the respondents never had to skip meals before the lockdown. But in the last 30 days, one in seven of them said they experienced skipping meals either "often" or "sometimes."
In September-October, about 27% respondents sometimes went to bed without eating, while about one in 20 households often slept without a meal.
*Read the complete survey results in the 11 states via this link.
**The Right to Work and Food Campaign, West Bengal, carried out a separate hunger survey in the said state in the eastern region of India involving 2,906 households in 20 districts. You may read the findings via this link.