One Month After Mandawali Starvation Deaths, Activists Protest Delhi Govt’s Inaction

Campaign insists no corrective measures have been taken to improve food security, 2.4 lakh ration cards were cancelled recently.

New Delhi: A month after three minor girls died of starvation at their Mandawali home in East Delhi, the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan today staged a demonstration at the Delhi Secretariat to protest against the “complete inaction of the Delhi government towards taking any corrective measures.”

In the wake of the tragedy, the Abhiyan had come out with a fact-finding report stating that various social welfare schemes had failed in the national capital, and if implemented properly, these schemes could have saved the lives of the three sisters.

The protesters held aloft posters questioning the absence of food security in Delhi that led to the tragedy. “Children died due to starvation, who is responsible? Break your silence, people want an answer,” read one of them in Hindi while another claimed that it was every child’s right to have access to eggs, milk and fruit.

The three minor girls – Mansi (8 years), Shikha (4) and Parul (2) – had died on July 24 and the post-mortem report had listed starvation as the cause of the deaths.

‘Family was not getting legal entitlement to food’

The Abhiyan said “the deaths highlighted the implementation failures, which meant that that the family was not receiving their legal entitlements to food.” It also added that the family did not possess a ration card; there was no functional Anganwadi in the Saket Block of Mandawali where the family lived; and requisite accountability mechanisms like social audit, which could have addressed these gaps, had not been operationalised.

Protest at Delhi secretariat. Credit: Twitter/@AnjaliB_

The protest today witnessed the participation of a large number of residents from the working classes who turned up to commiserate with the pain and trauma felt by the family of the girls as it struggled to make both ends meet. Incidentally, the father of the girls, who was the sole bread earner, could not cope with the financial hardship after two of the cycle-rickshaws he had taken on rent were stolen in quick succession in the fortnight preceding the tragedy. With their mother suffering from mental ailments and the family not having any support system around the new home it had shifted to, the girls had starved to death.

Anjali Bharadwaj, founder of the Abhiyan, said the need of the protest was also felt because “the government has taken no steps to fix the gaps in the implementation of food security, which led to their deaths.”

‘Government failed to provide grievance and accountability framework’

Bharadwaj, who is also a member of the Right to Food campaign, charged that “the government has failed to put in place the requisite grievance and accountability framework which could address the gaps.” She also stated that “despite the law making it mandatory, the government has not constituted the State Food Commission and no social audits have been undertaken.” The government, Bharadwaj claimed, had been repeatedly violating the directions of the Delhi High Court to put in place requisite rules and accountability framework.

The Abhiyan had also stated that its survey in Mandawali had shown that the issue of lack of food security and social security of the poor and the marginalised in Delhi was “undeniable”. Reminding the government that it had repeatedly called for strengthening the framework of food security and removing barriers which prevent people from accessing it, the organisation said, “Making food security conditional upon peoples’ ability to produce identity proof, residence proof, Aadhaar is inhumane and a violation of the right to life guaranteed under the constitution.”

Bharadwaj also lamented that 2.4 lakh ration cards have now been cancelled without proper verification. A blame game has started on this issue – while the ration cards were cancelled by the Delhi government, chief minister Kejriwal had on August 23 tweeted that this action had come under pressure from the Central government.

Abhiyan raises some old demands for streamlining food security

The Abhiyan has meanwhile demanded that community kitchens be set up across Delhi by both the state and the Central government to provide cooked food to the needy. It has also called for ending the quota system in PDS and universalising the scheme. Further, it has urged the governments to provide pulses, oil and sugar to all ration cardholders.

Likewise, the Abhiyan has called for the provision of eggs, fruits and milk to be distributed to children through the mid-day meal scheme and ICDS in schools and anganwadis and coverage for all children under six through ICDS without any conditions.

The Abhiyan has also called for implementing and operationalising the grievance redress and accountability provisions in the National Food Security Act, including carrying out of periodic social audits and setting up of a state food commission.

Finally, the Abhiyan has also cautioned that no untested mechanism like home delivery of rations should be brought in, saying “disruptions in the PDS cause extreme hardship and exacerbate vulnerabilities of marginalised households.”

It has also demanded that Aadhaar or Aadhaar-enabled biometric authentication not be made mandatory for any food security or social welfare programme as similar provisions have been the cause of several starvation deaths in Jharkhand.