"Failure" to link aadhaar with BPL ration card main reason for Karnataka Dalit family starvation deaths: PUCL report

The hut in which Nagamma family lives

A People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Karnataka, investigation has revealed that Jharkhand is not alone where starvation deaths have taken due to lack of the aadhaar document. A report based on the investigation by Narasimhappa TV was prepared following a news story citing opposing claims of the reasons for three deaths in a Dalit family in a village in Gorkana district in July this year.
The PUCL report said, the family of Nagamma Ganpathi Maru Mukhri, a widow, and four children, have a below poverty line (BPL) ration card. The three of her four sons who died are Narayan Maru Mukhri, Subbu Maru Mukhri and Venkatarammna Maru Mukhri.
The family is entitled to 35 kilos of rice every month, but, says Nasamhappa’s report, “The last time they got ration on the ration card was on November 22, 2016 and December 17, 2016, as mentioned in the ration card”, and the “quantity they got was 28 kilos rice, 6 kg wheat, and 1kg sugar in six months.”
“On March 27, 2017, again, 35 kilos of rice were provided. However, they didn’t get any ration for six months this year, except in the month of March, on the grounds that they have not linked their ration card with their aadhaar card”, the report says.
The PUCL decided to undertake the investigation following the claim by the district commissioner that the deaths took place because of “excessive consumption of alcohol by the three victims”.
Noting that Nagamma and two of the four sons of in the family did not have aadhaar cards, PUCL says, Nagamma admitted, she had a ration card and would get monthly ration, adding, she never faced problem with getting food, when they failed to get job as daily wagers.
“However, the problem arose when the Food and Civil Supplies Department demanded that aadhaar card and ration card should be linked, as she and her two sons didn’t have an aadhaar card; therefore, they faced the problem of starvation, as during this time they were not receiving the daily wages, too”, the report states.
“She mentioned that the death of three sons was due to the irresponsibility and negligence of the Food and Civil Department, Kumuta Taluk, and the Gram Panchayat authorities, and further mentioned that the reason for the death was that they had not been provided ration facilities to the family for about seven months”, the report says.
Says the PUCL report, a local NGO Mahaganpathi Samaj Seva Sangh, on receiving information about the death of two within six days, on coming to know that the family had no food to eat, decided to provide rice, toor daal, coconut, potato, wheat and other items to it.
PUCL quotes Kumara Jeeva Hatigi, member of the NGO, as saying that he knew at least one of the deceased, Narayanna Maru Mukhri, who “was not an alcoholic person, though he was epileptic.”
Quoting the local ration shop owner, the report states, he admitted that Nagamma’s name was “not mentioned” in the list of ration recipients, “and the reason given was that the ration card and aadhaar card had not been linked.”

The food inspector of Kumuta Taluk said, the aadhaar card “had not been provided by the victims or their mother.” And the tehsildar “shockingly stated that ‘If the victims were really starving,then they could have approached dharmchatra (the place where the food is served on charity)’.”

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog