In May 2006, Dilli Dakha lost her first child, a girl aged one and a half years. After that she had a boy Sugreev who is now two. The couple then lost their twin daughters Ganga and Jamuna. According to Dakha, she was not able to feed them, as there was no milk. She says she eats one roti with onion once a day. Her family’s diet does not include any pulses or vegetables, because they cannot afford it. Her husband earns around Rs.20 per day, on the few days he goes out to work. Subsequent to her third delivery she has started loosing her sight, which is largely due to the deficiency of vitamin A. Deaths of children like Ganga and Jamuna are unfortunately not new to the district.
Dilli Dakha and her husband are Sahariya tribals. Sahariyas or the tribals who call themselves “Sehera or Sair”, it is claimed are the first of all tribes in the country. For generations they depended on the forest for survival, living a subsistence life with limited needs. Agriculture, gathering forest products and hunting is their traditional means of earning a livelihood. Life has not been easy for the Sahariyas after their eviction from the forests.
Sahariya Children are the worst affected due to poverty, lack of livelihood resources and indifferent government policy. According to the regional medical research centre for tribals in Jabalpur, the Infant Mortality Rate of Sahariya is 88 (per 1000 lives births) and 93.5 percent of Sahariya children are severely malnourished. According to the same sources the average life span of a Sahariya is only 45 years, 74.3 percent of Sahariya children are underweight and 75.4 percent stunted. Data from the state governments Bal Sanjeevani Abhiyan (8th Report) indicates that 58 percent of the children in the age group 0-6 years in the district suffer from malnutrition. As far as Sahariya children’s are considered we don’t see the Sahariya mothers in isolation .Nearly 86.5% Sahariya are anaemic because of non-availability of any proper and nutritious food. These indicators show that Sahariya’s are one of the poorest and most deprived communities in the entire country.
The Sahariya of MP has been in the news a lot in recent years. One village Patalgarh of Karahal Block of Sheopur District of Madhya Pradesh has been in the news since February 2005 for the most distressing reason – the death of 13 innocent children. This village is situated at a distance of 70 kms from the district headquarters and 65 kms from the block headquarters. To reach the village one has to travel through thick forest and bumpy, muddy roads. The village situated in the interior does not have even the most basic infrastructure facilities. The nearest hospital for example is situated at a distance of 35 kms. This lack of accessibility is problematic not least of all because it affects the functioning of public services like anganwadi centers and provision of midday meals. Previously there was no anganwadi in Patalgarh village and the nearest one was in Hirapur village, 17 kms away. Mithilesh looks after the ‘temporary’ anganwadi in Patalgarh village to which 70 children have been enrolled. These children have not been given any food or supplementary nutrition from February 2006. There is a Multipurpose Heath Worker for the village who is able to come only once a month, because he has to look after three panchayats. He has also been entrusted the duty of registration of births and deaths and in the given circumstances he leaves out many children. This is the main reason why the government has been denying the deaths. Most of the new born die within one month by which time neither their birth nor their death has been registered.
Recently the right to food campaign in MP demanded a joint commission of enquiry from the Commissioners of the Supreme Court. The state government also agreed and the enquiry commission has substantiated reports of malnutrition deaths in Sheopur and termed the predominantly Sahariya tribe as “one of the malnutrition hotspots in world”. The JCE found that there is complete failure of governance, and ignorance of the state to provide the very basic entitlements to Sahariya.
The right to food campaign in MP also filed an interim application in the ongoing case in the Supreme Court, hoping to make the state government more accountable for the children’s deaths.
Subsequent to interventions from the Supreme Court the story of Patalgarh is totally different. The village now has a functioning Anganwadi, the ANM has been appointed and a "PDS tractor" brings grain from the nearby village once a month. Previous Supreme Court interventions also facilitated the distribution of temporary ration cards to enable people to access the PDS. Under NREGA a road construction work is also under-way and the workers are getting minimum wages of Rs. 61.37 per day.
Although Patalgarh is a priority for the government at the moment, little is done for other villages like Patalgarh, where indifference from the administration results in negligence and death of several innocent children. Every summer many Sahariya Children like Ganga and Jamuna die, but they don’t always make the headlines of newspapers who are more concerned with the illness of Mahajans (pun intended) and Bachans.
Rolly Shivhare |
