For the Saharia tribal in Madhya Pradesh, the biggest meaning of life is neglect. Starvation, malnutrition and diseases come into the lives of these primitive tribal with the same frequency as general days come and go in the lives of other people. The Saharia tribe has been facing social, political and economical neglect right since independence, but since year 2001, the tribe has continued to remain in headlines become of their constricting existence due to starvation and diseases. One can visit any of the 1159 Saharia villages in the state and recent example of death of a child or maternal death can be heard. Despite the continuing neglect, the calm Saharias have never raised their voice and this has been considered their weakness. The government was never sincere in its efforts towards them. Rather than providing them with health care facilities and source of livelihoods, the tribe was strategically termed as insensitive and lazy. The Gothra Kapura & Saraikhurd villages in Sheopur district are living example of the fact that how a community can become weak, starvation hit and diseased owing to the collapse of government system and welfare state at large.

Every child in the 48 families in the village Ghothra Kapura has bad skin diseases but they never got medication. One can’t loud the slogan that Ghothra Kapura is a very much part of a welfare state. The children have open wounds owing to these complications in almost every part of their bodies including eyelids, scalp, arms, stomach, back, palms and soles of their feet. The children cannot stand or lie down owing to these wounds. Once when they were found with some white ointments on their wounds, enquiry revealed that about a fortnight ago the ANM (health worker) had visited the village and distributed some tablets of Paracetamol and the villagers had ground the tablets and put it on the wounds of the children in the hope that they would get some relief, relief from the pain? No, at least from the flying bees.

Pansuri Bai of the village narrates that the children are highly troubled by flies that often lay eggs on the wounds and often, small larvae are found in the wounds. When the villagers ask for medicines from the ANMs, they simply ask them to wash the wounds with soap. Pansuri Bai says that when they cannot afford to purchase food, how could they afford to buy soap? Therefore they decided to put the medicines meant for fever remedy on these wounds so that at least the flies do not trouble the children.

Radheyshyam of the same village says that they are tired of asking for work from the government. He mentioned that they approached the tehsil office in August 2006 for work but their applications were not taken. Later 40 persons applied for work through registered post but in vain. He mentioned that there is a provision of unemployment allowance if someone doesn’t get work within 15 days, but even after the passage of two months since applying, they have neither got work, nor allowance.

When we look at the ground realities of the health facilities we see that there is a primary health centre (PHC) about eight km away at Sararikhurd but since how long it is without a doctor no villager remembers. The ANM at this centre Savitri Bhadoria opens the centre four times a month. There are no implements or diagnostic and the PHC campus is full of heaps of garbage. If one moves ahead, there is a community health centre (CHC) about 20 km from village at Karahal that opens everyday but three out of four posts of doctors are vacant and so are several posts of nurses. This block falls in the area, which is under the mobile dispensary scheme, but there is only one mobile dispensary available in the entire block and every rounds to villages takes at least 35 days, that too only if the vehicle is in working condition and moves every days.

There are 533 villages in the Sheopur district with population of Rs 5.60 lakh and there are only 166 beds available in the one district hospital and four other hospitals of the district. Of these 148 beds have never been changed. Since last 18 months the state government is undertaking advertisement and awareness campaign to promote institutionalized childbirth, but during this period neither there has been increase in the number of beds in the government hospitals of Sheopur nor has there been a single posting of obstetrician and gynecologist. The availability of medicines has also not improved. Sixty percent posts of the nurses and health workers are lying vacant. In such situation, it is a big puzzle as to how the right of safe motherhood could be ensured.

The disastrous effects of malnutrition are often visible in this area. In the Ranipura village as least eight children died owing to ailments that arise out of malnutrition or under nutrition. When the anganbadi of this village does not have the weighing machine, how can malnutrition be calculated in the village? Since the anganbadi worker is only partially literate, no records of the children are maintained. The women and child development officer of the district says that many of the anganwadi workers have now been made supervisors so the system has been hit. But what they fail to mention is that during the last 12 months, nutritious food worth only three and half to four and half months have reached the anganbadis, Is this irregularity in the supply is caused due to illiteracy of Anganbadi workers or promoted supervisors. Health camps have not been regularly held in the area and thus blaming only the health workers is not justified at all.

The problem before anganbadi worker Kapuri Bai of Gothra Kapura village is also same that she faces problems in maintaining records of the malnourished children and she does not get any assistance from the department in this respect. This village saw deaths of 13 children in a year, but there is no record available of the children below the age of one year. Thus it becomes clear that in the Sheopur district there is no official information available as to how many children below age of one year are dying and why. There are 40 death mentioned in the state government records between April and August 2006 for entire district whereas the local NGO workers have recorded at least 44 deaths in only seven villages including Jaddpura, Ranikhura and Gothra Kapura. It is obvious that the actual situation is not coming to the forefront. Some vaccination targets seem to have been completed in the villages, but there are no arrangements to deal with the emergency health situations or even regular diseases.

If we consider the situation of mid-day meal scheme, then this scheme too requires `intensive treatment’. There is only one teacher Gajraj Singh available for the 108 children enrolled in the Ranipura village. This teacher is also not a local person, but travels from Rikshipeda village, which is 30 km away. Naturally the school does not open every day. Since the school opens only three to four days a month, and the midday meal too is distributed for only these many days. Similarly there is only one teacher available for 180 children in the Sararikhurd village under the Gothra panchayat, who too travels from another village. A student Balwant from this village says that the teacher has made donkeys out of all of them. Nothing is working here for a better future because nobody is questioning the system and asking for rights and that’s why responsibilities and duties are taking for granted by the teachers, ANM’s, Doctor or even our elected representatives.

We continue to analyse various rights, but we can never claim with confidence that the state and society has been able to provide Right to Life to women and children. During last 22 months, 29 children below age of six years of the village Patalgarh in the same district have died. Several memorandums have been submitted to the district administration and the state government, yet there was no action. The case was then taken to the Supreme Court under the ongoing public interest litigation on Right to Food (PUCL Vs Union of India and Oth.) and then a joint commission of enquiry was ordered. The intensive joint efforts of Judiciary, media and people’s action helped out under a campaign and only then an anganbadi was opened at Patalgarh village after 15 months of struggle, people started getting food grains from public distribution system and the opportunity for employment first time in four years. But the initiative to fight starvation remained limited to this single village. It is for sure that the issues of Sahariy children and women have now reached to a political agenda and one should accept the reality that only larger people’s action will be able to change the Policy and the system. Change in the situation of one village like Patalgarh will not serve the purpose and villages like Ghothra-Kapura, Ranipura & Saraikhurd will remain untouched.  Dire situations still exist in other villages of the development block and experience tells that perhaps continuing efforts of at least two years would be required to change the situation in the Ranipura and Gothra Kapura villages. The destiny of these children is such that they would not get justice even after their deaths because their deaths created controversy. As these children never underwent health check up it would never be proved that they succumbed to malnutrition, but the living people of village mention that the opportunities to get two square meals in the village are very limited.

The district collector of Sheopur MS Bhilala has a take on the entire situation that the malnutrition conditions are grave, but whenever malnourished children are admitted to hospital under Bal Shakti Yojana, their parents take them away. However the collector does not consider the fact that no Saharia family can survive without work for 14 days (the period of admission under the Bal Shakti Yojana). The supply of nutritious food has always been irregular and 40 per cent of the posts in hospitals lie vacant. Since there is threat of dacoits in the remote villages, continuing monitoring is also not possible. It is not known as to till when would be tribal of Ranipura and Gothra Kapura forced to live with empty stomach, ailing bodies and festering wounds.

Sachin Kumar Jain