Famine relief: 50 paise per head!

 

NK SINGH

"The relations of landlords and tenants are those of a high-handed proprietory body on the one hand, habitually disregarding the law, and on the other a tenantry, ignorant, very helpless, and sunk in the very most abject poverty.,,,. Though the rent law gave the ryot certain rights, he was so helpless or so ignorant that he was unable to assert these rights out of court, or to go into court to enforce them."

So wrote the Famine Commission in 1880, in a report where they ascribed the miseries of the people in Bihar to the nature of the agrarian system. 

This year, the one-lakh-strong Paharia community - tribe living in the forest hills of Santhal Parganas in south Bihar are starving. Even a hurried tour of the affected areas is enough to strike home the sharp miseries that have resulted from the failure of two successive crops.

In normal times, too, the Paharias suffer from chronic malnutrition. But this year, the situation is alarming, particularly in eight blocks of Littipara, Amarapara, Sundarpahari, Goarijore, Boria, Barahat, Pothana and Taljhiri inhabited by 65,000 people.

Batches of hungry, ill-nourished Paharias, who seldom leave the hills, have come down to the plains and are seen roaming in search of food. In front of restaurants in Godda, Pakur, Amarapara and Hiranpur towns, squat scores of starving men, women and children, waiting all day long to share the leftovers with the stray dogs of the town.

Paharias live today as they have lived for centuries. Once a week they come down from their hills to nearby towns to sell the faggots, roots, tubers and fruits that they collect from the jungles, and to buy basic consumer goods for their homes. 

Their general isolation makes them suspicious not only of the Dikkus (the plains' people) but also of the tribal Santhals. 

Such cultivation as they practice is of maize and ghanghara, and for this, they use the method of shifting cultivation, which demands more time, space and labour and results in unnecessary wastage of much-needed forest resources. 

But their main food comes from wild fruits like mahua, roots, tubers, etc.

No government has ever felt the need to take the trouble to induce them to improve their economy or to join the mainstream of the state's life. In these circumstances, they continue to live a deprived and insecure life.

Many are afflicted by TB and leprosy. There is hardly any medical facility worth the name. The few show-piece health centres are virtually inoperative, and either have no doctors or no proper medicines. 

Education is practically non-existent. Drinking water is not easily come by in most villages, and some villages fetch water from anywhere like three miles away.

Last year's excessive and untimely rain ruined the Paharias bhadai crop altogether. Rabi is never grown in the tribal areas of the district. Even mahua, which yields food as well as beverage, was not available on the trees this year. After two such years, the Paharias' plight is far worse than usual. 

When the subject was raised in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha, the government claimed that it had already taken up relief measures: Free rations were being distributed, and other relief measures such as loans, subsidies, and manual labour schemes to give the Paharias purchasing power, had been started; fair price shops had been opened on the hills and orders issued to district officials that whatever forest produce the Paharias brought should be officially purchased, again to provide them with purchasing power.

The fact is that the government has sanctioned altogether Rs 50,000 for the one-lakh strong Paharias -- approximately a relief of 50 paisa per head. 

Such are the circumstances in which the 'self-sufficiency in foodgrains' which the Agriculture Minister for Bihar claimed Bihar would reach by the end of this year has to be evaluated. 

Temporary relief is no solution, of course, to such famine situations the -- roots of which lie deep in the feudal exploitation, known to persist in the villages of the Santhal Parganas.

Misery, poverty, unemployment and illiteracy are by-products of the feudal structure headed by the moneylenders in the region. 

For all practical purposes, that structure is as it was nearly a hundred years ago. Land reform, irrigation, and better agricultural practices, have never been heard of in these parts. 

ECONOMIC AND POLTICAL WEEKLY

MAY 6 ,1972