Acid Reflux

8216;8216;A government official who visited our village once even told us, 8216;Log khana khane se mar jaate hain, ab bhookh se koi nahin marta People die of eating, nobody dies of hunger now8217;,8217;8217; says Algu of Kodara Tola village.

Whatever be the official explanation, the nomadic Moosahars have their own name for the cause of death: Bhookhmari. That8217;s the word Jasiya of Thadibhar village utters reluctantly when asked what claimed her husband Shambhu Moosahar, 40, on December 27.

8216;8216;Bhookhmari ki bimari se mar gaya He was down with hunger and so died,8217;8217; says Jasiya, who also lost two of her children over the past year. She now begs for food in a Moosahar village where almost every family copes with hunger-related conditions.

IN adjoining Ghurpatti Tola, Bindhyachal8217;s skeletal frame lies covered with flies and mosquitoes in his hut. He looks 80, but is probably half that. His brother Eta died two months ago of, as locals inform, of bhookhmari; Bindhyachal may just follow suit. A third brother, Bijlal, has found no work for the past eight days and there is little to sustain the family.

Ironically, every household in Ghurpatti Tola8212;a village of 34 Moosahar families with eight widows8212;has a ration card. But few have the money to make use of the card. And no one here has heard of the much-feted Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or the Food for Work programme.

8216;8216;I have not had any work for the last 10-12 days,8217;8217; says Shubhawati, whose husband died in January last year, leaving her to beg for food with her six children. Their main sustenance for the past few days has been five kg of rice doled out by some political party workers.

Among the 35 families of Loharpatti village, only 12 have ration cards. Villagers allege they are expected to pay between Rs 500 and Rs 1,500 to officers at various levels to procure one.

MORE than 100 km away, Adai Bedauli village in Ghazipur district, too, has witnessed two Moosahar deaths. While Sheonath, 55, died in November, Shani, 62, died in January. All signs indicate these were hunger deaths, but the Ghazipur district administration8212;the village is just 3 km from the Bhanwarkol block office8212;denies it.

8216;8216;There was no food in the house in the days leading to his death,8217;8217; says Meera, Shani8217;s widow. 8216;8216;He was ill. And I am blind, so I couldn8217;t even go begging.8217;8217;Later, she had to: To collect money for the last rites.

Ironically, the family got its ration card under the Annapurna scheme just weeks before Shani8217;s death. But since the lone PDS shop in the village is non-functional, it was of no use.

Ghazipur district magistrate Anita Mesram, however, stoutly denies there were any starvation deaths in the district. She admits there8217;s a problem with distribution of PDS cards, and says she has asked the sub-divisional magistrate to inquire into the matter.

BUT why is the administration so reluctant to recognise these deaths as the fallout of having too little to eat? That8217;s because admission would set off a chain-reaction of investigations, determination of possible lax implementation of government schemes, and stringent action against district officials.

Besides, to fix a death as a fallout of starvation, officials depend on circumstantial evidence8212;such as checking a residence for evidence of food, getting a hold on the socio-economic status of the area, sounding out the nearest PDS outlet8212;to decide whether the end was brought about by having nothing to eat for days.

8216;8216;And, adds Kushinagar DM Prabhu Dayal Srivast, 8216;8216;it has to be borne out by a post-mortem. The villagers don8217;t wait for this: They just cremate the body and later claim it to be a hunger death.8217;8217;

If it wasn8217;t hunger, what did these 12 at least die of? 8216;8216;Disease and old age,8217;8217; replies Srivast. 8216;8216;Actually, the Moosahars are in very poor shape.8217;8217;

But the scenario is no different across communities in areas bordering Nepal and Bihar. In eastern UP, says Dr Y D Singh, former superintendent of the BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur, 8216;8216;Two-thirds of the mothers are anaemic and their average weight is less than 45 kg. Malnutrition is at the root of all problems in the region.8217;8217;

A study conducted by Dr K P Kushwaha of BRD Medical College and focusing on adolescent girls in 167 villages of two blocks of Gorakhpur district bears him out: He found the average body mass index to be much lower than the acceptable 18.5, ranging between 14 and 16.5.

Little wonder that most deaths from encephalitis8212;the official toll last year was 1,4008212;infections like tuberculosis and HIV incidence, all indicative of low resistance, are the highest in eastern UP.

with Sanjay Singh in Ghazipur