Last year Orissa’s chief minister Navin Patnaik pronounced that toxic mango kernels are the ‘traditional’ food of the tribals in his state. In making this observation, he was only following a family ‘tradition’. Years earlier his father, Biju Patnaik, had sworn that ants are a tribal delicacy. This year, guess who has done a Patnaik? None other than Ashok Gehlot, chief minister of Rajasthan, who let it be known on Tuesday that ‘ghas-ki-roti’, or rotis made out of a little flour and a lot of ‘grass’ was a popular food among the tribals in his state. He even made a show of imbibing some of it to drive home his point that it is really quite alright to exist on such wretched stuff. He will not, therefore, agree that the deaths that occurred recently in Baran district were caused by starvation and insists that it was ‘illness’ that took its toll on local communities. Why doesn’t Ashok Gehlot get it? If ghas-ki-roti and mango kernels qualified as ‘food’, they would be gracing the tables of this country. These are starvation foods, serious starvation foods, mere mass to stem hunger and that is all. It’s the kind of stuff that people who have no access to foodgrain, as it is generally understood of course, are driven to eating. The effects of such ‘nutrition’ is there for all to see: in the distended bellies of the babies, in the russet-coloured hair of young children, in the pale anaemic faces of mothers, in the skeletal frames of local tillers. Instead of justifying such intake, the chief minister should have been screaming at his bureaucrats to mobilise state resources and get cracking; he should have been camping in Delhi to get an indifferent Centre to respond rather than play a deathly politics. To even pretend that everything is fine apart from some water unavailability is to demonstrate a state of deep denial. It does neither his state nor his image any good. There has been some movement in the state of late, but this is only because the media — whose interfering ways the chief minister clearly cannot stomach — the court, NGOs and political parties raised a huge stink. Gehlot should realise that it is far better to come clean on such issues, rather than paper over them, so that the nation can respond to the crisis unitedly. This country has produced some of the best academic work in terms of human deprivation, it has some of the finest minds working on the issue, including world-class economists and development activists. Surely such a resource is something that Rajasthan can utilise gainfully to address the tragic conditions of life in its backyard? But this can only happen if Gehlot stops recommending the virtues of ‘ghas-ki-roti’ and starts sizing up the problem caused by seven bad monsoons and an indifferent administration — and does it with honesty and purpose.
