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Journalism of Courage
Last year Orissa8217;s chief minister Navin Patnaik pronounced that toxic mango kernels are the 8216;traditional8217; food of the tribals in his state. In making this observation, he was only following a family 8216;tradition8217;. 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 8216;ghas-ki-roti8217;, or rotis made out of a little flour and a lot of 8216;grass8217; 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 8216;illness8217; that took its toll on local communities.
Why doesn8217;t Ashok Gehlot get it? If ghas-ki-roti and mango kernels qualified as 8216;food8217;, 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. It8217;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 8216;nutrition8217; 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.
