Famine . . .
( Continued from Page9)
The headman of the village of 14,000 people said he knew of 80 who
had starved to death in the last two months. He said hundreds would
die in the coming two weeks. Like many other officials, he was resigned
rather than angry, though he said the volunteers who gave out the free
gruel supplies got 70 paise (about 10 cents) a head a day but spent only
30 paise.
Official relief efforts are not enouh to keep people alive — and in this
district there is no sign yet of any foreign relief. Although more than 60
pier cent of the whole state's rural population is badly hit, the govern
ment aims to provide only 15 per cent with free rations of four pounds
of grain a week a family — which is not enough for even one meal a
day.
A daily plate of gruel, which cannot be digested by starving cntiaren
or adults, is supposed to cover another 26,000 people (nobody gets
both). A token scheme for relief works is also being started — but this
cannot helo people already too weak to work.
The free gruel is a watery mixture of broken wheat mixed with bran
and pulses (edible seeds), without spice. Only people with cards issued
by the village authorities can get even this.
Those without cards are forcibly turned away, and leave, moaning or
weeping, to die. Across the road from a distribution van a woman
collapsed on the roadwav. motionless, except for her tonaue in and out
The man in charge of the gruel said that, if he gave her any it would
“finish her off right away." Nobody knew her or offered help.
People are roaming about everywhere looking for food, leaving
wives, husbands and children. People picked leaves off trees and dug
up roots.
In the next village of Paltlakawa, a young man walked away, unfed,
from a gruel kitchen, carrying an emaciated baby obviously close to
death. He burst into tears saying his wife had left him and his gruel
entitlement card had been stolen.
The basic failure of the state government was that it did not procure
enough rice for distribution. Out of a million tons that came on the
market this year, it planned to purchase only half — and in the event
managed to buy only 160,000 tons, leaving the rest to find its way to the
inflated open market.
The deficit should have been made ud from the central government's
pool, but there is a famine in Assam, Orissa, Maharashira and other
states too.
No relief is now in sight, when the winter rice crop comes in there
seems no prospect of the indolent and corrupt state government
procuring more for its distribution system And next spring's wheat
crop in the surplus states of the "Green Revolution" is expected to
suffer badly from the shortage of fertilizers and power for irrigation
pumps. Foreign relief experts say next year's famine may be more
severe than this year's because of the worldwide grain shortage.
Many thousands of children and old peple could be saved by a
massive foreign relief operation, like that mounted in the 1968 flood
here or in the 1970 influx of refugees from Bangladesh. Powdered milk
on a massive scale for the winter would be an obvious measure But
Cooch Behar has not yet attracted world attention.
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