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Special Update: Two important announcements
UPDATE 27: RECENT AND FORTHCOMING ACTIVITIES Dear Friends, This update comes to you after a long break, and we have a long list of events and activities to report. So this update is being sent in two parts. With the elections around, several events are being planned not only within the right to food campaign but also by associated campaigns such as the campaign for the right to health. We anticipate a fair amount of action during the next few months. We take this opportunity to salute the courage of Sarita and Mahesh, two land rights activists who have done exemplary work in Bihar. They were shot dead on 24 January by the local mafia. We wish to draw your attention to the impending national protest in Patna on 12 February, which includes a rally to Shabdo, the village where Sarita and Mahesh worked. The organisers are counting on a strong turnout not only from Bihar but also from other parts of India. More on this below (see also the new “Sarita and Mahesh” section on the campaign website, www.righttofood.com). Today’s headlines: 1. MUMBAI: PLANNING FUTURE ACTIVITIES 2. WEST BENGAL: STARVATION ROLLED BACK IN ABANDONED TEA GARDENS 3. KARNATAKA: SOCIAL AUDIT OF SUPREME COURT ORDERS 4. DELHI: FORTHCOMING RALLY FOR THE RIGHT TO HEALTH 5. RAJASTHAN: PDS DEALERS DISRUPT REVIEW MEETING 6. COMMISSIONERS’ UPDATE 7. BIHAR: MURDER OF LAND RIGHTS ACTIVISTS SPARKS PUBLIC PROTESTS
About 50 activists involved in the right to food campaign met in Mumbai on 20 January, on the sidelines of the World Social Forum and “Mumbai Resistance”, to discuss forthcoming activities. Various activities were proposed in anticipation of the coming parliamentary elections across the country. As a first step, activists from different organisations will gather in Bhopal on 21-22 February to prepare suitable campaign materials (posters, leaflets, pamphlets, etc.). The meeting will be organised at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The activities that were proposed include: (1) Consolidating our efforts to make the right to food and the right to work central political issues (e.g. through public hearings, lok ghoshna patras, large rallies, seeking commitments from candidates, etc.); (2) Debunking the government’s “feel good” and “shining India” propaganda; (3) Intensifying our campaign for the right to work, including an Employment Guarantee Act but also going beyond that; (4) “Direct action” to assert the right to food and the right to work, such as “self-service” at PDS shops where people have been deprived of their entitlements, and physical obstruction of labour-displacing machinery; (5) Social audits of the implementation of Supreme Court orders on the right to food; (6) Conducting a series of training programmes to enable grassroots organisations to take up right to food/work issues more effectively in their own area. Also in the light of the forthcoming, there was much discussion of the issue of communalism. There was a unanimous agreement on the need for the campaign to distance itself from all communal and anti-democratic organisations. The draft “statement” prepared at the end of the meeting states the following: “We also discussed the ominous growth of communal and anti-democratic tendencies in the country, and the need to resist them. We all felt that our commitment to the right to food is inseparable from our commitment to social justice and democratic values, and implies firm opposition to communalism in any form. Democracy is premised on the fundamental equality of all citizens. Therefore it is incompatible with discrimination based on caste, gender, religion or other attributes. We appeal to all individuals and organisations involved in the right to food campaign to put these concerns at the centre of their work, during and beyond the forthcoming elections.” For the full text of the draft statement (yet to be finalised), click here. The statement includes further details of possible activities that could be taken up in the context of the forthcoming elections. If you are interested in obtaining campaign materials at cost price after the Bhopal meeting, please send a line to right2food@yahoo.co.in
During the last two years, trouble has been brewing in the tea gardens of West Bengal. Apparently due to a recession in the tea industry, many tea gardens have been abruptly closed, leaving tens of thousands of people at lurch. There have been many recent media reports of extreme hunger and even starvation deaths in the abandoned tea gardens. This prompted the right to food and work campaign of West Bengal to intervene. The group started with a survey of living conditions in over 12 tea gardens. The house to house survey indicated that death rates had more than doubled since the workers lost their employment. This has been confirmed by data available in local hospitals, and other independent surveys. The food habits of the workers also show drastic changes, with some families consuming levels far below the recommendation of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). The incidence of malnutrition among children is also very high. In spite of this dire situation, many of the affected families are classified as “above the poverty line” by the recent BPL enumeration. Further the ration shops have been closed, as they used to be run by the management of the gardens. Mid-day meals, for their part, are yet to be initiated by the West Bengal government. To complete the story, even the available SGRY funds have not been utilised in the area. The right to food network in West Bengal took up these issues with the Commissioners (Dr. N.C. Saxena and Mr. S.R. Sankaran), and an application was also filed in the Supreme Court. With a little help from the media, these efforts spurred the sleeping government into action. Recent steps taken to address this emergency include the distribution of Antyodaya cards to all permanent workers in the closed gardens; the provision of cooked food in primary schools; and the provision of 15 days of employment per month to the affected workers under SGRY. However, some demands of the campaign are yet to be met, so the struggle continues. For a more detailed report, click here.
‘Sarvajanika Ahavalu’, i.e. a social audit, is to be organized in Karnataka for the first time on February 9, 2004. The right to food campaign in Karnataka along with REACH and ActionAid India are organizing this social audit, which focuses on the implementation of Supreme Court orders on the right to food (PUCL vs Union of India & Others, 196/2001). There is widespread hunger in the area in the wake of three years of continuous drought, and the campaign group feels that unless effective action is organised the Supreme Court orders may just remain on paper. The process of holding social audits has also been initiated in Dharwad, Chamarajanagar and Davanagere districts, where similar events are expected in the near future. VENUE: Nandi Bevooru Village, Harapanahalli Taluk, Davanagere District,
Karnataka Harapanahalli is 7 hours road drive from Bangalore. Nandi Bevooru Village is 16 kms. From Harapanahalli on the Harapanahalli - Hospet Road.
In anticipation of the forthcoming elections, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (a network of organisations committed to the right to health) is planning to organise a national rally as well as a dialogue with representatives of different political parties. Participants from across the country will gather in Delhi on 4 March 2004 for a string of events aimed at highlighting the dismal condition of health facilities in the country and putting the right to health on the political agenda. Further details will follow in due course, meanwhile interested readers are invited to contact Vandana Prasad (chaukhat@yahoo.com). For further info on JSA, see the network’s website, http://www.sochara.org/Jss/index.htm 5. RAJASTHAN: PDS DEALERS DISRUPT REVIEW MEETING An eventful public meeting was convened by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) on 31 January 2004 in Kumbalgarh (Rajasthan). This was a follow-up to an earlier public hearing on the public distribution system (PDS), held there in December 2002 (see Update 8). This earlier meeting had exposed rampant corruption in the PDS, and last month MKSS thought that the time was ripe to review the situation. The review meeting’s agenda was to ask government officials, in public, what action had been taken against those who had been implicated in the corruption. Another concern was to find out what difference (if any) the earlier public hearing had made in the area. The review meeting, held on 31 January, was quite stormy. Angry PDS dealers had formed a semi-circle around the meeting to prevent people from entering the premises. They had also done a good deal of “homework” to derail this effort. For instance, they conducted a “contact programme” with the concerned families and threatened them with dire consequences if they spoke with MKSS activists, or put pressure on them to say that the PDS was working well in their village. In some cases, the dealers took away people’s ration cards lest MKSS should lay their hands on them. At the public hearing the dealers made organised attempts to disrupt the proceedings as soon as PDS issues came up. It is only with the help of the police and the assembled public that the meeting could be held. A sobering conclusion of this review meeting is that corruption is still in full swing in the area, in spite of the fact that people’s awareness has gone up. The ration cards still show false entries, some dealers continue to keep people’s ration cards, and shops open for just a few days each month (as opposed to 26 months as directed by the Supreme Court). The local administration has promised once again to take action against the errant dealers. What happens on the ground remains to be seen.
The Commissioners of the Supreme Court, Dr. N.C. Saxena and Mr. S.R. Sankaran, are continuing their efforts to ensure the implementation of Supreme Court orders. We have already mentioned their intervention in West Bengal (see item 2 above). Another important focus area at this time is Sarguja district in Chhattisgarh. This intervention followed complaints of non-implementation of the Supreme Court orders in villages of Block Lakhanpur in Sarguja (on this also earlier Updates). In particular it was alleged that Antyodaya cards had not been distributed to families of “primitive tribes” in the area, such as the Pahari Korwas. After the Commissioners intervened, the state government directed the local administration to ensure swift distribution of Antyodaya cards to all Pahari Korwa families. Recent reports suggest that this has indeed been done in the entire Block. However, Antyodaya cardholders are still marooned as the PDS is virtually non-functional in many villages, depriving them of their entitlements. A public hearing is expected to be held in Lakhanpur on or around 24 February. In a similar vein, the Commissioners responded to a complaint about the absence of mid-day meals in village Pandripani, also in Lakhanpur Block (see earlier updates). Initially, the state government claimed that an enquiry had been carried out, that mid-day meals in Pandripani were doing just fine, and that the complainant had retracted his statement. However, this claim was roundly debunked after further local enquiries and the state government was sent back to the drawing board. According to recent field reports from Sarguja, the local administration is frantically trying to improve the mid-day meal programme not only in Lakhanpur but in the entire district. The Commissioners have also travelled to several states in the recent months. Mr. Sankaran made visits to Maharasthra and West Bengal, and Dr. Saxena travelled to Bihar to evaluate the ICDS scheme. The Bihar visit led to some positive moves on the ICDS front. For instance, orders have been passed to raise the coverage of Supplementary Nutrition in each anganwadi from 57 to 97 children/mothers, and measures have been taken to ensure quick recruitment and timely payment of anganwadi workers. For detailed reports on these visits, and further details of the Commissioners’ activities, see the “Commissioners’ section” of the campaign website (www.righttofood.com).
The brutal murder of Sarita and Mahesh in Bihar (see intro) has sparked nationwide protests. A rally is being organised in Patna on 12 February, with nation-wide participation. The rally will end in Shabdo village where Sarita and Mahesh used to work and lost their lives. It is hoped that this event will act as a springboard for further action, not only to obtain justice for Sarita and Mahesh but also to address the problem of endemic violence and repression in Bihar. For further details, please contact Apoorv Anand at apoorvanand@rediffmail.com See also the new section “Sarita and Mahesh” on the campaign website (www.righttofood.com). This is a provisional section, added on an emergency basis to support these efforts.
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