Are we getting poorer?

In the backdrop of a failed crop over the last 2 years- 2008 and 2009, and the NREGS not adequately compensating for the reduced available food, the biggest hit that rural life has taken has been that of rising food and other essential items’ prices. We reproduce here a small write up on the impact of the price rise on the diets and the lives of people in the poorest part of our community programme that ends with some learning observations:

Spectre of a Failed Monsoon

The spectre of a failed monsoon crop concerns us all these days- I have been wondering how people will cope with this loss – of food for the year and for meeting the other human needs that the yield is used for. I know that the NREGA has been in place for the last couple of years, and that it promises families of an additional 7500 rupees every year if they work for 100 days that may be offered to them- but it is so sorely plagued by delayed payment that it certainly has lost faith among people. The 35 kilogram food grain subsidy that the PDS in Chhattisgarh provides to the officially poor lasts 7 to 12 days in most families if they eat what they usually eat, and thus for the rest of the month depend on the ‘open’ market.

In such a situation, what worried me additionally was the issue of rising food and other commodity prices over the last year. I have understood the cause of this to be related to the recession of the world economy, and the decreased food production as a result of climate crisis and the hegemony of the financial players who are supposed to have the ability to affect the lives and prices of all items anywhere on the globe.

Suffering in Silence

Whatever be the causes, in everyday life the effect of increasing prices of various commodities including food did not seem at first glance to be something glaring. I did not see suddenly any more illnesses due to increasing hunger, nor did i see any epidemic of acute starvation. Nor did I see any food or water riots. Civil unrest is something that is still blamed on to Bastar and Surguja, due to militant left, and certainly not due to food prices.

Last week, out of a nagging restlessness that i had, and not from any suggestion from anyone among them, I decided to ask village health workers from 16 villages, all of who reside in the Achanakmaar reserve forest, who had collected for their periodic monthly training for a day, a question- what change has happened in their life over the last 12 months? Is there any change in what they eat, and the way they live? The answering started promptly and quickly became a collective lament. And yet it did not convey any sense of self pity at any stage, nor any anger, only disappointment and that too sometimes.

From Little to None

Majority of the people have stopped drinking tea in the last few months. Both tea leaves and sugar have become expensive, and are thus dispensed with. One person recalled a sad incident where her ageing father in- law begged her for tea, as he hadn’t had it for several weeks. In response she made tea, and added some salt to it, which he very gratefully had. Some people add haldi to tea to give it colour! Several colleagues said sugar has gone out of the diets, now it being 40 rupees to a kilo.

It is official now. There is no daal in poor village people’s diets. In previous years we had documented that most poor people here consumed daal 3 to 5 times a month. Now it is zero. Only those who manage to have a crop on their lands have a little bit. It is just too expensive to purchase from the market. Even the fish has been less this year as there has been less water in the water bodies.

Most people said that their oil refill now lasts longer over the last few months. Here, most families usually purchase 125 to 250 ml oil at one time and the next refill is bought once this finishes. This period now lasts almost doubly longer compared to before.

Even the salt and the masalas are a problem. Those who don’t hold a ration card for BPL have to purchase salt from the market where it is now rupees ten to a kilo! Masaalas are more expensive, and are thus dispensable.

Many baiga health workers said that lately there are several nights that they go to bed hungry, and make their children go hungry. One Oraon health worker from village babutola pointed out a bizarre story of a family in her neighbourhood where an entire family consumed cucumbers the entire night as they did not have any rice to cook in their house! Dasoda, the health worker from Mahamayee told that there was a family in her village who did not have anything to eat for 2 full days. After remaining hungry for 2 days, they sold their cooking utensils and purchased enough rice and salt to make themselves a ‘pej’- a rice soup to quench their hunger. Rice in any case has turned really expensive. The cheapest rice in the market is for Rs 15 per kilo. Even the officially poor families , who get 35 kilo rice from the PDS at one or two rupees a kilo have to purchase rice at rupees 15 per kilo for their needs after they exhaust the subsidized supply from the market, in case they don’t have their own harvest to fall back upon.

Not only are these major foods a problem, but also the omnipresent vegetables have become scarce. Lately, most people make do with some form of gourds to make their curry, now that other vegetables are scarce. Even the lowly mirch, the green chillies, are scarce- I learnt that one gets only 10 chillies for 2 rupees these days! Perhaps people have to take antioxidant tablets now that chillies and other sources are getting scarce.

Many health workers said that the only time they have daal is during the training sessions. And that is also the only time they have tea, in fact milk tea.

Other Changes

One of the big surprises for me was that the health workers use much less or no soap or soda. Soap has turned either more expensive or smaller. And thus the latter ones in the pecking order in the families get to use soap less frequently. Many health workers have not been using any soap in the last few weeks. They have been washing their hair with ash, and their clothes with ash or with just water. I was told that clothes washed with ash acquire a smell which is not always very pleasant. Several health workers have not been applying any oil when they do their hair, which they felt rather sorry about.

Loans for food are often taken by people for short durations at the fag end of the agriculture season to tide over the time between exhausting the previous stocks of food and the arrival of the new harvest. This year the loan takings have been larger, have started earlier and many more have taken loans for food for the first time.

One of the saddest effects that have happened is that several children have been pulled out of school. Many health workers mentioned that though books, dresses and bicycles are being provided free by the state, the collateral expenses they have to incur when children go to school makes continuation of schooling unaffordable, and thus they have been forced to do what they did not want to do.

Most people have not bought any new clothes in the last one year, a few got it from their mai-kaa. And when clothes have not been bought for all , they are an increasing source of conflict between family members with the parents having to face allegations of partisanship.

What was mentioned by almost all people was the occurrence of ‘chintaa’ or worry. All families have sufficient cause for concern about future due to the rising prices and a potentially failing crop. Whether this has resulted in obvious morbidity is not clear.

What is the Root of the Problem?

Is this likely to be specific or limited only for poor people of forest villages in an otherwise backward district like Bilaspur? I don’t think so. People in most rural areas must be suffering similarly. The scale may be different but the direction is likely to be the same.

I have been asked this question several times, which i am sure most friends working with people and economists alike would be grappling with- Are we becoming poorer as a nation? When development activists report some wrongs in the country and criticize saying that there is no progress, they are confronted with arguments such as- It may not be too good and the trickle emanating from the rising sensex and the growth rate is little, but is there, and while the speed of progress could have been faster, it is slowly but surely in the correct direction. This, our experience says, is untrue. All the health workers that talked together in this group were unanimous that they have become poorer in the last one year. The details of their deprivation mentioned above testify this truth. We have other reasons to believe that most people in villages that we are working with, are becoming poorer. And the NREGS and the landmark Chhattisgarh PDS is not able to look after this. Perhaps it would have been worse had these schemes not been there. But it is already bad enough.

What does it tell us, a group of people working towards better health for people through health care, for the coming times? First, it is almost sure that we will see the health consequences of this deprivation. There will be more diseases due to compromised bodies, more complex presentations which will be made difficult by much fewer resources to manage these problems. I fear that there are going to be many more people whose tuberculosis will flare up, many more children with severe pneumonias, many more women who will need operative procedures in childbirth and many more patients who will drop out of treatment for their illnesses. We need to be prepared technically and with resources, and also look for preventive measures for illnesses related directly to hunger.

Second, this underlines the urgency for intervening in ensuring food availability. People cannot be allowed to be held ransom by the market. Control over food production- for all- the food grain, the daals, the oil, the vegetables all of it. Even PDS is dependent on rapidly changing state largesse and the market, and thus cannot be trusted on by poor people. We need to intervene by supporting cultivation of daals and legumes, and oilseeds as well as by conserving water by watershed management so that people have a chance of better crop yield.