Concerned about hunger in the Indian capital due to Covid-19



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Two weeks after India issued a nationwide blockade, Sunita Devi was concerned about how to feed her four daughters in the following days.

The original 21-day blocking order was extended to 6 weeks. Devi, a single mother, is one of thousands of unskilled workers in the capital, New Delhi, in India, who runs out of money and now lives on government-administered food in public schools.

“Our diet is low. They are not enough for my entire family,” said Devi.

Children queue to receive relief from rice and beans in a poor neighborhood in the Kapasheda district of Delhi on April 7. Photo: Al Jazeera.

Children queue to receive relief from rice and beans in a poor neighborhood in the Kapasheda district of Delhi on April 7. Photos: Al Jazeera

Devi is from Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, about 560 km north of New Delhi. Her husband, a driver, died of tuberculosis two years ago. Before the blockade, he made 5,500 rupees ($ 73) a month in cleaning and cooking jobs for three middle-class families in Paschim Vihar.

Paying $ 26 for rent, she and her daughters live on less than $ 2 a day, including tuition. Devi has no savings. The blockade was like a shocking blow to her.

The owners don’t want Devi to come to work more in the current period. They also didn’t pay any extra money to help her survive the 6-week lockdown.

“I used to work in their houses and now they closed the door in front of me. They said I could infect them. I only have a few rupees in my pocket. I should use them to pay the rent or buy milk.” , Buy vegetables for your children? Devi said.

Around 4:00 p.m. a day, Devi stands outside a school in Nilothi, lining up to receive rice and beans for dinner relief. This queue for food distribution has become common in most major Indian cities during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In Kapasheda, some 22 km from Nilothi, Seema Sardar and Kanika Vishvas, both local workers, said they were fired without receiving any money to support their lives.

The owner of Sardar, who lives in a mansion in a wealthy district of New Delhi, came to the United States in early March and has not paid him April’s salary. Vishvas, whose husband works as a garbage collector, said he cleans the house and kitchen for three men in an apartment in Surya Vihar, nearly two kilometers from the neighborhood where he lives. They have not been paid in March and April. Vishvas could not come to speak to them because the police had blocked the road.

Almost half of India’s 476 million workers are self-employed, 36% receive temporary wages and only 17% receive regular wages. Two thirds of them work without a contract and 90% do not receive social security or medical insurance. Blocking order because nCoV makes life even more difficult.

On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued one of the strictest blockades in the world, completely suspending public transport, but did not specify how the government would support the poor. Tens of thousands of migrant workers have left New Delhi, and many agreed to walk hundreds of kilometers to their home cities when factories and companies close.

Then, the government announced the relief measures, providing each citizen with 5 kg of rice / flour for the next three months with the same kg of peas for each family.

In Delhi state, the government announced that it would provide grain to 7.2 million people, equivalent to 40% of the state’s population. But academics and activists say that support is not enough because millions of disadvantaged families who are not in the Public Distribution System (PDS) will be left behind.

The state government said it has distributed meals to 1,635 locations, including public schools and homeless shelters, helping to support the lives of 1.2 million residents. But according to experts, the number of people who need help is many times greater.

Dipa Sinha, an economist at Ambedkar University, notes that PDS cannot cover the entire population of Delhi. “Registered rations in Delhi, like most other states, are based on the 2011 census. Since then, the population has grown, leaving large numbers of the urban poor and immigrants on the list,” Sinha said.

More than three million workers live in daily jobs based on temporary wage jobs in the Indian capital. For many, ration cards, if any, are still stored in the field.

“Almost 70% of Delhi’s population, equivalent to 13 million people, lives in slums. Only 7.2 million people are registered as beneficiaries of food security laws, but there are still 6.5 million People need food support because they don’t have social security, “said Amrita Johri, an activist for the Campaign for Food Rights, a campaign against malnutrition.

In the slums adjacent to the wealthy, middle-class housing areas in Delhi, people, especially women and the elderly, say they are fighting hunger and uncertainty because they cannot find work. .

At a construction site in Anand Niketan, Chanakyapuri, home to many foreign government offices and embassies, Rajkumar Oraon, a worker from central India, said 30 immigrants, including women, women and children, were trapped without food for three days after that the blocking order was issued.

Seema Sardar, right, and Kanika Vishvas, two workers who work in Kapasheda, southwest Delhi. Photo: Al Jazeera.

Seema Sardar, right, and Kanika Vishvas, two workers who work in Kapasheda, southwest Delhi. Photos: Al Jazeera.

“We mixed rice and water and lived for three days. On March 28, after a local teacher found out, he made us a meal with rice and chicken peas, but the food cart was not there every day,” said Oraon . No family on this construction site has ration cards.

Munni Chauhan, a widow in her 60s who works as a thread cutter for garment export companies, walks more than a kilometer a day to the southwest district office office in Delhi to protest the blockade.

She said she ran out of money and food. “I said to myself that if the police wanted to punish me, they should do it. I came to ask the government what I can eat. How do I pay my rent?” Chauhan said angrily.

He confirmed that he had enrolled in the Aadhaar biometric database, a condition required to receive social security benefits, but he still did not receive a ration card.

Social security experts say India is not out of food, so the government has to open reserves to feed the poor.

“The food reserve of the Indian Food Corporation (a state-owned company) currently exceeds 77 million tons, three times more than the safety stock requirement and enough to meet the immediate food needs of millions of poor people,” said Reetika Khera, economist at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.

According to Jasmine Shah of the Delhi non-profit Dialogue and Development Committee (AAP), those without a local government-issued ration card must sign up for the “electronic ticket.”

“More than 1.5 million people registered emails last week and 0.3 million people received rations thanks to the new system,” Shah said.

But many workers said they had difficulty obtaining “electronic tickets” because they needed smartphones, but most of them did not.

In Nilothi, Saira Khatun, a construction worker in her 40s, said she couldn’t register because she didn’t know how to use a smartphone.

According to Jameesa Khatun, a local worker with a $ 27 income from a domestic worker, employees of the digital service provider require $ 4 to help workers sign up. “How can we pay that money when we can’t even buy milk for our children,” she said.

Mohammed Gulzar, an auto mechanic, said he had a smartphone but was unable to register it because last week the site went down due to heavy traffic.

According to Shah, the technical problems have been resolved.

Activist Johri called on the government to build a simpler system that can be easily used by the current crisis.

“Economists recommend urgent measures, and states should avoid trying to be ‘smart’ by setting up complex systems,” Johri said.

Vu Hoang (The O Al Jazeera)

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