Mainstream Weeklyfor twenty four years people have forgotten the hunger related deaths in Odisha and today it has got started in Kandhamal district of Odisha. It seems that failure of public distraction system has resulted in killing two persons in the district.
Key Words: Hunger, poverty, public distribution system, death
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Introduction:
Within five months of rule in Odisha the Hanuman is dancing in the villages where lanes of thatched houses are there and people are scared of the Hanuman with its tail catching fire which can burn these houses. Perhaps this may be the reason for not having Hanuman temples in Odisha which later invented by the Hindutva forces. Their ration system has been destroyed which resulted in bringing back of geography of hunger in Odisha which resulted in deaths of two Dalit Christians. The tail of Hanuman is marching in the cities of Odisha where rioters led by the Ministers are dancing with the Hanuman and burning the shops and houses of the minorities and the police officer M/S Nath went to arrest some of them which resulted in her transfer. No old age pension coming to the people for which the women are abusing the Hindutva forces. Six lakhs of women members of Mission Shakti are on the streets to protest against the present government as they do not get money for doing their works.
After the super cyclone of 1999 the central government constituted a team who looked into the failure of Public Distribution system as the cyclone affected people could not get ration as it was not working. The findings show that the storage for food grains meant for PDS was in the private hands. Every district level the traders belonging to Marwaris control the storage space and sold the grains in the open market. The central government gave financial allocation for making the storage space to be controlled by the state. Sufferings of people did not matter to these traders who enjoyed their power by selling the goods and services to people by making huge profit . This information given to me by Marwari industrialist from MP who used to live Rayagarh and told me that politicians of Odisha scared of the Marwari whereas in MP they were scared of the politicians. With the coming of Naveen Patnaik this situation got changed and as he is a powerful personality. He saw that the storage did not remain in the hands of Marwaris and the government took over the space and controlled the storage of grains at the district level.
Reasons behind the non working of PDS in Odisha:
What are the reasons behind the collapse of Public Distribution system in Odisha under the present government. It started in a different environment which can explain the failure today. After Naveen Patnaik came to power in 2000 he gave priority to working out ration system in the state where seventy percentages of people lived in hunger and poverty. As story went that many children did not demand food from their mums but they went straight to their homes and put their leg into the Chulla and if fire was there then they asked for food from mum otherwise they drank a glass of water and went to the bed. In our school days I used to go to many friends homes where I found no lunch had been cooked as it is the major meal in the state. As a researcher I did a survey in 1090s that sixty percentages of families in the villages could not tell me what they used to eat for six months. This story got repeated today in a different form. Politics of implementation of PDS lies in the politics of the state. The most of the MLAs of the both the ruling party and opposition party used to share the loot from the selling of food grains under the PDA programme as the Marwaris controlled the business. They used to sell the grains allotted for the PDS and distributed the money among the ruling party MLA and defeated MLA in the form of 60 : 40. This did not work as the Marwaris could not reach Naveen Patnaik as the chief minister as he maintains a distance from his MLAs and the powerful Marwari. This helped him to work out the implementation of PDS in Odisha with the help of some of dedicated civil servants.
Review of literature:
Study conducted by Dreze and Retika Khera on working of PDS in Odisha shows it has improved and food delivery is reaching to those having ration cards.