[Reader-list] Reg: Set - 2

[Rakesh Iyer]

Theme: Right to Food

Source: Tehelka

Date: *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 19, Dated May 15, 2010*

Link: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main44.asp?filename=cr150510not_a.asp

Content:

*Not A Lion In Sight*

*Losing homes to Asiatic lions that never arrived is enough to drive Saharia
tribes towards hunger and malnutrition, finds **SHRIYA MOHAN*


**

THE BROTHERS are named Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol. But their similarity to
the Bollywood Deol family ends there. Two-year-old ‘Bobbeed yol’, as he is
called, has straggly, light brown hair and loose skin forms wrinkles on his
stickthin limbs. He squats listlessly on a cement parapet, watching older
boys play. His elder brother, five-year-old ‘Sunneed yol’, is malnourished
too, and sick with pneumonia — for the nth time in his life. Bobby and Sunny
live in Naya Palpur, a resettled village in Sheopur district about 450 km
from Bhopal. Their entire village was displaced from their original home in
Kuno sanctuary.

The story has an odd twist. Gujarat’s Gir sanctuary is the world’s last
refuge for 400-odd endangered Asiatic lions. For decades, however, Gujarat
has stubbornly refused to transfer lions from Gir to the Kuno sanctuary in
neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. In 1995, Saharias from 24 villages were
relocated to make way for the lions that never arrived. Bobby Deol and Sunny
Deol's family cultivate mustard on five acres of dry land; the annual
20-quintal yield translates into Rs 10,000. With the children being sick
with pneumonia or diarrhoea every other month, and forced dependency on
private doctors, the family struggles to get by. The children are trapped in
a vicious cycle. A weak immune system that makes them prone to infection and
diseases that affect their ability to eat and digest food leaving them more
malnourished than before.

Traditional hunter gatherers from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, Saharias are
classified as a “primitive” tribal community in India. In 2008, the Madhya
Pradesh Government set aside Rs 6.5 crore in a five-year plan for the
development of Saharias. The funds were marked for education, health,
nutrition, drinking water, agriculture, housing and employment. But Sheopur
and Shivpuri, districts dominated by Saharias, still have a malnutrition
record of 51 percent.

In Shivpuri district, Saharias are being displaced by two upcoming projects
— a 1,60,000 hectare Madikheda dam and the Madhav National Park where homes
of Saharia families will make way for tall grass for wild deer. The families
have been given stony dry land and Rs 50,000 for an acre of land, as
compensation for relocation.

Despite all odds, Shivpuri has got one thing right; the district has nine
Nutritional Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) — government centres where
malnourished children are taken care of — one in every block. For any family
in the district, the nearest NRC is less than an hour away. The NRCs here
also don’t follow the 14-day admittance period like others across the state.
Children stay till they achieve a basic level of normalcy in weight and
health.

And yet, controlling malnutrition in these parts isn’t easy. Constant
displacement has meant that the Saharias are afforded no opportunity to
think beyond the immediate, an immediate that unfortunately does not even
include their children’s lives.

*(Shriya Mohan is a media fellow of the National Foundation for India)*

*WRITER’S EMAIL*
mohan.shriya at gmail.com