[Reader-list] Reg: Set - 2

[Rakesh Iyer]

Theme: Right to Food

Source: Tehelka

Date: *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 20, Dated May 22, 2010*

Link: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main44.asp?filename=cr220510fire_in.asp

Content:

*Fire In The Belly*

*In the concluding part of her series, **SHRIYA MOHAN** visits Korku tribals
in Madhya Pradesh forced to adopt horrific ritual ‘cures’ to treat
malnutrition*


**

TWO-YEAR-OLD Ram Narayan Ramesh looks like he has a beer belly. However, the
reason his tummy is so swollen that his shirt can’t be done up is severe
malnutrition. He has been sick for more than a year. It is morning in Dabia,
a village in Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa district 200 km from Bhopal. Ram sits
quietly, playing listlessly with a plastic bucket — he has no idea that the
sickle thrust into a fire nearby is for him.

It is time. Ram’s shirt — his only article of clothing — is taken off him.
His mother holds him firmly on her lap, face upwards. A village elder takes
the sickle — now glowing an angry yellow — out of the fire. A few villagers
look on from a distance. Ram senses something is wrong and starts to cry.
His scream of pain and fear can be heard right down the alley when the flat
of the sickle blade is gently, almost lovingly, brought down on his swollen
tummy. Again and again, it is pressed down until Ram has been branded five
times. A look of relief spreads across the faces of the onlookers. The*chachua,
* a ritual treatment for Ram’s sickness, is over.


Ram has kwashiorkor, a type of lifethreatening malnutrition. Its symptoms
are a bulging stomach, pale hands and hair, listlessness and, ironically, an
inability to digest food. He weighs 7.5 kg — 25 percent less than normal for
a boy his age. A few weeks ago, he caught pneumonia and started eating even
less than usual. That’s when his parents decided to put him through chachua.
Ram is part of the Korku tribe. Doggedly superstitious, the Korku carry a
frog from door to door asking for water to be poured on it when rains fail;
pregnant women are given drinking water washed in their husbands’ left legs
to ensure easy childbirth.

But Ram should never have gone through the *chachua* —* anganwadis,* or
primary child care centres and crèches, are operating in Khandwa.*“Anganwadis
* should dispel such superstitions through health awareness, but the workers
rarely do their job well. There’s no monitoring of *anganwadis’* non-food
functions,” say Seema and Prakash, founder-activists of Spandan, an NGO
working to eradicate malnutrition in Khandwa.

Lakshmi Bai, a 28-year-old tribal, squats outside a Nutrition Rehabilitation
Centre (NRC) for acutely malnourished children, housed in the district
hospital. The centres give their wards two weeks of nutritious food; their
mothers are given Rs 200 towards travel expenses and Rs 60 daily towards
lost wages. It is 2 pm and there is no shelter from the searing sun. Akash,
her 45-day-old child is so tiny that he is lost in the folds of her sari.
Wrinkled and wasted, he is too weak even to suckle.

Mother and child travelled three hours by bus and on foot to reach here, but
the doctors said Akash was “not malnourished enough to be admitted.” That
was two hours ago. “These people come here just for the money. The child
looks fine to me,” says the annoyed officer in charge of the NRC. Akash
weighs barely 2 kg when most children his age weigh over 4 kg. Inside the
40-bed facility, 39 beds lie vacant.

POONAM VASKALE is the sup - ervisor for 27* anganwadis* in Khandwa. An MA in
sociology, the 29-year-old is paid by the Ministry of Women and Child
Development’s Integrated Scheme to ensure that no child or mother is left
untreated. She lives in Khandwa and drives her own car. According to
regulations, all reports of malnutrition are to be submitted to her every
month. Vaskale — the only link between policy and ground zero — is charged
with ensuring that severe cases are admitted to the NRC and malnourished
ones are better fed. “It’s hard to visit these places with no transport and
I’m too busy with paperwork to do any real monitoring. This might be an
interesting calling for social workers. For me, it’s just a job. Just one of
many entrance exams I wrote.”

In distant Bhopal, an IAS officer admits off-the-record, “We don’t know how
to monitor our supervisors in remote areas.” During surprise visits, another
ministry insider discovered *anganwadis* didn’t serve food, weigh children
or even stay open. “No one has a solution,” he says grimly. To stop
malnutrition and remove the perceived need for dire rituals like
*chachua, *funds,
plans, trained personnel and facilities need to be in place. They are — but
only on paper.

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

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