'A fistful of rice with sugar or salt is a standard meal for 10-year-old Asha Yadav these days. On better days, her mother adds some potatoes or dal (lentils) to her plate. A resident of eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district--among the most backward and poorest in the state’s agricultural belt--Asha is among the 95.1 million children whom the lockdown has deprived of midday meals at school. On school days, Asha would get at least one wholesome meal--rice, vegetables, milk and fruit--under the Indian government’s Midday Meal Scheme.
' Thanks to an all-familiar power cut in the evening, it’s pitch dark in Jhandupurva village. A few torch lights from smart phones pierce through the darkness and illuminate the shape of an eight-year-old boy. Thin, frail, head tilted a little to the side, he can barely speak when asked his name. Sandip is so weak that he stutters and pauses between words. The boy has already finished dinner, his mother Vidya said. Boiled rice with milk: about half a litre of milk for the six-member family, including four children. A rice gruel with more water than milk, and salt added to taste.
'A five-year-old Dalit child allegedly died of hunger in Jharkhand’s Latehar district on May 16. Her father, a brick-kiln worker, said he had not been earned any wages during the lockdown. Video testimonies released by activists who visited the child’s home in Hesatu village, show family members, neighbours and community health workers attributing Nimani’s death to hunger. “She died of hunger,” the child’s mother, Kamlawati, can be heard saying in one of the videos. “She had not eaten for four-five days. What can we eat when there is nothing to eat?”...'
'A 35-year-old woman who fell sick while standing in a queue at a shop in Uttar Pradesh’s Badaun district to collect free ration being distributed during lockdown died at a hospital, officials said on Saturday. The incident took place on Friday. Police have sent the body for post-mortem, they said. “We got information about the death of a woman while standing in a queue outside a shop to get rice. The district supply officer has been sent to the spot. The cause of death is not yet clear, and it is being said that she died of heart attack.
'...Ever since the central government announced a day-long curfew on March 22, followed by a 21-day lockdown, starting March 25, to control the spread of coronavirus, social media and news sites are streaming with first-hand accounts of fishermen across the west coast of India throwing away their fresh fish catch. In the absence of ice, there can be no storage. In the absence of exporters and traders, there can be no selling.
'Bhalswa is home to Delhi’s largest open garbage dump – and working-class families who can’t afford to live in a less toxic place. Around noon on Saturday, a queue snaked around a bend in the road leading into the neighbourhood. Food was being distributed inside a community hall by the Shri Shiv Sevak Delhi Mahashakti Group, an organisation that runs kitchens during the annual Amarnath pilgrimage in Kashmir. When we saw people lined up on the road, we started rolling the camera, not realising that the queue was nearly 2 km long...'
'It's been three days since Chandrawati Devi, 32, had anything to eat. Her family of eight in Jharkhand's Garwa district has been starving ever since the lockdown. She is now afraid that if left unattended, they might die out of hunger. "I can't even go out to beg because of the lockdown. We've used up everything we had to feed the children," she says. Resident of Korkoma village, Chandrawati used to work as a daily-wage labourer in a nearby brick kiln.
'Syed Mihraj is an auto driver and since the lockdown began, he has been sitting idle at home. "I have a family of five members to feed and we have run out of essentials at home. I have not been earning for the last 15 days," says the auto driver, whose family does not have a ration card. On Monday, the residents of his locality at Shaheen Nagar in Bismillah Colony of Hyderabad stepped out during the lockdown, demanding they be provided with essential goods as many in the locality may run short of supplies soon.
'After the discovery of a Covi-19 positive case, the entire Worli Koliwada area of Mumbai was declared a containment zone and completely sealed off five days ago. No one was allowed in or out, in a bid to contain the spread of the virus. But after supplies ran out, plight of residents worsened. “We don’t have milk, vegetables or any groceries. What will we feed our children,” asked a resident. “You have to go to a bus stop one kilometer away to get a gas cylinder. Those who have cars and petrol can go bring them, but what about those of us who don’t?
'...On the first day of the national lockdown, on March 25, the Delhi government was prompt to announce that it will enhance the quantity of subsidised food grains given under the National Food Security Act to urban poor, from five kg a month to 7.5 kg. Under the public distribution system, the government provides food rations to 72 lakh residents, which is less than 40 percent of Delhi’s total population of 1.93 crore.
