Abinash Dash Choudhury - Confusion over Aadhaar afflicts Jharkhand tribal groups; 43% go hungry due to procedural obstacles
The bright sun shining
over the vast idyllic fields of Jharkhand’s Latehar district is only a mirage.
The shadow of hunger sparkles even brighter here. In Sewdhara, a hamlet nestled
deep within the forests, 50-year-old Sonmati Kunwar is sitting under a neem
tree to weave soop — a bamboo basket used for winnowing. A
widow with no land of her own to cultivate, she is dependent on minor forest
produce and casual labour to subsist. Every morning, she leaves her children
and walks into the forests surrounding the village to collect bamboo; dries it
for over a fortnight in the sparing winter sun, and shreds it into pieces to
make it possible to weave.
"If I work for
very long, and without rest, I will complete two baskets in a day," she
explains, her eyes still set on the soop. For the next few days she
will clean the fully woven baskets and dry them. Later, she will carry her
produce to the local market in the block headquarter, about two hours away
from the village, on foot to earn what will be her only cash income, about 150 rupees
a day.
Sonmati lives with her
children, one of whom is physically challenged. They reside in a one-room
house. The doorway leads straight to the dwelling area. The house, made of mud
and tiles, is large enough to hold a a cot and a mat. Their possessions — a few
pair of clothes and some utensils. Sonmati said there is no toilet in their
house and they have to go out to the open fields.
Without a stable
source of income and any safeguards or opportunities for employment, Sonmati
often cannot afford her basic needs of food. "There's nothing to save. We
live in a hand-to-mouth condition. We stay hungry when I cannot go to
work," she said. With her ailing health, it gets difficult for her to work
regularly, she added. To add to her woes, the looming food insecurity and
extreme penury forces her to live in a precarity that can be fatal... read more:
https://www.firstpost.com/india/digital-push-in-jharkhand-goes-awry-anomaly-in-aadhaar-linking-deprives-43-of-tribal-groups-of-schemes-on-food-pension-6146531.htmlMore posts on Aadhaar
