starvation deaths in india !

This is scandalous that people can starve to death and the government spends billions of dollars on arms and planes, (which the indians against flying iaf keep crashing anyway)

22 starvation deaths reported in MP

TIMES NEWS NETWORK FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 08, 2002 12:40:57 AM ]

BHOPAL: There have been 22 alleged starvation deaths in the Vidisha district, about 90-minute drive from Bhopal, since October 22.

Reports of these deaths, including 12 of children, have come from four tribal villages of Nahariya, Khajuri, Lahadra and Lamanya. But the Madhya Pradesh government denies that these have anything to do with either starvation or malnutrition.

The government refuses to even acknowledge ‘‘unnatural’’ deaths. However, BJP’s MP from Vidisha Shivraj Singh Chauhan brought along over 200 ‘‘starvation victims’’ from the affected tribal hamlets ‘‘to open the eyes of chief minister Digvijay Singh.’’

The villagers allege that while hunger took its toll, no one from the government visited them.

Three months ago, Mallu — a tribal from Nahariya village — lost his job as a labourer when stone cutting was banned in the forests. Coupled with the loss of soyabean crops due to drought, Mallu and his fellow villagers had nothing to eat by mid-September. The situation was similar in other villages of the district.

The villagers survived on dalia made out of sama — a wild grass seed — for several weeks.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…?artid=27603512

Hardly surprising. The last time i heard people were eating rats in Calcutta? Does that not stand no more...

PJ, excellent topic. This is quite untolerable indeed!!!

DD, yeah I was watching a National Geographic Explorer program recently which showed Calcuttans cooking rats over a fire and eating them. Now THAT is sad when the food rations are so scare that these people are forced to resort to eating rats, animals that may carrying fatal diseases such as those that wiped out vast populations of Europe during the Bubonic Plague in the Middle Ages. The case is similar and the concern is definitely there. It is quite unfortunate that in an extremely poor country such as India, even if the disease patterns were a source of knowledge, it really wouldn't make much of a difference to these mal-nourished populations when the only concern for survival is food..in this case, namely, rats!