The death of two women caused by consumption of mango kernel gruel last week in Kandhamal district and the Odisha government’s predictable response encapsulates one thing—the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In 2001, Rayagada district’s Kashipur block had jumped to national headlines for 19 such fatalities. After all these years, the villain has remained the same—the humble porridge made of dried mango kernels.
The narratives by two governments 23 years apart have an uncanny similarity too: tribal communities’ dietary practices and food poisoning.
Amid an exchange of barbs between the ruling BJP and opposition parties, one thing is clear: the government of the day is not willing to see it beyond the linear explanation of the gruel’s toxicity.
When starvation deaths rocked Odisha in the early 2000s, the BJD-BJP combine was new to power. Abject poverty in the erstwhile KBK region prompted the then chief minister Naveen Patnaik to launch Rs 1-a-kg rice scheme that helped ameliorate the food security crisis to a large extent.
But a chronic regional disparity lingered, as did the shadow of malnutrition evidenced in poor human development indices in the tribal-dominated districts of Nuapada, Kalahandi, Jajpur and Nabarangpur in subsequent years.
The Mohan Majhi government has a mandate to change the course of development and model of governance. Its food supplies and consumer welfare department is not new to governance.
It can ensure that essential items covered by the public distribution system reach the beneficiaries on time. The department’s minister has acknowledged that the rice quota for the October-December cycle was not availed of on time in the Kandhamal village where the deaths were reported.
The department has been helmed by bureaucrats for a record number of years, but no one has been deemed answerable for the lapses. This must change. The district administration also has a duty to explain the disruption of supply to some remote pockets that remain cut off during the monsoon, exacerbating the food crisis.
The Kandhamal episode is a grim reminder of the socio-economic condition of the tribals, the state’s most vulnerable segment. It’s also a jolt to get out of denial and seek course correction, because mango kernel gruel is not a viable choice.
Timely supply of foodgrains to the poorest should not be the only objective; ensuring access to adequate nutrition must be the overarching goal.