Racing Rats or Racing Food

Caste discrimination percolates down to the food plates for Musahar community in Madhepura district of Bihar reports Neha Dixit

“The mahant of the Shankar Math told me to stay away from ultra-Left people the day I questioned the Collector about the hunger deaths in my village,” recounts Prabhansh Manjhi.

Prabhansh is from the Musahaar community in Madhepura district of Bihar. Estimated to be 2.3 million in the country, they are Mahadalits, one of the lowest in the caste hierarchy. ‘Mus’ means rat in Hindi and ‘ahaar’ means food. Considered as untouchables, they traditionally hunted rats from agricultural fields and ate them and that is why named ‘Musahaars.’ According to the recent census, 93 percent of the community works as agricultural labourers. The Musahar literacy rate is three percent and falls below one percent among women.

Image Courtesy: BBC news

Prabhansh’s family has worked as bonded agricultural labourer for the the last six generations. It is only his father who started working as daily wage labourer that Prabhansh knows that bonded labour is ‘banned’ in India. “This year, I have been without work for at least eight months,” he informs. His five children work alongside him and his wife as rag pickers and earn as little as Rs 25 to Rs 30 a day. The Musahar literacy rate is 3 percent, but falls below 1 percent among women.

According to official figures, 75 percent of the Musahaar children are malnourished. Rahul Ramagundam in his book ‘Defaced Innocence’ on tribal rights mentioned, ‘Their history takes an interesting turn when it is told that, originally being from tribal origin, from perhaps Gumla of Jharkhand, they moved northward as slaves’. The Musahaar were considered as Scheduled tribes before independence. They were integrated under the Scheduled Castes after the 1951 Census. Sixty years later, this change in the category seems as futile tokenism.

Madhepura is situated on the banks of the Kosi River and has often faced its onslaught in the form of floods, famine and drought. Last year, due to intermittent rains, Prabhansh’s five year old son contracted diarrhoea. Like all Musahaar families, Prabhansh too they lives in difficult-to-access areas within the embankment areas of Kosi river, which are flooded for four months a year, on the outskirts of Belokhari village. Not a single family out of the 100 in the ghetto had food grains for more than three days, also because it was non-agriculture season. The entire area was surrounded by water and over 60 children were suffering from diarrhoea. The doctor had adviced his son to eat rice for gradual recovery. “We could not even go out to look for work. Even the money lenders refused to lend me money or grains since I had not paid the previous loan,” he says. A week later, his son died of starvation. “The doctor told me that my son was physically too weak to fight diarrhoea.”

After two more such deaths were reported, the Block Pramukh sent two quintals of rice, another one was provided by a Panchayat member along with some litres of kerosene and mustard oil. This helped in stopping some hunger deaths but no government aid came in still.

There are 1,524 anganwadi centers in Madhepura district. The Integrated Child Development Scheme launched in 1975, aimed at improving the overall health of children below six years of age is implemented through these anganwadi centres.

“The one anganwadi centre in our village does not open whole of the monsoons,” says Prabhansh. Anganwadi centres are supposed to provide supplementary nutrition upto 25 days a month to children below six. “And since we are untouchables, the anganwadi worker, Usha, gives us only the leftovers of the meal after the upper caste children have been fed.” When contacted, Usha remained unavailable for comment.

In Belokhari village, 397 families are entitled to ration as Below Poverty Line families and 90 of them qualify under the Antyodaya scheme to provide grains to the ‘poorest of the poor’ families. According to the panchayat records, out of the 100 families, only 6 have been identified as beneficiaries under the Antyodaya scheme and only one has actually received any ration ever. In June, 2001, BPL ration cards across Bihar, valid from 1997-2006 were cancelled. The new ration cards that were made in 2002 were only distributed as late as 2006. Moreover, the Public Distribution System (PDS) shop is in Chiknatwan village, at least 7 km from Belokhari village. Prabhansh, who managed a ration card only in Octiber last year says, “Atleast half a day’s wage is required to go to the PDS shop. The PDS dealer charges Rs two extra on each kg as transportation cost. ” This is when the government pays the transportation cost separately to the dealers. Even the Supreme Court direction, in 2002, to provide one quintal grain to each panchayat to avoid hunger detaths is yet to be implemented.

Ramesh Singh, the sarpanch of Belokhari village informs, “When we contacted the Block Development Ofiicer, we were told that I should provide grains from my personal resources till they arrange money from the state government to cover the cost of transportation of the grain form block office to the Panchayat office.”

Musahaars, the landless dalits have also been at the receiving end of exploitation by the Kurmi community, classified under Other Backward Castes category. “Each time, we demand ration or question the anganwadi workers or ask for our wages from the agricultural farm owners, they get offended. The Mahant of the Shakar math even call us Maoists and laugh at us saying ‘people who eat rats want to eat halwa-puri’,”tells Prabhansh.

Poverty and malnutrition has its worst impact on children. A high Vitamin D deficiency is also found among them due to minimal intake of vegetables. They are also left out in the polio immunisation drive as polio workers avoid visiting them due to caste discrimination and because their habitation is far from the main village since they are outcasts. The Government of Bihar operates the Mahadalit Mission, which partially funds some programs to expand education and other social welfare programs for the Musahar but they are yet to reach the village. Government's inadequate focus on health schemes meant for grassroots level, coupled with state health functionaries reluctance to enter these mahadalit habitation, has led to severe malnutrition, negligible immunisation and high incidence of malaria and Kala-zar among them.

“August to mid-November is the worst time for us in terms of employment. The only brick kiln in the vicinity has also shut down. My family has been literally living on rice and wild tubers and roots for the last few months,”says Prabhansh. He will leave next week for Punjab with his family as agricultural labourer in sugarcane fields. “Atleast, we will eat two square meals without having to rely on government schemes.”

(This story is second of the six part series on malnutrition. It has been facilitated under the One World-POSHAN fellowship grant.)

Related story: When Patriarchy is a Scheme to Conquer Malnutrition

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