On 3 August, a person from the Scheduled Tribe (ST) community, residing in Bhula Bheda village, under Belpahari PS of Jhargram district, died of starvation, alleged NGOs working in the area. A fact-finding team from the Right to Food and Work Network, West Bengal visited the area to investigate the incident.

The team spoke to family members of the deceased, Sanjay Sardar, his neighbours, local ration dealer, ASHA workers, Binpur-II block development officer, PA of the block medical officer of health, Belpahari block hospital and district magistrate of Jhargram.

The post-mortem of the deceased was done but the report is yet to be handed over to the kin of Sanjay Sardar. Talking about the death Anuradha Talwar, convener, Right to Food and Work Network, Bengal, said, “We are saying the death is due to starvation as the family has a history of it.

It is really unfortunate that the deceased was not getting benefit of any of the schemes by the state and Centre.” In light of the death, the hunger watch survey has become more relevant. The Hunger Watch II survey in Bengal was conducted with 1,992 households, across 16 districts, for which data collection took place from December 2021 to January 2022. Hunger Watch I showed six months after the lockdown, the hunger situation was grave.

One in three households reported that their income was slashed by half of what it was during pre-lockdown. Hunger Watch-II shows that many of these issues remain even now.

The Right to Food Campaign in association with the Centre for Equity Studies and a number of other networks and organisations conducted the first Hunger Watch survey after the national lockdown in 2020 with three broad objectives.

The survey showed that 78 per cent could not afford cooking gas in the month preceding the survey, while a high proportion of 69 per cent reported to have gone without food for a whole day and 53 per cent reported having had to skip a meal, while half of the respondents surveyed, reported to have slept without eating at least once during the past one month.

The Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) cards, ensuring free ration to the poorest families among the BPL list, were held by only 15 per cent of the respondents. The report also showed that only 2 per cent households surveyed earn more than Rs 15,000 per month from all sources.

Chakradhar Buddha, convener of MGNREGA Sangharsh Morcha, which had earlier toured three districts, said, “We tried to understand what the workers are going through due to non-payment of wages and also because the work has stopped.

After meeting different stakeholders we could see a lot of helplessness in the state and block-level officials on the issue. What has happened in Bengal has never happened in the history of MGNREGA.