Has Corona calamity triggering severe food crisis brought behavioural changes in humans and animals? Sounds strange, but the hapless people and animals left starving after 21-day nationwide lockdown enforced to check Coronavirus spread have been behaving strangely to ensure they get food somehow.
In the past few days, hapless migrant workers left stranded on the deserted streets with nothing to eat and no shelter to stretch their legs have been caught calling up the police officials and hurling choicest abuses at them so that they could be arrested and sent to jail. Their logic is that while in jail they will at least get food and won’t starve.
Police said a youth from Bihar left stranded in Surat town of Gujarat called up Kishanganj district superintendent of police Ashish Kumar over the weekend and started hurling abuses at him. The police officer got surprised at his behaviour but didn’t react.
When he stopped abusing, the police official inquired about his problem to which the youth said he along with seven other friends from Nawada district in Bihar are left stranded in Surat and have nothing to eat. Subsequently, the SP contacted a person through the national association of civil servants (Bihar group) and arranged food and shelter for the starving youths.
“I could understand their pathetic condition. When their anger subsided, I asked about their problems and immediately informed the Nawada district magistrate for necessary action,” the police official said.
A similar incident took place on the streets of Patna last week. A group of policemen were patrolling on the street around midnight in the Kankarbagh locality of the state capital when a youth shouted. “Sir, please arrest me and send me to jail,” the youth pleaded. When the cops asked for the reason behind his request, he said, “At least I will not die from hunger there.”
According to the youth, he had somehow reached Patna by train from the southern city of Chennai where he worked as a daily wager and was going to Bhagalpur, his home district, but he got stuck in Patna as all transport services remained suspended due to lockdown.
Let aside humans beings battling for foods, even hundreds of street dogs surviving on waste foods thrown by hotels and leftover by the city residents too have been behaving strangely due to severe food crisis caused by the lockdown. The hungry streets dogs have been barking furiously these days since they have no food to eat. While all the hotels are shut, people are not coming out of their homes out of fear of being punished by the police as a result of complete lockdown.
“Dogs have turned very aggressive as they are going hungry due to lockdown,” said Bihar Veterinary College’s research director Dr Ravindra Kumar. He said all hotels and restaurants are currently shut due to lockdown. “These hotels used to dump a large amount of waste food on the streets every day which dogs feasted upon. The common residents too have nearly stopped giving left-outs. This has left dogs starving,” explained Dr Kumar.