Questions
Research Questions and Sources
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prepared by
George Kent
Department of Political Science, University of Hawai'i
Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822 U.S.A.
kent@hawaii.edu
This Case Study raises questions about:
- the right to food in India
- poverty and living conditions in India
- living conditions in poor countries
- the human right to food and nutrition worldwide,
- whether countries should or must join to enforce this right
- the global system of human rights and how choices are made re: the enforcement of which human rights.
Steps Students Might to Begin in the Case Study:
- First try answering the Propositions Exercise
- Then read Drought and Death and view the picture from A Farm Crisis and Suicides
- .Read The Human Right to Food in India, then choose which of the follow-up questions you will answer, and begin exploring the online websites provided for your research. Please recognize that you are free to explore websites other than those provided. Develop full written answers that have supporting examples and a fair consideration of alternate viewpoints and counter-examples.
A second set of questions and websites follows for those who want to explore the larger issues of :
- The foundations of human rights,
- The human right to adequate food and nutrition.
- Cultural foundations of Human rights.
- International obligations.
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Food Rights in India To help get you started, here is a list of short statements or propositions on food rights. Please decide whether you agree or disagree with each. Please write down your answers and feel free to write brief explanations as well. When you"re finished, you can compare your answers. It may also be interesting for you to answer these questions again after you have completed the Case Study. Propositions on Food Rights True or False??
Case Study
Veera Hona (29), Mala (65) and Rota (75) of Medi panchayat in Kotada tehsil of Udaipur district, whose lives hunger claimed in February. The district administration was quick to claim that the death of these persons, all belonging to the Gamar tribe, was not owing to any famine. What unfolds is a tale of growing unemployment, vanishing livelihoods, mounting debts, dwindling food resources and falling nutrition levels. This is the stark profile of poverty and hunger that you would come across anywhere in the southern and western parts of Rajasthan where acute famine conditions prevail as a result of three successive years of drought. Veera of Nakola village, mortgaged his only piece of land, which measured just one bigha (one bigha is an extent of one-third to two-thirds of an acre), when it stopped yielding anything. Early this year he could find no work in neighbouring Gujarat where he goes in search of work during what is for him the lean labour season every year. With no money for the return trip, Veera trekked 70 km to reach Nakola on February 2, only to see an empty barn and his wife and three children with empty stomachs. With no work in the village - or in the fields or at government relief sites, where relief work was yet to start - and not enough forests around to sustain the village, he was worried about his family. For two days he and his family tried to live off kajari seeds which they gathered from the forests and sold to the local shopkeepers. Soon, there were no more of these seeds, from which oil is extracted to make soap. They were again left with no work and hence no food. The children kept crying for food. Unable to stand this agony, Veera committed suicide by consuming a pesticide. In accordance with the local tribal custom, beside his grave were kept for a few days two earthen cups, one filled with offerings of a little rice and another with milk, both luxuries for Veera when alive. In the case of Mala of Medi village, drought and illness together forced him to mortgage two years ago the only piece of land (two bighas) in his possession. Last year his child's illness saw his debt mount by Rs. 2,000 more. Malnutrition claimed the lives of three of his children, aged between one year and five years, in the last five years. Out of his four surviving children, Makana (14) has a walking disability. With no crop in the field and no employment, Makana left for Gujarat. When he could find no work there, he trekked 80 km to return home. Mala had also gone to Gujarat on an errand and returned disappointed only a fortnight before his son's home-coming. By then Mala, who had six dependents, had spent all the Rs.600 he had received in December as arrears of his old-age pension. He had no cash, food or work. As if it were not enough, he had a swollen foot. Left with no option, he became a beggar. His wife Jeeja collected firewood from the fast-shrinking forests, and that fetched her Rs.10 or 15 once in two or three days, barely enough for the family to prepare corn gruel (raabri) on alternate days. Meanwhile, the swelling on Mala's foot worsened, and he fell ill. He died on February 10. The story of Rota Gamar of Koldara is no different. He and wife Jeera lived with their nephew Limba and his family. Driven by the drought, Limba migrated with his family to Gujarat around Deepavali last year. He left behind his 10-year-old daughter to take care of the old couple. Suffering from polio in one foot, Rota had a mule to take him to his kuccha house on the hill. The mule was the first to fall victim to the drought. Its death forced Rota to live in a one-room thatched hut at the foot of the hill. Rota's food stocks exhausted, and he could get no help from Limba. With a meagre daily earning of Rs.20-25, which he had to share with five family members, Limba could hardly send any money to his daughter and the old couple back home. Rota ran out of money when he had spent the old age pension of Rs.100 he had drawn in January. (That Rota had to spend Rs.50 every time he had to visit the teshil headquarters, 25 km away, to receive this Rs.100 is another story.) He turned a beggar, but could not get enough to eat. He fell ill, and died on February 10. Like their deaths, the belongings as well as the debts the three persons left behind reveal a pattern. Their belongings, like those of many of their fellow villagers, were a single-room kuccha hut, a rickety charpoy (cot), a rag for the whole family to sleep on, one or two earthen pots, one or two aluminium or stainless steel utensils, a grinding stone and a slab, a small structure made of bamboo and mud to store foodgrain, a stone chakki, and a bigha or two of mortgaged land. The poorest of the three, Rota, had even less. All three left behind debts running to not less than Rs. 10,000. Their debts too shared a pattern with those of most others in their villages. But for three government employees (two teachers and a postman) and a handful of non-tribal shopkeepers, almost everyone in the three villages has incurred a debt that ranges from Rs.10,000 to Rs. 40,000. The loans are of three kinds: sarkars, sahukars and sunars, that is, from the government (mostly from cooperative land banks) for digging wells and for other similar capital investments), from moneylenders (usually local shopkeepers), for mostly health reasons, and from pawn brokers (against their women's jewellery), as a last resort. This same April, 2001 issue of Frontline has a lead article entitled "A Farm Crisis and Suicides", by Parvathi Menon, which tells about the forty-one cases of suicides that were reported in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh between September and November 2000. Devarlu Balanna and his wife, from Marthadu village in Anantapur district, with the photograph of their son Devarlu Rajanna, who committed suicide last October. THE CASE IN INDIA"S SUPREME COURT While extreme hunger is always there in India, natural disasters such as floods and droughts bring more hunger because so many of the people are so vulnerable, living at the edge of hunger all the time. Like many other developing countries, India has a wide variety of feeding programs, food subsidies, and other sorts of "schemes" to alleviate hunger, but somehow these programs are never quite enough. Lacking political power, marginalized people stay marginalized despite such efforts to help them. They can be empowered, however, through clear acknowledgment of their human rights. People have a right to adequate food. The following article on "The Human Right to Food in India" tells the story of the controversy over emerging recognition of this right. Over the centuries, many millions of people have gone hungry in India. Now, for the first time, the claim has been made that the government has a positive obligation to do something enforce this right, and if government does not meet its obligation, it can be called to account in the nation"s courts. For further exploration of this subject before answering questions, click here to read THE HUMAN RIGHT TO FOOD IN INDIA. PLEASE NOTE. At the end of the article The Human right to Food in India you will find an extensive list of websites to explore further your questions about the right to food. **************************** |
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