Rising hunger stares rural India in the face as the second wave of COVID invades villages

-GaonConnection.com

The second wave of COVID19 hits rural India and the lockdown makes a comeback once again causing loss of livelihoods. People in villages are eating less, and many cannot afford vegetables and pulses. Plain rice and salt, or roti-chutney is what families are eating. But for how long?

Sitting on the front steps of his home floor in Satna district’s Kitha village, 12-year-old Ravi Yadav holds a big thali on his lap. It is lunch time, a baby is crying in the background, probably wanting to eat too. Ravi has a small mound of boiled white rice which he gathers into small portions. Before conveying it to his mouth, he dips the rice into the accompaniment — plain white salt.

Boiled rice and salt is all there is in the young boy’s plate. Not a speck of colour by way of a yellow dal or a green vegetable or any hint of a masala.

About 300 kilometres from Ravi’s village in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, Soni Devi looks at the sparse selection of vegetables she has at her home in Jagarkhera village of Unnao in Uttar Pradesh (UP). She has to cook a meal for five out of this. As she peels the handful of potatoes kept on a plate by her side, and a solitary tomato, the 27-year-old Soni pointed towards a cold drink bottle with a little mustard oil in it and said: “Today, this is all that I have to cook and feed my family of five with”.

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