Mumbai: Despite of several schemes to provide nutritious food for pregnant women and teenage girls in tribal districts like the Khavti Yojana to prevent malnutrition and other diseases, in a heart-wrenching incident in Palghar district a mother ended her life after killing her three year old daughter as there was no enough food to feed herself and her family. The incident has raised serious questions about effective implementation of these schemes meant for the tribals.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Chitra Wagh herself had visited the Kadvyachimali village in Jawahar taluka in Maharashtra’s Palghar district to meet the family who lost two of its members due to starvation and also to know about the current situation of the schemes run by the state government.
Speaking to thenews21, Wagh said “there are many programs initiated for the betterment of the tribals and poor people to provide food for the poor and tribals but many of them are still working on paper only and ground reality is extremely different.
Since March 2020, the scheme which is meant for providing nutritious rich food for the pregnant women is stopped under the name of lockdown due to coronavirus”.
She further said “recently they have started giving raw ration like rice, dal, eggs, wheat flour and milk to the women but since these items are given to pregnant women to take home and eat, these items are not sufficient at home for their other family members who are also using these items as even they are hungry and as we all knew there is no control on hunger.
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“In reality, this program was set up to provide food to the pregnant woman at Anganwadis where they were served cooked food so they can consume it. But since March this practice has been stopped”, added Chitra Wagh.
The Amrut Aahar Yojana was started in November, 2015 in 16 tribal dominated districts in Maharashtra state. The yojana was set to improve the diet and health of pregnant women and lactating women, Children between 7 months to six years of age.
The tribal areas of Palghar district are extremely impoverished and have reported severe malnutrition for decades. The problem persists despite repeated government interventions. The other schemes like Kishor Vaeen Muli (teenager girl) was started to provide nutritious food to the teenager girl and Khavti Yojana was started but that too was stopped.
Chitra Wagh had tweeted about the issue and also demanded implementation of the Khavti Yojana with immediate effect. “I myself had visited the village there the people were complaining about they not getting enough food or money to buy vegetable or anything. Even the various schemes run by the state government for women, children and teenager girls were stopped”, said Chitra Wagh.
Further she said she had written to the Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray and state’s Women and Child Development ministry, tweeted and demanded to implement on the Khavti Yojana with immediate effect so that the tribals and poor villagers could get enough to eat and no one dies of hunger. Also the Village Child Development Center (VCDC) programme which had started 15 days ago should be continued further.
Under Khavti Yojana workers, villagers get food grains and unemployment allowance. There are 14 tribal-dominated districts in Maharashtra where the government has not started a Khavti scheme yet and the information is still being received.
This scheme is implemented only during the rainy season, because during monsoons tribals do not get any work and hence this budget plan was made. Despite the arrival of monsoon a month ago yet the plan has not been implemented yet.
According to a study, the level estimates suggest that the prevalence of malnutrition among the tribal children aged between 1 and 6 years remained alarmingly high in Palghar district. The proportion of children with stunting, wasting and underweight was 59%, 20% and 53% respectively in 2017.-By Vikas Nag
