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Families in Bihar regularly go to bed with empty stomachs, says development economist
PATNA, India (AlertNet) - Around seventy percent of rural households in India's impoverished eastern state of Bihar are routinely forced to skip meals due to high levels of poverty, a new study has revealed.
The study - by the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi - was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the country's largest welfare scheme, the Public Distribution System (PDS), which aims to target the poor by providing basic food and non-food items at below market prices.
"The level of hunger is quite appalling in Bihar as compared to other Indian states," said development economist Jean Dreze, who led the study which looked at nine states in the country.
"Seventy percent of the total rural populace interviewed told us they had gone to beds with empty stomach several times in the past," Dreze told journalists over the weekend.
Dreze said villagers in other states spoke of hunger levels - 7 percent in Uttar Pradesh; 16 percent in Andhra Pradesh; 17 percent in Chhattisgarh, 9 percent in Orissa; 26 percent in Jharkhand; 36 percent in Rajasthan - but the figures were alarmingly high in Bihar.
India enjoys economic growth of around 8 percent a year, has its own space programme and plans to spend $50 billion to modernise its military over the next five years.
But despite being Asia's third largest economy, India has around 400 million people who live below the poverty line.
Many people, in states like Bihar, are plagued with poverty and chronic food insecurity, further exacerbated by disasters such as floods which annually destroy large swathes of farmland, displacing hundreds of thousands.
Dreze said 1,200 poor families were interviewed, many of whom said they had not eaten pulses, fruits, eggs or meat for several weeks.
The PDS, which is supposed to deliver cheap foods to poor rural homes, also has its flaws, according to the study, which revealed that less than half the food grains - about 45 percent - meant for the poor was actually getting to them.
. Under the PDS, federal authorities buy food grains directly from farmers and then allocate it to state governments, which are responsible for selling it to poor families through a network of shops throughout the country.
But there is widespread corruption and the food is often either siphoned off by various operators - from officials to truck drivers and shopkeepers - and sold on the black market or left to rot in warehouses due to poor management.
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