Family awaiting death due to starvation in Kalahandi

The Pioneer, 18th May, 2008
Bijay Dwibedi Bhawanipatna

Even though the State and Central Governments are spending crores of rupees so that nobody stays hungry and if somebody starves the local administration should be taken to task, a green card holder of Bamathana village of Kalahandi district, Biswambar Harijan (59), his wife Nila (50) and their daughter Sukar are starving. Biswambar, who is also ailing, cannot move from one place to another.
Even though he has a BPL card due to his precarious financial condition he fails to procure the rice available under the scheme. If the nieghbours out of mercy give them something to eat they have food or else they starve.
Whatever his wife earns is spend on medicines for Biswambar. Though he had approached the Collector and the BDO for Government assistance his pleas have fallen on deaf ears. The family is likely to be victims of starvation death if the administration does not come to their immediate rescue.
On the intervention of some scribes who took up his case with the panchayat secretary he was sanctioned 10 kg of rice from a PDS dealer after five months. From this glaring example of callousness of the administration, their eagerness to help the starving and downtrodden in one of the poorest districts of the State could be easily imagined, said locals.