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Delhi's starved sisters remained locked up for 6 years
An eerie
silence shrouded the Gupta household in north Delhi's Rohini where
two sisters had locked themselves for the last over six years.
Traumatised and frightened to face the world since their father's
death, the sisters were "starving and smelling" when a medical
emergency team rescued them from their home Saturday.
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Chennai:
This is a chilling story of two sisters who were starving for six
years due to want of money. Their family, neighbors, community
locality, state and the nation all hang their heads in shame being
a party to their slow dying process.
What a irony of a nation, that brand
itself as “shining” and whose Supreme Court have given directive
that no one should die for want of food or of hunger in this
country.
Two malnourished sisters, who did
not step out of their house for the past six years, were rescued
by a NGO from their home in Rohini sector 8, in the national
capital region and got them admitted to a government hospital in
Delhi.
They were found immensely
dehydrated, in tattered clothes, with disheveled hair and had not
taken bath since long when the NGO opened their house. They had
wounds all over their body and they were bed-sores on their back
and feet.
According to sources, Mamta Gupta (30), who is divorcee and has a
teenaged son and her sister Neerja (28) stayed with their
65-year-old mother. The sisters were suffering from some
psychological disorder.
The condition of the sisters also had to do with the family's
financial situation which had deteriorated soon after their father
passed away a decade ago. Some relatives used to help them
financially as they did not have any source of income but that was
not enough.
It was on a distress call from the
NGO that brought a Centralized Accident & Trauma Service (CATS)
ambulance to their residence. The sisters were so frail that the
para-medical staffs were scared of lift them by hand for fear that
their bones could snap or the skin could peel off. It was
impossible to measure their blood pressure.
While Neerja was still in her senses, Mamata was unconscious and
had almost been reduced to a skeleton. She weighed just 20 kilos.
Doctors attending Mamata said she was severely starved and her
body is covered with bed sores and fungal infection. The
functioning of her organs like heart, kidney and liver has also
been affected due to prolonged starvation. She can't move her body
and her joints were stiff because she had been bedridden for
several months and a chance of her survival was less.
The case of the two malnourished sisters is strikingly similar to
the case reported in April 2011, when two sisters in their forties
were rescued from Noida near New Delhi where they had locked
themselves in for months after their father’s death and were found
starving. While the Rohni sisters lived with their mother and
teenage boy, the Noida sisters were living alone.
These cases open up the debate on social security net for the
citizens of the country. There is something like old age pension,
which is again being grossly misused, there is nothing to help the
common citizens of the country.
Late president R. Venkataraman had taken up this issue after his
retirement but his lone voice could not sustain the campaign of
providing social security to citizens of the country. As a result
even in the 21st century, the tag of ‘Hungry India; lingers on.
Malnutrition accounts for nearly 50% of child deaths in India
.According to the latest report on the state of food insecurity in
rural India, more than 1.5 million children are at risk of
becoming malnourished because of rising global food prices.
The United Nations World Food Programme report points more than
27% of the world’s undernourished population lives in India while
43% of children (under 5 years) in the country are underweight.
The figure is among the highest in the world.
The proportion of stunted children (under-5) at 48% is again among
the highest in the world. Every second child in the country is
stunted, according to the health ministry’s figures.
Imagine this with the report that ‘10,688 lakh tones of food
grains were found damaged in FCI depots, enough to feed over six
lakh people for over 10 years.’ Food worth nearly Rs 60,000 crore
is being destroyed every year due to poor and insufficient storage
facilities. The government spends about Rs 2.6 crore of the tax
payers’ money to get rid of food grain that has rotted during
storage.
The failure does not lie in any operational inability to produce
more food, but a far reaching failure to make the poor of the
country able to afford enough food.
Hunger is primarily a problem of
general poverty, and thus overall economic growth and its
distributional pattern cannot but be important in solving the
hunger problem. It is important to pay attention to employment
opportunities and other ways of acquiring economic means. It is
also important to control food prices as it influences people’s
lives.
It is shameful that in a country where so many people go hungry it
is left to the media and other agencies to highlight the pathetic
state of affairs. Right to food should be made the fundament right
in the country.
Syed Ali Mujtaba is a
journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba@yahoo.com
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