Prem Malhar said his 50-year-old father died of hunger a few months ago because he did not have the Indian government’s Aadhaar identity card that would have given him access to subsidized food.
At least 14 people have died of starvation in Jharkhand state in eastern India, where the Malhars live, campaigners have said.
They have said that the deaths have occurred since authorities canceled old handwritten government ration cards last year and replaced them with the biometric Aadhaar card to weed out bogus beneficiaries.
Taramani Sahu, an advocate with the Right to Food Campaign, blamed the Jharkhand Government for delays in issuing the Aadhaar cards after 1 million old cards were canceled.
For some who depended on the rations for subsistence, the results were fatal, she said.
In July, three sisters under the age of 10 died of hunger in New Delhi, sparking accusations of government apathy.
The deaths were not linked to possession of the Aadhaar card, but there has been widespread outrage that people are dying of hunger in a country where, according to government and industry data, grains and produce worth 580 billion rupees (US$8.04 billion), or 40 percent of total output, go to waste every year.
Opposition parties have seized on the issue ahead of three big state elections this year and a national election next year, whittling into support for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Modi’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the starvation deaths.
Nishikant Dubey, a BJP lawmaker and a member of a parliamentary panel on the Aadhaar policy, said that linking the card to welfare programs was the best way to check siphoning off funds meant for the poor.
On the deaths, he said: “The opposition is being irresponsible by blowing it out of proportion for political mileage.”
Malhar, who lives in a hut made of twigs, leaves and mud in a hamlet near the town of Ramgarh, said that he and his brother now have the Aadhaar cards, but are still not eligible for subsidized food because of what he called “bureaucratic ineptness.”
“My father died because he couldn’t get his Aadhaar card during his lifetime and I’m not getting food because my Aadhaar card is not linked with the ration shop,” said the 25-year-old, dressed in a red vest and tattered trousers.
Reporters spoke to three ration shop owners in the area who said that they could not give subsidized food to those who did not have Aadhaar cards or failed the biometric identification process.
They said that the Malhars’ cards were not linked to the system, as that had to be done by another government department.
In the state capital, Ranchi, Jharkhand Minister of Food and Civil Supplies Saryu Rai said that he ordered local officials to distribute subsidized food to the poor even if they did not possess the Aadhaar card.
However, campaigners said that those orders have not been transmitted to the shop level.
Rai said it was not clear that the deaths in Jharkhand occurred because of starvation.
Officials have previously said that people died because of illness, not lack of food.
“There must be a system to know what constitutes starvation deaths and I welcome food activists to work with us on this,” Rai said.
Officials in other states have said that they have eased rules that insist on Aadhaar.
Still, advocates claim that the decree has deprived some families of subsidized food in Rajasthan, which is also ruled by the BJP.
Aadhaar is part of an ambitious effort to digitize India’s economy and almost all transactions with the government are dependent on the card, including banking, food subsidies and taxation.
Among other things, the government has said that the use of Aadhaar would plug theft and leakages in the US$23.63 billion-a-year food welfare program that guarantees ultra-cheap rice and wheat to nearly two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people.
Nearly one-third of the food meant for the poor is stolen every year, with intermediaries, traders and government employees colluding to sell the produce in the open market, economists have estimated.
The government has said that nearly 30 million fake and duplicate cards have been weeded out, saving about US$2.35 billion.
However, in a vast nation where many people are unschooled and dirt poor, the Aadhaar system is far from foolproof.
Some of the poor have not enrolled in the program, or their fingerprints do not match those on the database, the largest in the world. Others suffer because the identification system requires functioning electricity, an Internet connection and operational servers, which are not always assured in the India interior.
Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which runs the Aadhaar program, has said that connectivity and power problems do crop up, but added that authorities have been told not to withhold social benefits if people can provide other, acceptable identification.
In the hamlet near Ramgarh, Malhar and other men took shelter under a tree as a light drizzle came down, seeping through the makeshift roofs of their huts.
Malhar lives in the hut with his 22-year-old brother Videshi and four other family members. Their sole possessions are a few utensils and clothes that look like rags.
They subsist on the brothers earning between US$0.70 to US$2.70 per day by picking through trash or working nearby rice paddies.
“We’ve lost our faith in the government, which is responsible for my father’s death,” said Prem Malhar. “The most unfortunate part is that authorities still continue to be callous and their callousness is starving poor families like ours.”
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