By one estimate 1.4 crore households have been re-designated as Above Poverty Line during the Rajasthan government’s drive to trim the list of PDS beneficiaries.
As the afternoon sun bore down, Naujibai Bhil waited for her turn outside the public grievance office in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district.
“The sarpanch cancelled my red ration card and replaced it with a blue one,” said the adivasi woman from Daang Ke Vaas village, holding her head in her hand. “I can no longer get any wheat in the ration, only kerosene.”
A widow in her 60s, Naujibai Bhil survives on a monthly pension of Rs 500 since farm work is hard to come by at her age. She says she worked under the national rural employment guarantee scheme for two years, earning Rs 3,000 in wages, but no new public works had been initiated in her village in recent months despite the drought-like conditions.
Around Naujibai milled other Bhil adivasis, many with the same grievance.
Rajki Bai and Bagu Bai, both Bhil adivasi women from village Bhilwadi Tola of the same panchayat, also complained that their ration cards which entitled them to subsidised ration had been changed after a period of 15 years. The resultant loss of food entitlements, in a drought year, has pushed the two landless women into the throes of fear and anxiety.
Their stories echo many times over in Rajsamand in central Rajasthan, one of the state’s most arid and poorest districts. The drought-like conditions due to inadequate rain last year was the first blow. The second setback came a few weeks ago, when many beneficiaries were re-designated in public distribution system records from Below Poverty Line to being Above Poverty Line, and their red ration cards exchanged for blue ration cards.
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