* A ground report reveals the rural landless poor are struggling to find work, and cutting down on staple food items
* The govt needs to urgently expand the food safety net as it is sitting on surplus foodgrain stocks. The rural jobs scheme needs more funding and prompt payments
CHITRAKOOT/ PANNA: It is well past 2 in the afternoon, but the wall clock hanging in Seema’s bare room is stuck at 10.15am. But that is not the reason why this mother of a month-old child, is yet to have a morsel of food. A meal—rotis or wheat flatbread, and a deep red and watery curry with potatoes floating in it—has been cooked. But Seema is waiting for her husband to get back home. By eating late, she will “save" a meal. That will help buy some milk for her other child, a two-year-old girl.
The thatched roof of the single-room mud house in Dafai, a village in Chitrakoot district of Uttar Pradesh, is pockmarked with holes. Seema’s husband Sanjay, a graduate, works as a casual worker in and around the village. But it has been difficult to find work of late. At times Sanjay earns just ?100 a day working as a porter or a construction labourer; on most days even that paltry sum eludes him. Therefore, the family’s spending on food was cut drastically.
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