While food commissioner to the Supreme Court Harsh Mander found no evidence of starvation deaths in the gutted Dantewada village he visited on Wednesday, he said the tribals there are living in conditions of great destitution, akin to starvation. ‘‘There is not even an elementary sign of state presence. No anganwadi, no pensions; the only thing people said they get are food rations once a month,’’ said Mander. The bureaucrat-turned-social activist was...

Many Indians eat poorly. Would a “right to food” help? “LOOK at this muck,” says 35-year-old Pamlesh Yadav, holding up a tin-plate of bilious-yellow grains, a mixture of wheat, rice and mung beans. “It literally sticks in the throat. The children won’t eat it, so we take it home and feed it to the cows.” Mrs Yadav has brought her children to a state-run nursery in Bhindusi village in rural Rajasthan. The...

For a poor boy from the dark heart of tribal India, constable Kartam Surya has done well. An 8th class pass from the village of Misma in South Bastar’s Dantewada district — in the so-called Maoist 'liberated zone' in Chhattisgarh — 26-year-old Surya makes sure he gives his father, a marginal farmer scratching a living from the land, enough money to live in peace and comfort. "Surya is a good son...

Six months ago, when dictrict collector R Prasanna was transferred from Maoist-affected Bijapur to neighbouring Dantewada, local residents held rallies urging him not to leave. Now, as he readies to launch a development plan for Dantewada on April 1, Prasanna finds himself transferred. The collector's transfer comes after days of intense drama during which the district police stood accused of torching nearly 300 homes in three villages and obstructing both...

About four years after its first survey on the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Orissa's hinterlands that showed large-scale defalcation of money, the Delhi-based NGO Centre for Environment and Food Security today in its second performance audit revealed that 67 per cent of very poor Dalit and tribal households in Orissa and UP did not get even a single day of the NREGS employment during previous...