Coronavirus: Millions in India facing hunger during COVID-19 lockdown measures

Millions of Indians who have been without work for weeks are facing hunger as the country battles the coronavirus outbreak.

The most vulnerable are daily wage earners, contract workers and migrant labourers who have been without work and earnings since the country was shut down on 25 March.

It comes as World Food Programme analysis suggests an additional 130 million people around the world “could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020” as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Programme, has warned the UN Security Council that the world is “on the brink of a hunger pandemic” that could lead to “multiple famines of biblical proportions”.

Hundreds of men, women and their children have been waiting in the blazing sun for a precious meal in Gurgaon on the outskirts of the Indian national capital Delhi.

Mujibur, a labourer, is there to pick up a hot meal for his wife Mariam who gave birth to a baby boy during the shutdown.

It is past midday and this is the first meal she will eat until dinner time.

She said: “It’s a big problem for me, there is no food, no money and I have a baby, I am very worried about him. Whatever is given to us that’s all I eat the whole day.”

The biggest problem they all face is the availability of food and rations.

For weeks they have been without any work and most have exhausted their savings.

The shutdown has stripped them of everything including their dignity.

Hundreds here live in clusters of one-room homes, some even in tin sheds and huts made of plastic sheets and bamboo.

They are labourers, masons, drivers, maids, cleaners, guards and vegetable sellers that cater to thousands of homes and high-rise apartments that dot this cyber city.

Lalla Bai, a daily wage labourer, left her two children in the village to come here to earn a living.

Desperate to go back home, she said: “We are angry with the government, they are starving us. Neither are they killing us nor are they allowing us to live. We are stuck in the middle. I cannot go back to my children.”

She insists we come inside her bamboo and plastic sheeting hut.

It’s stifling as the temperature is already touching 40C (104F) and this is just the beginning of the long summer.

Social distancing is a privilege these people cannot afford.

 

 

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