These children are just a few destined to join the hundreds of AIDS orphans in Manipur, who are swelling in numbers by the day. With parents dead, grandparents generally unable or extremely reluctant to look after them, more and more boys are being thrown out into the streets to join the ranks of street-children, while girls become free domestics in the homes of relatives for a roof over their heads.

For Anna, a 12-year old orphan who spent the last few years tending to her sick parents at the cost of school and education, life at her relatives home is an absolute nightmare. She is engaged in household chores all though the day, with only abuse and harsh words coming her way. Food is the bare minimum, hardly adequate for an infected (HIV positive) person like her. But then, she is grateful for a roof over her head. There are no homes to exclusively house the HIV positive, while existing government homes for orphans are not willing to accommodate them.

Torn asunder by insurgency, deaths, encounters and the like, Manipur is fighting to restore normalcy and peace. Consequently, the government has no time to spare for problems like these even as the AIDS juggernaut sweeps over its verdant land.

If medical experts and international bodies perceive India as a land where the African AIDS tragedy is all set to take off, Manipur is a state where the tragedy has already started showing its first telltale signs of impending disaster. Of the 4.5 million people recorded as HIV +ve in India, a sizeable percentage happen to be in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa, going by the findings of the national sentinel surveillance round.

But the method of transmission in Manipur, unlike as in the other states, is primarily through intravenous drug usage. (In the case of all the other states, unprotected heterosexual contact is the major mode of transmission). This, again, is the product of several factors- including high frustration and unemployment among the youth, Manipurs proximity to the international border and thence the Golden Triangle of Thailand, Laos and Burma through which drug cartels operate, and few successful anti-drug programmes managing to create the necessary awareness among impressionable youngsters.

Be that as it may, the current situation is such that the HIV sero-prevalence rate among female spouses of IDUs stands as high as 44 per cent. As per the findings of the Manipur AIDS Control Society, the sero-positivity rate in Manipur per one million people stands at 15.74 per cent, which is 6 times higher than in Maharashtra, and 20 times higher than in Tamil Nadu. More alarming is the fact that the largest percentages of sero-positive cases happen to be in the 21-30 years (56.97 per cent) and 31-40 years (25.29 per cent) age groups.

Going by the district-wise percentage of HIV positive cases, the capital city of Imphal showed as high a percentage as 68.78 per cent.Around 10 per cent of the population in the 0-5 years age group is estimated by experts to be HIV positive in this state. This means, the state shall soon lose a major proportion of its able-bodied working population to the dread disease. HIV positive children, normally do not survive beyond 12 years of age here. Most of these children die by the time they reach 10 years, given their inability to partake nutritious food. Thus, with more than half its young childbearing generation affected, AIDS shall take its toll of two full generations-comprising parents and their newborn infected children.

And yet, not even half the kind of effort being made in Tamil Nadu or Maharashtra is being put in Manipur, especially in the Kuki tribal populated hill districts where low literacy, lack of awareness and the total absence of AIDS-related health services makes matters worse.

The saddest part is that the Church or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are totally uninterested in the plight of these unfortunates. There is a studied silence on their part. There are several American sponsored Church projects operational in these parts, yet none of these involve the care for and treatment of AIDS patients, says Anthony Haokip who has started the Good Shepherd Mission along with some like-minded friends to work in the Saikul-Molkon area outside Imphal.

Haokip and his friends use their personal savings and spare time to educate peasants in 41 villages of the Saikul-Molkon area on the dangers inherent in intravenous drug usage, the importance of using condoms and the prevention of AIDS. They run a school and clinic in these parts. Anti-AIDS Medicines and health services are also provided through their Good Shepherd Mission.

Many parts in Manipur badly affected by the disease lie in the agricultural outskirts of Imphal and thereabouts. The death of peasants by the droves, hence, spells the onset of a disaster that will curtail food production in this already troubled state. Zimbabwe and other sub-Saharan African nations are today reeling under drought with no one left to tend the farms. It is high time government agencies and NGOs woke up before a similar catastrophe overtakes Manipur in the near future. Charkha Feature

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It is once again the election season when promises are made and achievements are touted. In the face of the shining land are pockets of ugliness, which mar its complexion. The election promise of food for every stomach and employment for all will sound like a cruel joke to Daryav Singh, living in Khajoori village in Vidisha district near Bhopal. Without any means of survival, faced with hunger, he kept feeding his little 2-year-old daughter rotis made with wild sava grass. On the third day, unable to digest it, his dearest child died. It makes one wonder. Why is it that in a state like Madhya Pradesh, which claims that Panchayati Raj is thriving and decision making processes down to village level are characterized by informed and conscious choice that this bleak situation exists?

What is ironical is that there is a provision of surplus grain being kept with the sarpanch for disbursal to the needy. What happens to it and what are the lapses that happen which prevent this from reaching those who are weak, helpless and in dire need? If despite available resources and allocation of these to the needy, people are dying then there is something grossly wrong in the system.

There is a curious condition around the disbursal of the wheat, which debars those who benefit from pension or any welfare scheme. Combine this with the fact that a number of names of the old. Poor and helpless illiterates have been surreptitiously incorporated on paper in welfare schemes without their knowledge or consent. You have a lethal recipe for disaster like Daryav Singhs tragedy. No wonder that despite claims of copious reserves of surplus grain existing in every village one-third of all villagers go hungry to bed?

Is this a localized phenomenon or is it symptomatic of the larger policies impacting the lives of millions? The answer seems to lie in both. A closer study of the situation on the ground reveals that probably the grain never reaches the village in the first place. Those entrusted with the responsibility of distributing it did not dispense with it after all. Just in the last three months, seventeen instances where the Sarpanchs (whose primary duty is social welfare) were found selling the grain (siphoned off from government schemes meant to benefit the poor), on the open market. In this state the much-lauded pro-poor and progressive government policies fall flat on their face not because there are no resources, but because of an unholy alliance of those who profess public duty and infact sacrifice it for private gain.

Advisers to the government opine that the problem is tangled up with the economics of food and that the answers to the food crises lie in two things. Firstly, they try to explain the problem away by saying that despite being poor, the poor do not pick up rations from these shops, and so we do not stock more than we can dispose off. Secondly, the government usually picks up only about 60% of consumption as surplus stocks. The really astounding fact is that in all these years, not a single government has even attempted to find out the reason WHY people in the very throes of poverty are unable or unwilling to access these so called food stocks, meant especially for them? A close analysis of the situation reveals, some ludicrous examples of how the government is almost hell-bent on making the difficult access impossible instead of working towards it. For instance, the ration shop is 9 kilometers away from Nanipura village. Just going to-and-fro would cost Rs.4, defeating the whole purpose of low-priced rations!

Another instance of incredulous planning is that the timings of the shops coincide with the working hours of any poor labourer. Even if the shop remains open and is filled with stocks, it remains a mirage for those who need to toil to earn their daily bread. Such mindless planning and needless suffering is unfortunately the hallmark of an entire department of the Government impacting millions of lives, run without thought and without question. It makes one wonder that how can largesse lace with arsenic be deemed a situation of plenty?

The anguish of the hungry millions and those who speak for them have an election season before them to highlight their woes and expect sympathy and even redressal from those in power. Sadly, this is also tinged with the blame game that political parties excel at. At many such instances when accountability was demanded from the state government, it was pointed out that there was another party in power at the Centre and the election time gave ample scope for deliberately maligning the State Government. In the process, the poor once again is sacrificed at the altar of political maneuverings, conveniently pushing the real issues to the back burner. The poor, already pushed into poverty and hunger by the making and breaking of political alliances which it is powerless to stop or control, is expected further to grapple with the politics of the distribution system.

What is sad is that this combination of callousness, political compulsions throttles several government schemes like the Sampoorna Grahmin Rozgar Yojna (or the SGRY), which claims to grant the poor their basic right to employment. The Scheme provides priority access to both primary education as well as employment for the poor. That is in theory. In reality, at the village level it excludes the very same by reserving the benefits for those who are better off. It is they who benefit from these schemes and are given preference, while the really needy languish and grapple with their helpless and unchanging situation.

Charkha Feature

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On 13th December 2004 at about 1.00 pm, Santosh was assaulted by two boys in the office compound of Assistant Commissioner of Food (North East), when she was guiding some poor and illiterate people on how to get their ration cards made or names added/deleted in ration cards. Santosh is a volunteer with Parivartan, an NGO helping poor people in slums and resettlement colonies in Delhi on how to get their rights from various government agencies using the Delhi Right to Information Act. This is the fifth incidence of violence against Parivartan workers in the last year and a half.

In the last two years, Parivartan has been seeking daily sales registers of the ration shop owners in different parts of Delhi. People in Kalyanpuri, Sundernagari and Seemapuri and some parts of Welcome Colony, Patparganj and R K Puram have not received any rations for the last several years. For instance, the people of Ravidas Camp in Patparganj had not received any grains for the last several years and were repeatedly told by the ration shop owner that the government had stopped sending rations. Verification of these registers, obtained under the Delhi Right to Information Act, has exposed massive quantity of corruption. It is obvious from this that the public distribution system in large parts of Delhi seems to exist only in files.

But the Government of Delhi does not seem to be willing to take stern action against either the ration shop owners or the officials being paid to supervise them. There is documentary evidence of fictitious names in ration shop records and serious discrepancies in the stock registers. Despite complaints and incontrovertible evidence being submitted to the government, the Food Commissioner of Delhi has refused to act under the provisions of the Essential Commodities Act or in accordance with various Supreme Court orders on this matter.

The main reason for the continued violence against Parivartan workers is that this is being projected as an issue between Parivartan and shop owners by officials of the Food Department. Whenever a complaint is made against any shop owner, they are let off by imposing a minor fine. In very grave cases, a few licenses have been cancelled. However, no prosecution is initiated under Essential Commodities Act, which lays down a sentence of seven years of imprisonment for such offences.

When Parivartan met the Chief Minister of Delhi in the first week of November, they were assured that Delhi Government would register FIRs on every complaint of misappropriation of rations. However, the Chief Secretary of Delhi, in his letter dated 6.12.04, has written to the Commissioners of Supreme Court that prosecutions will not be launched in these cases as the rate of conviction is quite low in Delhi and that witnesses turn hostile in most cases. But does this mean that the police should stop registering and investigating cases of crime? Interestingly, while the Chief Secretary mentions that the licenses of shops in these cases have been suspended or cancelled as the investigations of Delhi Government have also confirmed the allegations, he refuses to prosecute the shop owners.

Continued refusal of the Delhi Government to act strongly against unscrupulous shop owners has emboldened them. They treat Parivartan as the sole obstacle in their misdeeds and hence this violence.