New Delhi, India – There is a lot in common between Devanti Devi and Soni Devi. Both are in their mid-30s, come from the same district in the eastern state of Bihar, live in the same neighborhood in New Delhi, and their husbands collect garbage in the sprawling capital.
When Soni got married in 2004, her name was added to a government document, called a ration card, which guarantees essential food to the poor at subsidized prices under the Public Distribution System (PDS).
“There was no discomfort. Someone came, filled out our form, took our family photo, and after a few days, they added my name to a joint ration card with my in-laws,” Soni told Al Jazeera.
Last year, amid the coronavirus crisis, Soni also received subsidized food grains in New Delhi for a few months under the government’s One Nation, One Ration Card scheme, which allows a ration card holder from any state to access PDS schemes across the country.
Like Soni, Devanti also inherited a ration card from her in-laws. However, within a few years of her marriage, her family name was removed from the card.
“I remember when my second son was two years old, an official came to our house to ask how many people received food grains here. He told me that ‘people like us’ take the whole ration on behalf of a family,” he told Al Jazeera.
“I didn’t understand what he meant by that sly comment. After a month, when I went to the fair price store, I discovered that our entire family’s name had been cut out with a red pen on the record. The merchant said that our names had been removed from the list.”
While Soni identifies as Verma, a surname often attributed to privileged caste groups among Hindus, Devanti is Dalit, “the former untouchables” falling at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy that have faced discrimination and persecution from privileged caste groups for centuries.
Although both women belong to the same income group, it is telling that Soni lives in a cement house that has a second-hand fridge, an air cooler and a television, while Devanti, a Dalit from Valmiki, lives in a shack with some utensils in the name of belongings.
“We have tried everything to make a ration book. On each visit, we were asked to hand over 300 to 600 rupees ($4-8) as a bribe, a huge amount for us,” he told Al Jazeera.
“But to this day, we don’t have a ration card. Ration cards cannot be made by simply giving bribes. It can only be done if we know an officer of our caste.
‘There is caste prejudice’
There are many such cases where India’s huge PDS scheme never reaches Dalit households because they don’t have documents to prove they are poor.
In many cases, it is simple discrimination when Dalits are not issued the document despite eligibility. In other cases, they are canceled without the families’ consent. Sometimes Dalits, even women, are also defeated and abused when they demand their right to food.
In 2020, five-year-old Dalit Sonia Kumari starved to death in the Agra district of Uttar Pradesh state, sparking widespread outrage in the country.
It was later discovered that another 2,000 Dalit households in Sonia’s village did not have a ration card as they reeled under the financial burden of the pandemic.
The state government, led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), issued a ration card to Sonia’s family just days after she death.
In urban areas, according to the Dalit Bahujan Resource Center, nearly 33 percent of sanitation workers, manual scavengers and waste pickers, professions that primarily involve Dalits, do not have ration cards.
Prashant Kanojia, national chairman of the tribal and dalit wing of the Rashtriya Lok Dal party, says that “the very basis of the caste system in India is rigid hereditary occupation.”
“Who are the rag pickers, the crematoria or the inhabitants of the street? They are mostly Dalits,” he told Al Jazeera. “If they identify Dalits as Dalits, the government won’t be able to turn a blind eye so easily.”
Since coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has not released any official caste data, ignoring demands from Dalits and other marginalized groups.
Al Jazeera approached Indian Food Ministry officials and several BJP spokesmen, but they declined to comment on the matter.
India’s National Food Security Act (NFSA), passed in 2013, gives legal entitlement to the government’s right to food scheme through a specific PDS. On paper, the law guarantees food to all citizens, but not everyone is eligible for rationed food grains.
While the NSFA’s “targeting” of the poor is based on poverty indicators, it does not include caste as a single caste, despite the fact that one in three Dalits is poor, according to a UN poverty index. published in 2018.
Only two-thirds of India’s population have ration cards, according to the 2011 census. Beneficiaries are identified according to criteria that vary from state to state.
In such a scenario, who gets the benefits often depends on the local officials responsible for identification.
caste dynamics play a role here, leaving room for discrimination, activists say.
Dipa Sinha, who teaches economics at New Delhi’s Ambedkar University, says that the “very nature of targeting itself leaves room for caste-based discrimination” in the NSFA.
“Targeting with strict quotas leaves a lot of room for discretion at the local level. Since most of the decision-makers are from the ruling castes, and in the absence of transparency, there is scope for discrimination,” he told Al Jazeera.
Economist Sukhdeo Thorat, who has worked extensively on caste, says there are “general inefficiencies” in government that all the poor have to deal with.
“For example, corruption. However, there is a caste bias, beyond these general inefficiencies, that not all poor people face. Prejudice is reflected in attitude and behavior, but it is not easily quantifiable. That is why Devanti is still fighting for a ration card while Soni Devi has one,” Thorat told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera approached Indian Food Ministry officials and several BJP spokesmen, but they declined to comment on the matter.
‘I am often put last in line’
Rani Devi is 64 years old, according to her Aadhaar card, a state-issued biometric document. It is the only official identity card held by the resident of New Delhi. However, her wrinkled face, her hunched back, and her weak eyesight clearly show that she must be older.
Almost six years ago, Rani lost her son to alcohol poisoning. Her daughter-in-law left her three children with Rani and she never came back. Three years later, Rani also lost her husband. Now the widow also had to fend for her grandchildren, without any source of income.
Poverty is not the only misfortune in Rani’s life. She is also a Valmiki Dalit.
Under NFSA provisions, Rani falls into the category of “poorest of the poor” Indian citizens. Therefore, it is their fundamental right to obtain food grains at subsidized prices. She is also entitled to a widow’s or old-age pension, while her grandchildren are entitled to free school lunches.
However, this is all on paper. In reality, Rani or her grandchildren have not received any of the government schemes mentioned above.
“How many times do we have to request a ration card? I filled out the forms so many times, but has something happened? When the officers know who I am, I am often the last in line,” says Kunal, Rani’s 16-year-old grandson, full of anger.
“I don’t have anyone of my ‘caste’ there. Can you imagine a family from a higher caste going through this?”
Beena Pallical of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) says that the fact that Rani and her grandchildren do not receive ration cards is a “result of caste”.
“It’s not that the Rani doesn’t want or need a ration card, but the system has made it very difficult for a Dalit widow to get her due.”
Chronic hunger has hit Rani’s grandchildren harder than her. Since she was too weak to work, Kunal was forced into child labor at the age of 13. In 2020, Komal, Rani’s eldest granddaughter, got married when she was only 16 years old.
An analysis of three decades of the National Family Health Surveys of India showed how generational malnutrition has been prevalent among Dalit children in India. The study found that while 58 percent of Dalit children were stunted in 1992, that number only dropped to 50 in 2016.
Dalit scholar and activist Suraj Yengde says that the exclusion of Dalits from the PDS leads to “generational hunger” that passes from one generation to another “along with caste”.
“The poverty rate cannot be dissociated from caste. Caste is nothing more than the deprivation of all the resources that can improve life. It ensures that those who are born poor are destined to live and die in poverty,” he told Al Jazeera.
The NFSA has a provision for a food commission to monitor implementation of the law. The commission must have a dalit and a tribal member to ensure adequate representation of the two marginalized communities.
However, the Delhi state government has not yet constituted a food commission and has instead asked the Public Complaints Commission to deal with the NFSA.
“It’s not just Delhi. Multiple states in India have not established food commissions. Along with the lack of funds, there is also a lack of will,” Amrita Johri, an activist associated with the Right to Food campaign, told Al Jazeera.
A Dalit couple, Suryakali and Sushil Kumar, came to New Delhi in 2013 from the Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh in search of work.
They used to return to their villages during harvest seasons. In 2015, the couple were shocked when they learned that their name had been removed from the ration card lists in Pratapgarh.
“When we inquired, we learned that our village chief, who was from the Thakur caste, claimed that we were receiving rations in Delhi, so our names should be removed here,” Suryakali told Al Jazeera.
“He didn’t even ask us or our family for our consent. Just because we are Dalits, he easily removed our name. If we were Thakurs, he would not have dared to do it.
Sushil said she tried everything “from confrontation to pleading” but it didn’t work. “In 2018 I also went to senior officials. Even then my card was not made. When the [coronavirus] closure was announced, it took us by surprise. We had nothing to eat in our house,” she said.
“In 2020, we again applied for the ration card, this time in Delhi. However, two years have passed and there is no response to our requests.”
This report was produced by the author as part of the Global Nutrition and Food Security Reporting Grant offered by the International Center for Journalists and the Eleanor Crook Foundation.