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3. Famine in Maharashtra: Eve Hall's 1973 Diary continues

There are so many taboos, so much ignorance about food. Villagers sell eggs (for about 20 paise a dozen) and never give their children one. But with that money they'll buy their children a couple of biscuits because that's a status symbol.

Pawpaws are bursting with vitamins, but no woman will eat one because they're considered "abortive". In fact, eating green pawpaw can cause an abortion. a bad one that ulcerates the womb. But not ripe pawpaws. When people have colds they don't drink anything cold and avoid lime-juice (a cheap fruit here); i.e. they avoid a cheap source of vitamin C.

A very common vegetable called a "drumstick" is high in calcium content and its leaves full of vitamins, but its taboo for pregnant women and children. Eggs, meat and fish are supposed to increase bleeding -- so mothers who have just given birth are forbidden them; no protein, again when they need it most.

Even in good years, infants are badly nourished. As soon as the children are weaned (which just means off breast milk) they are offered foods like chapatis or jawri (sorghum) bread, totally adult food which they are never taught to eat; specially prepared food for infants is quite unknown in the villages, and the children get no milk, only tea.

Of course the women have little enough money for food at the best of times, but through ignorance they make little use of the cheap seasonal vegetables when they are available. Malnourishment is always there--in the drought years it's more obvious because the amount of food is so much less.

Perhaps that's the best thing about this feeding scheme. It's a long- range programme really. It's part of preventative medicine. Of course it's coping with an immediate situation, giving children calories and vitamins enough to keep their health from deteriorating. But even more important, it's teaching mothers that an 18 month old baby, or even younger, can actually sit down and eat food; it's teaching them that milk is important.

Mothers of even obviously malnourished children have such a negative attitude to their toddlers' feeding: "No, he doesn't drink milk...no, he doesn't eat," says the mother. "Has he said no?" asks Miss Jensen angrily. And she takes the child on her lap and proves that he'll drink milk from a cup, that with patience he'll learn to eat porridge and like it.

Miss J., when she started the feeding scheme, drew lines with lime wash along which the kids were supposed to sit -- and she saw some of them eating the lime; they craved the calcium. Kids often eat mud because their bodies crave the minerals and they're anaemic. This carries on the vicious circle of of intestinal worms, which makes them even more anaemic, so they eat more sand...

It always seems to boil down to education. What can you hope for when the average age of a new mother, in the village, is 16? Almost all girls are illiterate in the villages. They often go to the village school for a year or to when they are small and the mother wants them out of the way. But by the time they're seven or eight, they're useful at home and that's the end of their education. Another reason women are so dependent on men for everything. Most men under 25 are at least semi-literate.

Teachers get about 150 rupees a month (if they have an honest paymaster who doesn't keep back 50 rupees for himself). So they aren't exactly high powered educators. Professional people, doctors, nurses, teachers who work in the villages are at the bottom of the list for all facilities and pay. And Gandhi said: If the village dies, India will die!

The feeding programme, says Sujatha, is almost a bribe for the hospital to step into the community, into the village. "If you can help the villagers at a time when they need help most, they will be more ready to accept your ideas of changing health habits later." And some social habits too, I hope!

"It's all a question of how much confidence you can build up -- you can be the best in your field, the most active and untiring worker -- but if you haven't established a rapport, you can do nothing." And that's why the involvement of the village leaders and their active cooperation in the feeding schemes are among the most important aspects of the whole programme.

Famine and drought are accelerating the process of change, are bringing town and village a little closer, have brought some students into contact with the villagers more quickly. But the state machinery still stays very remote.

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