Drought-hit India starves as state aid breaks down

The drought bedevilling India has begun to threaten the government's long-standing claim that it can feed the country's growing multitudes.

According to a report yesterday, a dozen children may have died in the past month from starvation in Rajasthan, one of the most drought-blighted states which has a population size similar to Britain.

The problem is not a lack of food – India has a 60 million tonne surplus – but a breakdown in the delivery of government and state aid to hunger-stricken rural areas.

Officials from the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in India meet today to discuss the reports coming out of Rajasthan, where this year's rainfall has been less than a third of the average.

According to The Hindu newspaper, 18 people have died in Rajasthan's Baran district in recent weeks, including 12 children, amid "chronic hunger and deprivation".

The report said residents had begun making chapatis out of wild grass seed because they have nothing else to eat.

Rajasthan state officials have denied that the cause of these deaths was starvation. This has been rejected as a cover-up by their political opponents, some of whom organised a protest rally in the capital, Jaipur, this week.

There is no dispute, however, over the severity of the drought, which has affected 12 states, driving up the price of cattle fodder, causing crop losses and adding to the endemic pollution of the water supply. In Rajasthan, the drought is in its fifth year, blighting thousands of villages. In August, India's farm minister, Ajit Singh, announced that the nation's drought was the worst in more than 15 years. WFP officials said yesterday the outlook had not significantly improved in the past two months.

"The problem is not whether the country has enough food to feed the people, but to what extent the state and central governments are implementing the food delivery systems which they have in place," said Pedro Medrano, the WFP's director for India.

It is a multi-layered crisis. The WFP estimates that at least 200 million of India's one billion population are hungry and "chronically food insecure", which is the highest absolute number of hungry people in the world.

This week, the WFP co-produced a report called the Food Insecurity Atlas of Urban India, which said that more than a third of the children in India's cities suffered from malnutrition, were stunted in their growth and underweight.

The problem is compounded by the migration of the rural poor and illiterate to the overcrowded urban areas, partly as a result of drought. The report called for more resources and support for Indian government programmes aimed at the rural poor.

The issue has resurfaced as negotiators from 185 countries meet in New Delhi for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Their discussions include implementing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which sets targets for cutting carbon emissions worldwide.

Climate disasters have been cited by the UN as a reminder of the consequences of global warming. But the United States' refusal to ratify the Kyoto agreement has weakened the accord, shifting the focus of some countries – including India – from reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to adapting to the changes wrought by global warming.