Seven districts in Uttar Pradesh state and six in Madhya Pradesh form Bundelkhand region, which has been grappling with a drought for seven straight years, except the last one. Late rains this year give the impression of vegetation but the crops are underdeveloped and worthless.

In the five villages an ActionAid team visited, villager after villager recounted how officials refuse to sanction petitions for subsidised ration or old age pension cards. The worst-affected government scheme is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that promises rural families 100 days of manual work including digging ponds and building roads.

Two hundred villagers of Akauna in Chhattarpur district have yet to get remuneration for NREGA work they did eight months back. "District officials have still not responded to the questions we put forth in March using the Right to Information Act despite repeated reminders. We had asked how many people got jobs in Akauna from January to March and how much money was spent," says Narendra Sharma of ActionAid.

NREGA wages have also not been paid to eighty villagers of Seelaun in Chhattarpur.

Forced to go
In the absence of jobs, villagers are going away to Delhi and Punjab to find daily wage work.

"Hunger makes us go," says 35-year-old Rambai of Seelaun. "We end up in slums in cities or even roadside huts with plastic roofs," adds 40-year-old Ramlal.

Migrating families are leaving behind the old. Many among the elderly have no choice but to beg.

"I have little to eat, and few clothes. This sari is all that I own," says 80-year-old Dalit woman Jhharokhan Paswan in Chandauli village of Mahoba district. Her husband starved to death last year. Without money, she could not complete his last rites.

A grain bank initiated by Kriti Shodh Samsthan, an ActionAid partner organisation has provided her with 40 kilos of wheat. And a few more starving families have received grains from the bank. But the number of families who desperately need food in Bundelkhand is huge.

Food and water in short supply
"Almost 65% of families are underfed in over 500 villages of Mahoba," says Manoj Kumar of Kriti Shodh Samsthan.

In Banda district, almost half of the children aged three or less are malnourished. According to government records, there are 130,000 malnourished children in Chhattarpur and 600 in Tikamgarh district. But there are many who have not found mention in ineffective anganwadis that provide nutritious mix to toddlers and pregnant women only on paper.

Drinking water is also in short supply. In Mahoba, all the six rivers have gone dry. Women travel long distances to get muddy water from wells, and families drink it after merely straining it through a cloth.

Diarrhoea and fever are common. And government health centres, which are usually located several kilometres away often, do not stock medicines. Five children died of diarrhoea in Seelaun village of Chhattarpur last year.

Kallu Ahirwar, 25-year-old man from Chandauli village of Mahoba came back with a bad liver after years of construction work in Delhi. His mother Phulia Rani says, "He urgently needs help. But where do I get medicines when I don’t have the money for food?"

Text by Anjali/ActionAid
Pictures by Prashanth Vishwanathan/ActionAid