Adivasi mothers in Attappadi in Kerala’s Palakkad district on Tuesday vowed not to allow Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his Culture Minister KC Joseph enter their settlements unless they apologised for stating that child deaths due to malnutrition were recurring there due to the people’s failure to eat the food provided by the Government and alcoholism of pregnant women.
“Are these Ministers sure that our children are dying because we are drinkingIJ Had they seen us drunk when they came here recentlyIJ I will hit them with my broom if they enter my settlement again,” said Adivasi woman lakshmi of Paloor settlement colony in Attappadi, whose child had died immediately after delivery. As many as 56 children, including newborn babies, have died in the colonies of Attappadi due to malnutrition in the past one-and-a-half year. Several Ministers, including the Chief Minister, had visited the colonies recently and the Government had announced a special package to put an end to the recurrence of the tragedy.
“let that Minister come here again. let him come and meet me. He should prove whether we had been drinking when we were pregnant. Is he sure that Adivasi women here are giving birth to children in the sixth and eighth month of pregnancy because they are drinkingIJ He should not be allowed to come here again,” reiterated lakshmi. Chandy had in an interview with Delhi-based English weekly said that the continuing deaths of children in the tribal settlements of Attappadi were due to the refusal of Adivasis to eat the food the Government had been providing. On Monday, Joseph said alcoholism among the pregnant women was one of the reasons for the tragedy in Attappadi.
Adivasi women in Attappadi contradicted Chandy’s claim that people there were refusing to eat the food provided free of cost to them. They said they were not being given any food through the Anganwadis as the Government was claiming. “Nobody has been giving any food to us. We are eating because we are working,” said an Adivasi woman. After his statement in the interview triggered a controversy, Chandy, instead of withdrawing it, reasserted what he said. He said his statement was based on the feedback he had received from the people of Attappadi. He also claimed that the Government had been providing the food that the Adivasis had preferred but they were not eating it.
It was in the middle of this controversy that KC Joseph came out with his statement that the women of Attappadi were in the clutches of alcoholism and that this was one of the main reasons for the continuing deaths of their children. Even after the Opposition raised objections to this statement, Joseph refused to withdraw it. “What I said is a fact,” he said. Dr Prabhudas, Tribal Health Nodal Officer in Attappadi, also contradicted Joseph’s statement, saying that the Adivasi women in the colonies had not been drinking though men used to do that. The doctor, working in Attappadi for the past 15 years, said that the reason for the recent death of children was nothing but malnutrition.