Fighting against COVID-19 and all odds
Ranjana Das of Oxfam India’s Bihar office writes how the humanitarian relief work in the state has been akin to running a hurdle race, blindfolded.
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It has been over a month since we began our COVID-19 response in Bihar. Until now we have distributed dry ration kits to 2070 families in 10 slums in Patna and in the neighbouring areas of Phulwarisharif, Parsa and Maner — that is food for over 10000 people — and given nearly 1900 PPE and safety kits; 1400 PPE kits to the State Health Society for distribution among the frontline health workers in the state. We worked in 5 districts Madhubani, Kishanganj, Patna, Sitamarhi and Muzaffarpur. Our first response was the mass awareness programme in Madhubani.
Writing about the relief operations now seems like it has been a cakewalk. But it was anything but that.
The 21-day lockdown was imposed on 25 March. Oxfam India has prided itself as a humanitarian agency for decades, and this was no different. While we were rearing to go, the Bihar government wasn’t. In the beginning the delayed reaction and response of the state could have been attributed to caution due to the unknown, novel nature of the pandemic. The pandemic was, and remains, an unknown territory and the government didn’t want to take any chances. But as the days progressed the stance of the state government started feeling more antagonistic.
In Bihar, Oxfam India wanted to start with mass awareness on physical distancing and sanitation and hygiene, primarily washing hands. But the state made it clear that unless the Health department approved, no message would be deemed fit to be disseminated. So though the lockdown began on 25 March, we could only start by 31 March.
Our partner organisation in Madhubani, Manav Vikas Sansthan used the IEC material disseminated by the health department and displayed posters with every information on COVID-19 on a SUV-turned-Caravan and drove around villages. This was accompanied by miking so that the message could reach people in their homes, without having them to come out. Precautions were taken to maintain all protocol of physical distancing. We did this in 10 villages in Madhepur block in Madhubani district.
It is worth mentioning here that till date the state government had issued no advisory or guidelines to rope in local NGOs to hold awareness drives, which is one of the most effective ways of intervention. In fact, a similar exercise in Gorakhpur gained the administration’s attention who then wanted it replicated in other districts in UP. Our team in UP along with the UP State Disaster Management Authority later conducted the mass awareness ‘mobile van campaign’ in Bahraich and Lucknow.
Food distribution remained the other critical and contentious issue. In the initial two to three days after the lockdown began, when it began to become clear that work and wages are going to get affected, local NGOs with the support of the Bihar State Disaster Management Authority (BSDMA) distributed cooked food among the homeless in the capital. NGOs such as ours could not move with either dry ration or cooked food because of two reasons — one, the lockdown and second, the rumour that the state government will not allow any NGO to work unless we donated to the Relief Commissioner of Bihar. So we lay low for a while.
The very nature of the pandemic has made this humanitarian response unique and very challenging. It’s like running a hurdle race, blindfolded. With no clear indication of engagement with the state government, we approached the State Health Society to understand what and how we could help. By the end of the meeting we had a letter from the state health department (3 April), requesting us for safety kits for their frontline health workers and community in five districts and for the State Health Society.
In the meantime, the civil society received some respite in Amitabh Kant’s letter on 30 March. The Niti Aayog chairperson appealed with the CSOs in India to come forward and respond to COVID-19. The letter specifically mentioned providing food (cooked and dry ration) and essential and WASH services to people in need and mostly migrant workers.
Bihar, along with UP, has the largest number of migrant workers. According to 2011 Census, 20.9 million people migrated from these two states; this is 37% of the total number of inter-state migrants.[1] So when the lockdown was announced, factories shut down, and workers packed up and started the arduous journey back home, it was clear that Bihar was going to see millions of workers returning home. And when they would, they would mostly be jobless, with little savings to fall back on, and a bleak future. Bihar needed to be prepared for this. It still does.
The Niti Aayog letter read with Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla’s, letter issued a day earlier (on 29 March) meant that we could move safety kits — that included personal protective equipment (PPE), masks, sanitisers, gloves, and goggles — and dry ration kits. The letter allowed the transportation of all goods and groceries.
Despite the orders, transporters were very reluctant given the fact that truckers were required to stay in quarantine for 15 days once they returned from a different state. Once again our partners on the ground Adithi (Patna and Sitamarhi), MVS (Madhubani) and RAHAT (Kishangunj) were relentless — they managed permissions from their district administrations, collected orders and passes for their movement and transportation so that they were not stopped or harassed at any point.
Just when we thought everything was falling into place, we received a letter issued by the DM of Darbhanga (on 1 April) stating that the Bihar Chief Minister had announced that no NGO will be allowed to provide food — cooked or dry ration — to those suspected of COVID-19 or even to those who were in need of food. Every effort had to be channelised through the government.
So when I said antagonistic, this is what I meant. In the beginning of the lockdown, Bihar government issued an order that food through PDS would be distributed to only those with a ration card. According to a Down To Earth report (22 April), there are 1.68 crore ration card holders in Bihar and a majority of them are yet to receive the 5 kg rice and 1 kg pulses promised to them.[2] In addition, due to reports of large scale irregularities in the distribution of the PDS during COVID-19, AADHAR-based identification has been made mandatory which is proving to be a huge stumbling block.[3]
Official report shows that around 15% living in rural areas and 28% living in the urban areas in Bihar do not have ration cards.[4] Our response aimed to reach out to exactly this section of the society — the slum dwellers, the daily wagers, rag pickers, and the homeless. An assessment by Koshish Charitable Trust across 18 slums in Patna showed how the lockdown had left large sections of these areas in complete distress and the loss of daily wages was leading to a food crisis. The April 1 order curbing civil society participation, clubbed with the PDS rules shows nothing but the state’s apathy towards millions of its own people.
Oxfam India is known for its humanitarian work and so it was a no-brainer that we would move ahead with the relief work. Armed with the two letters from the Centre by the end of the first week in April, we had reached out to 100 families in Madhepur with dry ration kits. The 100 included those families who did not have a ration card and were not eligible to get ration from the PDS shops, and those who were stranded at the Madhubani station, unable to leave for their villages due to the lockdown. And that was just the first week.
This has not been the first time (last year’s floods are a case in point) that the state has remained mum on engaging with the civil society. This pandemic is perhaps a good time for the state to start engaging with us and charting out ways of working together to reach the poorest of the poor. They must realise that credible NGOs and CSOs can, and do, reach to pockets and population that remain in the blindspot of government policies.
With the extension of the lockdown, the adverse impacts — economic and social — of the pandemic is yet to unfold. The only way to fight COVID-19 is to join forces. And we must do it soon.
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[1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/migration-from-up-bihar-disproportionately-high/story-K3WAio8TrrvBhd22VbAPLN.html
[2] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/covid-19-bihar-govt-cancels-licences-of-36-pds-shops-70626
[3] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/covid-19-thousands-pushed-to-starvation-due-to-faulty-biometric-system-in-bihar-70681
[4] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/covid-19-thousands-pushed-to-starvation-due-to-faulty-biometric-system-in-bihar-70681
