Poverty kills

The Dhading tragedy

Nepal is one of the 48 United Nations Least Developed Countries (LDCs). To be labeled an LDC, a country has to meet one or more of three key criteria: one, per capita income of under US $1,190; two, human resource weakness (based on nutrition, health, education and adult literacy); and three, economic vulnerability (based on indicators of instability of agricultural production, instability of exports of goods and services, etc). Nepal is supposed to have made great progress in the second criterion: the country, for instance, already meets UN targets on maternal and infant mortality.

The other two areas are more problematic. There is a long way to go before we get anywhere close to per capita income of US $1,190, from the current level of US $730. Since whole industries, the main job creators, have been decimated by severe supply side constraints (power shortage chiefly) and prolonged political instability, the only way the annual income can cross the US $1,000 mark is if our remittance income keeps increasing. Yet one would have to be a utopian to believe remittance will continue to grow at a time our major labor importers are in an economic swoon from slumping oil prices.

The government claims more success in reducing economic vulnerability, the third criterion for graduating to a ‘developing country’. But anecdotal evidence suggests the country struggles just to feed its poor and most vulnerable citizens. This sad reality was brought to the fore by a tragic incident on Monday, when six people died and 17 others were left fighting for their lives after consuming chapatis made from wheat flour laced with a dangerous pesticide.

Santa Bahadur Tamang of Pida-8 in Dhading district, on finding that there was no good grain left in his house, had decided to consume the pesticide-treated wheat grains set aside as seeds for next plantation. He washed the grains, took it to a nearby grinding mill, and brought back the wheat flour for consumption after giving a portion of it to the mill owner, Tilak Bahadur Dong—to deadly consequences for the Tamang and Dong families. Besides the six deaths, five of the 17 taken ill are still in a critical state.

This entirely preventable tragedy highlights two troubling realities about Nepali society. First, the hardships of poor farmer families like Tamang’s whose fortunes are entirely dependent on the elements. After a poor monsoon last year, the family perhaps didn’t make much by sharecropping. Successive governments have failed to ensure that these dirt-poor families have, at bare minimum, access to food stamps to tide over hard times.

The second troubling fact is absence of even basic understanding of the toxicity of dangerous pesticides. For urban middle and upper classes, the notion of ridding pesticide by simple washing might seem laughable. But this kind of basic ignorance is the sad reality for thousands of poor farmer families living below the US $1.25 a day poverty line. While the political leaders seem consumed by lofty ideals of framing the perfect constitution, the people they are meant to serve are dying for the want of basic sustenance.