Right to FOOD!

I met these kids on the sidelines of tarmac while strolling along the lanes of Mumbai.( I was there last week) I immediately froze them into my camera without even a shard of shame cropping up inside my head even when I was ripping them of their privacy. Little did they know that they even possessed some of it like every other person does? The children took no notice of me as they were busy devouring something which did not have enough decorum to get into the realm of foods. I went closer to them to find a footing in their vicinity. The area inhabiting them was a mere squalor with a dilapidated structure trying to find existence at the mercy of the municipal authorities which can anytime lob them off their being.




    I looked into the bowl of these kids to see what they were gulping (their wobbly knees and sunken eyes compelled me to do so) it somehow appeared to me a mixture of some rice and curry. I found a woman who may have been their mother joining them. After cajoling the woman to talk to me the woman told me that they were eating rice with a curry made from chillies and further explained that they eat this food about 3-4 times a week as they are not entitled to take free ration .i asked her the reason and she seemed quite oblivious to it this time not a speck but complete shame engulfed me with its tentacles breaching my soul and mind. There was no point that I could have go on and simply took immediate leave.



    I enquired about the set of conditions these people were a perpetual scrap of. These people are a part of 80 million poor who are living on less than Rs 56 a day in the urban India. Unfortunately they are not entitled to avail schemes initiated by the government of India because of their itinerant nature. But these are very much the citizens of India and are granted all the fundamental rights and complete possession of how and when to implement them. But I feel to exercise the fundamental rights these people may need another right which the constitution framers forgot to subsume in the league of rights “RIGHT TO FOOD”. I rest my case here.