Thread by @BiIndia

Koili Devi lost her 11-year daughter to starvation after her family’s ration card was cancelled for not being linked to their Aadhaar number. The local authorities, however, claimed that the death of Santoshi Kumari was due to malaria — not hunger.

The fight on whether or not the right to food, as promised by Article 47 of the Indian Constitution, is being impeded by Aadhaar card linkages has now reached the Supreme Court and the bench wants answers from the central government.

Devi maintains that Santoshi had allegedly not eaten for eight days before her death on 28 September 2017. She was even unable to avail the mid-day meal that she usually received at school due to the Durga Puja holidays at the time.

In a video with Right to Campaign activist, Dheeraj Kumar, Devi explains that the local ration dealer refused to give her family rations for six months on the grounds that their ration card had not been linked — or ‘seeded’ — to their Aadhaar card.

Devi’s husband was mentally ill and hence, unable to work. She and her other daughter tried to get some income cutting grass on farms, but that only put around ₹80 to ₹90 in their pocket per week.

Even jobs under India’s employment guarantee scheme, MGNREGA, were not available at the time to provide the family with any kind of disposable income. In the moments before Santoshi lost consciousness, Devi claims that her child asked for rice.

Now, the question isn’t just about Devi’s right to food, but the right of nearly four crore families whose ration cards have allegedly been cancelled, without prior notice, because they were not linked to the country’s biometric identification system -- Aadhaar.

The Supreme Court has taken up the case at a time when the COVID-19 has intensified food insecurity in India. The pandemic has caused a lot of disruption to the local, regional and national food supply chains.

The 2020 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report shows that India retains the dubious distinction of being the country with the largest population of food insecure people.

Overall, on the #GlobalHungerIndex, India currently ranks 94 out of the 107 country database and is in the ‘serious’ hunger category.