By the time Tulsi Bhuyian, 50, of Banwara village received his job card for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme on October 6, he had cremated his wife Gita Devi and his newborn granddaughter.

They died the day before.

The day he got the card, his daughter-in-law Phulkumari too died.

In just two days, the landless Dalit labourer saw three members of the family die. “They were sick and weak. There was nothing to eat in the house for the last three days. There is no work and so no money to buy food,” he said.

Though Sherghati SDO Durgesh Nandan said that these were not hunger deaths and Tulsi’s wife was suffering from TB and daughter-in-law from jaundice, District Magistrate Jitendra Srivastava admitted there have been administrative lapses.

“The mukhiya and the panchayat sewak have been served show-cause notice why job cards were delayed and why no work was done under the Employment Guarantee Scheme,” Srivastava told The Indian Express.

He said he could not yet establish if the deaths were caused by starvation but admitted that the Bhuyian family was “very very poor” and “there may be an element of truth in the allegations”.

No one denies Tulsi Bhuyian’s claim that there was no work, and no food. When officials reached the house after the deaths, they did not find any foodgrain.

Not just him, but six other musahar families of Banwara too had very little to eat. They were given rice and flour by government officials. There was hardly any work available for the last couple of months for 40 families of landless labourers in this village. The NREGS, launched in February, remains a virtual non-starter. The SDO too admitted that there was very little work and too much of poverty.

... contd.