"Everybody Is Hungry"

The whims of weather have always bedeviled India's food production. This year the drought that appears every five years with devastating regularity has struck again, sweeping across India from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea and north to the foothills of the Himalayas. Across the vast Deccan Plateau, where 50 million people live, crops are stunted, cattle emaciated, and people weak and exhausted from hunger. Thanks to astute stockpiling by the government--and to the Green Revolution that has helped to double food production in the past decade--India for the first time in centuries has enough food stocks to ward off mass starvation. But having ample food on hand is only half the battle. There is also the mammoth task of distributing supplies to the needy in remote rural villages--a project in which New Delhi has been less successful. The drought, moreover, has brought in its train a host of other problems. Small businesses have been wiped out. Drinking water is so scarce that it has to be hauled in by oil trucks. Thousands of unemployed have thronged into the cities in search of work. Malnutrition is pervasive. To assay some of the effects of the drought, TIME'S New Delhi Bureau Chief William Stewart last week visited the hard-hit state of Maharashtra and its capital, Bombay, and filed this report:

From the swank high-rise apartments of Malabar Hill to the new skyscrapers at Narriman Point, Bombay exudes money, power and privilege. But the city's back streets tell another story. They have become home to thousands of people seeking refuge from the scorching sun, who have poured into the city looking for work. They sleep on the platforms of railroad stations or in the jhuggis--sheet-metal and jute huts--that are home to hundreds of thousands of Bombay's poor. There is little work to be found, and in the past few months, with no money and often no shelter, many have had to beg. Accustomed to providing for themselves, they are humiliated and bitter that the government has not done anything to alleviate their plight. Since most of them have no money, they cannot even take advantage of the "fair price shops"--so called because they sell below the regular market price--set up by New Delhi to distribute food stocks.

One of the refugees is Narayan Mahadev Thanage, 30, who lives with his wife and daughter in one of the jhuggis adjacent to the new Bombay slaughterhouse. He was forced to leave his five-acre farm in Ahmednagar District 125 miles from Bombay, one of the areas worst affected by the drought. In a good year, he cleared 3,000 rupees ($410) over and above the cost of supporting his family. "In my village there aren't enough people left to make a good funeral," he says. "Maybe there are 100, and they are mostly old. The schools and factories are closed. There are relief projects, but in some areas they have stopped because there isn't even enough drinking water. You might get work once every 15 days." Thanage gave his four bullocks, two buffaloes, two cows and a few goats to the Belapur sugar factory, which feeds them crushed sugar cane as fodder, and came to Bombay. "Everybody here is hungry," he adds. "Any man with self-respect would not I beg, but if it's a question of filling your stomach and there is no work, what is I a man to do?"

At the Ghovandi railroad station, a 1 quarter-mile away, other refugees cluster around small fires. At nightfall, children and adults alike spread blankets out on the platform to sleep. Change Sampat Lokhande, a farm laborer, tells a familiar story: "The fields in my village had no water. I had to leave. How do I get food? Some of us beg. Some stay in front of grain shops and wait for the grain to spill. Then they scoop it up and hurry back here."

Red Earth. By and large, Bombay residents have been quick to help the refugees. Several trade unions in the city recently set up a refugee camp in a middle-class neighborhood to house 2,000 people in dozens of newly built jute lean-tos. A nearby market donates 440 lbs. of vegetables daily and the Salvation Army provides milk. Private companies are giving coal and firewood. "The basic problem is malnutrition," says Dr. K.R. Toraskar, one of three physicians who provide medical services at the camp without charge. "There is no starvation in Bombay, but I don't know about the districts. The cattle certainly are starving."

Out in the countryside, where the parched red earth tells the story, the government has provided aid. Special cattle farms are being opened, drinking water is being hauled in, and fodder is being brought in from neighboring states. Even so, 25% of the domestic animals are not expected to survive until spring. Workers given jobs on relief projects have been putting in long stretches with inadequate food. The prospects are that things will get worse before they get better. "The real problem will come in February or March with the hot sun and high temperatures," says S.O. Raje, a district official in Poona. Adds G.B. Joshi, 50, a government clerk: "This is the worst I have ever seen in my lifetime."

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