No cooked food for homeless at shelters forces many to beg in Delhi

NEW DELHI: Rukhanda of Haryana was recently rescued and brought to a women’s home in Nizamuddin. The 24-year-old, who aspires to become a doctor, missed her online classes for the medical entrance exam on Thursday when she had to go to nearby Nizamuddin Dargah in search of food.
On Wednesday, Akshaya Patra Foundation stopped supplying cooked meals to the various shelters and homes in the city. With no money for meals, Rukhanda somehow kept the hunger pangs at bay on Wednesday, but a day later, she, like the other inmates of the home, had to go out and beg for food.

One of the caretakers of the Nizamuddin women’s home said, “We have around 60 homeless single women, including elderly and people with disability, and 17 children at the shelter. The discontinuation of food has disrupted their lives.” Expressing outrage at the sudden halt in the meals, she said, “Why did the government not think of what would happen to the homeless women? They don’t have proper jobs, some are disabled and some have babies.”
The 45-year-old caretaker felt that the children would now be forced by their mothers to give up their schooling and go work somewhere or beg on the roads. “Hunger can force women into begging, prostitution and even illegal attempts to earn money for food. In fact, the government is forcing them to do so,” she added.
At the Sarai Kale Khan shelter, the problems are similar. There are around 500 men, women, children and persons with disabilities plus 30 who are bedridden living in the home. The caretaker told TOI, “For two days, these homeless people have been asking me when the meal service will resume, but I have no answer to give them.”
The caretaker added, “This situation is most difficult for the bedridden inmates who cannot go out to beg.” The shelter staff has pooled money to feed the 30 bedridden inmates for two days. Another staffer said, “We don’t earn a lot but we managed to arrange food for them from our side. But we can’t be doing this forever.”
Akshaya Patra Foundation began providing cooked food at the night shelters during the pandemic. Citing shortage of funds, the foundation has now “temporarily discontinued" the meal service. Foundation officials claimed to be providing nearly 15,000 meals every day at the 200-odd night shelters in the city. Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, which manages the night shelters, paid Akshaya Patra Rs 55 per person per day for the three meals, representing just 60% of the food cost.
Delhi government responded to queries from TOI by saying that with Akshaya Patra sending several requests to be relieved of the duty to provide meals to the shelters, the contract for the supply of cooked food had been terminated for the time being. The officials also said the government would make alternative arrangements for supplying food to the homes in some other form. However, there was no response on when the food services to the shelters would resume.
Meanwhile, protesting activists of Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan and Centre for Holistic Development described the halting of meals as going against the marginalised community members’ fundamental right to food. Demanding the restoration of the meal services, they argued that if the government was discontinuing the contract with Akshaya Patra, they should have made advance arrangements to provide food to the shelters at a time when Covid-19 cases were going up across the city.