Across the country, community kitchens have joined the war against the virus. Some have spiced it up — with a dash of big names.
It is Modi Kitchen versus Sonia Kitchen now playing out in Uttarakhand where, according to a report, nearly one person in every four lives below the poverty line.
The countrywide Covid-19 lockdown would certainly have worsened their situation.
The Modi Kitchen was started at the Kuldi Parking area in Mussoorie on March 31 to provide food packets to the needy.
“People are running kitchens across the country and offering cooked food to a large number of people. We started one such kitchen here in the name of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi to minimise the hardship of people during the Covid-19 lockdown,” local BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi said.
Joshi was in the news in 2016 — for the wrong reasons — when he brutally attacked Shaktiman, a police horse on duty in Dehradun, with a baton.
The horse — one of its legs had to be amputated — later succumbed to its injuries.
The Congress government at that time had installed a statue of the horse in state capital Dehradun.
On Thursday, Joshi claimed the Modi Kitchen has been providing food to over a 1,000 needy people every day.
The Sonia Kitchen was opened on Wednesday by state Congress chief Pritam Singh and the party’s Mahanagar president, Lalchand Sharma.
Sharma said food packets from the kitchen, named after Congress president Sonia Gandhi, reached people’s doorsteps as part of efforts to keep hunger at bay in a time of crisis.
“We serve packed food to over 500 people at their doorsteps. We have also announced that those who need food can directly contact us on the mobile number of Arjun Sonkar, the local municipal councillor. We are planning to increase the number of food packets to provide relief to more poor people.”
The initiatives have come in a state where, according to a report, 27.1 per cent of the population in the rural areas and 23.6 per cent in the urban areas live below the poverty line.
But if kitchens are named after politicians, can political publicity be far behind?
A senior Congress leader, who asked not to be named, said the people who run the Modi Kitchen don’t forget to stress on the name.
“They keep telling people to remember that the food pack is from Modi. We don’t do this kind of politics when the country is going through a crisis.”
The leader added: “We don’t want to criticise anybody at this stage. But the fact remains that despite having their government in the state, the BJP members are providing only four poories with vegetables whereas we give six poories and vegetables.”
Joshi, the BJP MLA, shrugged off criticism, saying they have been running the kitchen out of a commitment to society, but others have been doing politics only.
A journalist from Dehradun said BJP members have opened at least three more Modi Kitchens.
“While something is better than nothing, it is also true that the packets don’t contain enough food for one person. I have come to know that many poor people have complained not only to those who are running politically motivated kitchens but also to NGOs and government agencies that there is not sufficient food for one person in the packets,” the journalist said.
“This problem will remain because, be it private or government agencies, all of them are more interested in publicity and photo-ops than actually reaching the poor and taking care of their hunger.”
Madan Kaushik, spokesperson for the Uttarakhand government, said: “The problem is because of lack of coordination with many agencies. It is because of this reason that we have asked every agency to run community kitchens after coordinating with the government agencies, including the local administration and police. We will keep on strengthening all the community kitchens.”
