Rs 32 per day is enough to use the toilet!

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

The buns are stale but the hunger drives little children to 40-year-old Vatsala who sits in one corner of a road slicing it up and mixing it with jam and butter.

“I get these from the airport authorities near Meenambakkam who sell these leftovers from the airlines. I sell the bun laced with butter for Rs 5. I earn anywhere between Rs 200 per day,” says the middle-aged woman who is among the millions of the underprivileged who don’t have a shelter.

And if going by the planning commission’s new definition of poverty line, she along with millions of others may drop out of the social security system.

Interestingly, with the double-digit inflation and the spiraling cost of food products figures like Rs 32 per day has resulted in anger among activists as well the homeless. “We spend more than Rs 32 in using the public bathroom,” says Renuka who lives in a tent near the Memorial Hall. “I spend Rs 2 every time I use a bathroom besides Rs 7 for taking bath which itself cost me Rs 32,” she says wondering how the planning commission has reached such figure.

Surprisingly, most of the homeless don’t cook food during the daytime and rely on hotel food. “This saves fuel and our time. A meal in hotel costs not less than Rs 30 besides the consumption of tea which is Rs 5 per cup,” says Renuka, another homeless in the city as her daughter Gomathi munches the bun.

The dislike of cooking in home among the homeless is due to the fear that the food or utensils will be stolen while they are away at work and lack of refrigerator. “We don’t buy milk and the food cooked can be eaten only once,” says Rani whose husband pedals a rickshaw on rent.

“It is only during the night we cook food and that alone costs us nearly Rs 100,” she says adding that the subsidized food being given in the public distribution system is difficult to consume.

For 70-year-old Lalitha, who sells flowers, it is a hand to mouth existence from the measly sum of Rs 150-Rs 200 a day. “It all depends on the business. Sometimes we are not able to sell the flowers at all. Then we have to go without food or rely on some other means,” she says.

Surprisingly, people like Lalitha would not have figured as those below poverty line and would have not availed the social security schemes if the new figures of planning commission was to be taken into account. “The people who frame such policies should be given Rs 32 a day in a city like Chennai and ask them to survive on it for a month,” says Renuka.