Chennai, India
Massive
food shortages resulting from flooding and drought are now impacting
hundreds of millions of Indians and setting back ongoing humanitarian
work by years, warns World Vision.
The
failure of the monsoon in the north, northeast and some parts of
western India, has resulted in 22 percent less rain than normal. Now,
flooding in southern India has left 1.5 million people homeless, 200
people dead, and more than 200,000 homes destroyed. As a result,
millions of farmers are suffering from failed harvests or crops
destroyed by floodwaters.
“India is
now entering a period of severe food vulnerability,” said Jayakumar
Christian, World Vision's national director in India. “We are seeing
our development work set back by years.”
Christian
said 350 million Indians are drought affected – including in 52 of
World Vision’s 135 project areas. Additionally, Christian said the
floods in southern India had caught people and the government by
surprise.
“The sudden floods came as
a real shock to people living in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and
Maharashtra because the region has not experienced anything like this
in more than 100 years. These are not disaster prone areas,” Christian
said.“
Rates of malnourishment are
already extremely high in India," Christian continued. "Almost half of
all under-fives are malnourished and these droughts and floods are
pushing families to the very edge. What is needed is a massive,
coordinated response involving the federal and central governments, and
local and international NGOs to make sure food aid gets through.
”Without assistance, Christian warned that crop failures and losses would lead to:
Mass migration from rural areas to the cities
Increased indebtedness among farmers
Parents pulling children out of school to work instead
Increased vulnerabilities for children, including the risk of children being trafficked into labor or sexual exploitation
World
Vision is now appealing for $2 million to meet the immediate needs of
100,000 flood survivors who have been driven from their homes into
relief camps. The floods have destroyed crops and impacted some 20
million people, with scores of villages cut off.
The
agency’s relief workers have been providing cooked food, household
items, mosquito nets, cooking utensils and clothing to thousands of
survivors in relief camps in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka
as part of an initial $200,000 response.