I will call every Indian a traitor as long as fellow human beings continue to suffer from hunger and starvation--Swami Vivekanand "History repeats itself". Maharana Pratap ate "Ghass ki roti" in the medieval period and now due to recurring drought in Rajasthan, people of Baran district in Rajasthan are forced to eat roti made from a grass locally called ‘sama’. In a couple of days we all would be celebrating Diwali with bright lights and sweets, joy and happiness, but some where in the drought affected villages of Rajasthan, many people would be in the dark, struggling to survive on less than one square meal a day and there would be neither joy nor happiness among little kids as they do not have the means and energy to celebrate Diwali. Their parents' priority would be "how to light the 'chulha' rather than the ‘diya’.

Owing to recurring drought, there is no source of livelihood nor is there any source of food. Many tribals have no foodgrains and to survive, hundreds of tribals of Udaipur, Banswara and Dungarpur are willingly converting to Christianity for the sake of 'roti'. For tribals, the religion which provides them food is "theirs".

Supreme Court directives, Government orders and schemes and the entire public distribution system in the Baran region proved to be a failure either due to ignorance on the part of the people or dishonesty of the officials responsible for implementing them.

The newly-appointed President of the BJP State unit, Vasundhara Raje, rushed to Baran to have first hand knowledge and took the State Govterment to task for its failure to prevent starvation deaths and trying to cover up the failure. She demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot for mismanagement and failure to run the State. She also said that "Sonia Gandhi’s visit in Rajasthan was an exercise in futility as it brought no cheer on the faces of the people affected by the dry spell."

The State Human Rights Commission has demanded a report from the Baran district administration. BJP President Venkaiah Naidu had decided to send a three-member team led by Vice-President Gopinath Mundey to Baran. The other members of the team include party treasurer Ramdas Agarwal and Secretary Jaskaur Meena.

Meanwhile, Ashok Gehlot has taken media reports seriously and has instructed the concerned secretaries to work in such a manner that the needy and poor get timely relief. Gehlot says that the Congress Government has done its best despite its constraints as well as the Central Government’s discriminatory attitude towards it.