Roti Bank,” or “bread bank,” is a year-old effort to provide free food to needy people in the Mahoba district of the Bundelkhand region of India, a place that is suffering from a prolonged drought and a decreasing supply of subterranean water.Initially it started with five to 10 people, all of them friends. We decided to bring two rotis each from our homes, along with some curry. We thought we must complete this by 7 p.m. to have enough time to distribute the food. Now, we collect food from around 700 families. There are some centres where people come and take food, while we distribute it door to door also. It’s not possible to cover each and every area door to door, so we have also installed boxes at 21 places in Mahoba where people can drop food between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Now Mr Patkar is feeding around 1000 people. Most of them are elderly people whose children have migrated to big cities and don’t earn enough to send money back home, or they are too old to cook for themselves. After all, neighbors won’t help them every day. Also, there are beggars who are too weak to work.
