The organisation today distributed food grains to 550 families in the Bapunagar area, who have been rendered jobless owing to the collapse of a large number of diamond, construction and textile industries.

Another 800 families have been identified in Ahmedabad and they will be distributed food grains including 15 kg wheat, 10 kg rice and one kg daal (pulses), in the next two days.

VHP general secretary Pravin Togadia said, according to a survey conducted by them, there are a total of 3,200 families in the Bapunagar area alone who are unable to arrange two meals a day and have to go to sleep without any food.

“Through our ‘Ek Mutthi Anaj’ programme, we want to ensure that no Hindu goes to sleep without food anywhere in the country,” Togadia told news persons at the launch of the programme at Bapunagar on Thursday.

Under the programme, volunteers will collect food grains from donors and distribute it among the needy.

In the urban areas, they will collect one ‘mutthi’ (handful) of rice, wheat and daal from every household daily, and from the shop owners and grocery store owners, once every week. Those owing trucks will be asked to transport the materials from one place to another.

The VHP will provide ‘anaj donation passbooks’ to the donors, as also to the needy, to keep record of the donations given and taken.

If the economic conditions of the donation receivers improve, they will pass on the benefits to others in need.

So far, the VHP has collected 30,000 kg of food grains to be distributed among the poor and jobless in Ahmedabad.

The survey to identify families rendered jobless because of the meltdown is on in cities like Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot and Bhavnagar.

Togadia said the programme will be launched for the urban poor in other cities like Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Nagpur and Pune in Maharashtra and Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

He also quoted a World Food Programme report, saying that about 1.05 lakh people die of starvation every year in the country.

He said the VHP will rope in the services of retired persons and women to run the programme.

A separate trust will be registered for this purpose, he added.

He said the government was doling out wrong figures on people rendered jobless because of the meltdown.

He said that over 30 lakh people had become jobless in Gujarat in the last six months owing to the closure of the diamond and textile units, and the halt in construction activities.

He also criticised the model of economic development in the state, saying that unemployment was more in industrially advanced Gujarat than in UP, where the economy was based on agriculture.