'Starvation means when you have had nothing to eat for a long period of time and eventually die for want of food.' 'Hunger means your stomach is empty and you want food. Therefore, an empty stomach does not mean starvation. It only means hunger. And so many people are hungry but they eat food.' The enlightening lesson came from V. Thiruppugazh, collector of Sabarkantha, a remote tribal district bordering Rajasthan. This dividing line between hunger and starvation is of critical importance to the district headquarters of Himmatnagar, two hours away from Aanjni, the village in Khedbrahma taluka where Saibabai Harshanbai Bubadia (earlier reports had identified him as Saheba Bumbadia) and his seven-year-old daughter Savita died on April 25. The official line is that they were hungry but not starving. 'If it's just hunger, the government will save face,' explained C.B. Solanki, a social worker in Khedbrahma. 'However, if it's starvation, chief minister Keshubhai Patel's politics will get a beating, the Opposition will get the upper hand and poor Thiruppugazh will get a transfer to a remote department in the state secretariat.' Overnight, Aanjni had become an important destination. Rows of government cars, ambulances and trucks of fodder and grass ply to and fro. The fair price shop, non-functional for the first 18 days of the month, is 'fully open with lots of stock'. Relief work has started and wages have been promised soon. For the village and the taluka, it's almost paradise - getting what they normally should from the government. In front of Saibabai's broken-down hut, a group of villagers huddle under a semi-thatched structure. In the foreground were the parched fields on which no one from Aanjni has set foot for the past four months. 'In normal times, the fields would be all green. This is harvesting season and we would all be busy harvesting the crop - wheat, bajra, moong dal,' said Harshanbai Bubadia, Saibabai's 60-year-old father. As the sun set over the Aravalli mountains surrounding the village, Harshanbai wonders how he survived while his son and granddaughter did not. 'I wish I could offer you some tea,' he said. 'There is none. We have got a sack of grain but no money to buy even a match box. Anyway, the grain came only yesterday.' Inside the hut there were just two vessels. A small aluminium vessel - that was supposedly contaminated and led to the 'food poisoning of Saibabai and his daughter - and an earthen pot, both empty. There was one torn saree and a piece of cloth. Nothing else. The food-poisoning theory is tried on Saibabai's widow, who had just returned from the primary health care centre at Poshina. She retorted with a burst of abuse, then added: 'Nothing was cooked. My sister gave me two corn rotlas (thick corn bread). The two pieces were broken into 10 pieces for my five children and the two of us. My husband did not even eat that. He just had a cup of black tea for breakfast. They are bloody liars.' After a pause she burst out: 'The government said his stomach was full of food. They are fools - it was full of hunger.' The collector showed a ration card which 'proved' that Saibabai's family had bought 6 kg of wheat, 2 kg of sugar and salt and a kilo of rice. Actually, it was his father who bought them on his ration card after collecting money from other villagers. This was distributed among the three families, but nothing was given to Saibabai's family which lived apart but were listed on his father's ration card. The collector said they found the corn rotlas and a vessel of vegetable when they visited his hut. But Laljibhai Kalabhai Ninama - a local social worker who reached the house at three in the morning on April 25 - said he found three or four small pieces of the corn bread and a little bit of ground chillies. Ninama had picked up the corn pieces. The next day, the local tehsildar came and forced him to hand them over, saying they were poisoned and had to be sent for tests. 'We'll get the results soon,' said Thiruppugazh. 'The deaths were not due to starvation. The man and his daughter ate stale food and died.' Saibabai's father has been given a cheque of Rs 10,000 as compensation. But even after three days, no account has been opened for him to encash it. There is grain in the house, but no money to buy a match box. One of Saibabai's sons - a two-year-old - vomits on an empty stomach, but there is no water to give him. Is he starving? Or just hungry?