Despite Gujarat's impressive growth rate, the state trails less developed ones like Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam when it comes to malnutition. A new report places Gujarat at the thirteenth position on a list of states based on hunger.

“Among the industrial high per capita income states, Gujarat (69.7 per cent children up to age 5 anaemic and 44.6 per cent malnourished) fares the worst in terms of overall hunger and malnutrition,” said the report titled ‘India Human Development Report 2011: Towards Social Inclusion.’

“High growth is no guarantee in reducing malnutrition,” says Santosh Mehrotra, director general of Institute of Applied Manpower Research, a planning commission thinktank, and also lead author of the report. “Gujarat has a very high incidence of malnutrition among schedule caste (SC) and schedule tribe (ST) women,” he adds.

Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, who also spoke at the release, said that Gujarat's situation was puzzling.

“Why such high rates of malnutrition continue to persist even in the pockets of high economic growth is a puzzle? Gujarat is a puzzle,” said Ramesh.

He also claimed that the situation was similar in Karnataka, another high-growth state.

“The reported malnutrition rates in the northern parts of Karnataka are lower than the sub-Saharan Africa,” said the minister. However, the report had not mentioned anything on Karnataka's situation.

Punjab and Kerala fare the best, according to the hunger index in the report while Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh are the worst.

The report said that India has bettered its human development index (HDI) by 18 percent in the last one decade. “Global HDI has risen by 21 percent compared to a rise of 18 percent in India’s HDI over 2000-2010. China’s increase in HDI respectively has been 17 percent,” said the report. Among the states, Kerala has topped the HDI list while Chhattisgarh ranked at the bottom 23 and the last.   

The report also talked about how health, nutrition and sanitation issues have remained challenges for India in the 21st century. "From 80,000 in 1990, the infant mortality rate (IMR) has come down to 50 in 2009. However, we are far behind in reaching the MDG target of reducing IMR to 26.7 percent by 2015,” held the report. Ramesh called for greater central role in the areas of nutrition and sanitation in the 12th Plan.

Compared to China, the report also said India has very high under-five mortality rate. “Under-five mortality rate in India was still 64 per 1000 live births in 2009 compared to 31 in China.”

The report also pointed out that there is improvement among the marginalised sections of the society. According to the study, Muslims have gained a lot in recent years and have performed better than SCs and STs. “For most indicators, the ladder of performance on human development indicators goes like – STs, SCs and Muslims (in ascending orders of absolute levels),” the report said. However, it is just antithesis of what Sachar committee member Abusaleh Shariff feels. In a recent interview with Governance Now, Shariff, “When other communities are progressing like a rabbit, Muslims are going forward at the speed of a tortoise.”

Mehrotra clarified the indicators of Muslims are based on overall figures. “There is overall increase of development indices for the Muslim community,” he said. “The national average for poverty incidence fell from 36 percent in 1993-94 to 27.5 percent in 2004-05, while the poverty rate for Muslims fell from 43 percent to 32 percent.”