Prime minister Manmohan Singh has said the country’s child malnutrition figures are matter of “national shame”. He has said that before and he said it again on Tuesday while releasing a report of ‘Hunger and Malnutrition Survey’, prepared by Naandi Foundation on Tuesday. [Read our story on the report] Very true, it is nothing less than shocking that 42 percent of children below the age of 5 are malnourished. But beyond the candid admission of the fact, what has the government been doing in this regard? 

In 2008, the PM set up a national council on nutritional challenges, but it has met only once so far, in 2010. Does that say anything about how pro-active this government is to solve the problem?

In his speech on Tuesday, the PM also said we could not rely only on the integrated child development scheme, which (at least on paper) covers two-thirds of all villages in the country. All agree that ICDS is underfinanced, ill targeted and inefficiently managed.
 
Of course, the PM would look at even this problem only from the growth perspective. He said, “Despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level of undernutrition in the country is unacceptably high.” Isn’t it time he and his planner realised a high growth rate is not what you need to improve human development. What is needed is political will, as a slew of recent reports have pointed out.
 
The Naandi Foundation report flagged some of the glaring problems of the country: 42 percent of all children under the age of five suffers from malnutrition and 60 percent of children are stunted. India also has the dubious distinction having the highest number of stunted children in the world. Muslim and SC/ST children are more likely to be underweight and so are children from low income families, according to the report.
 
Solving the nutritional problem is linked with so many other things like income poverty, female education and female autonomy. The inferior position of mothers is commonly called as ‘Asian Enigma Syndrome’ where women have little say on family matters. It is common in Asian countries, especially in India. This leads to malnutrition among pregnant women, which further feeds into the problem of undernourished children.
However, our efforts to counter malnutrition in children do not recognise this social reality. This shows that our nutritional initiatives are aim to correct a singular aspect, whereas they need to be multi-sectoral.
 
In the early 1990s, several countries of south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa had similar levels of child malnutrition. Now most of these countries have marched ahead of India. Ironically, this was the period when India started being labeled an emerging economic superpower.
 
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) recently stated in a policy note that India can only solve the nutritional problem by 2043 if it goes by the current pace. [Read our story on this report] And by that time this will ultimately take a heavy toll on the growth rate, widen the economic disparities and fuel the social discontent to a new level.
 
However, a matter of “national shame” needs regular attention – not just in public forums, getting a mention and then being forgotten till the next report is released.

Also read:

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