While India touts its youth population as its biggest resource, the condition of adolescent girls in the country in the world, according to a Unicef report.

"Almost 47 percent of the girls in the age group of 11 to 19 years are underweight in India, which is the highest in the world," says the report which considered three criteria -health, nutrition and education - to comment on the state of adolescents globally.

The report says that 56 percent of them are anaemic and 43 percent are married before the age of 18 out of whom 13 per cent become teenage mothers. Thirty percent boys were also found to be anaemic.

“This is of concern as anaemic girls being undernourished are the first to drop out of school and are married off early,” said Karin Hulsof of Unicef India.

The number of high underweight children put India in the category of African countries like Congo, Burkina Faso and Guinea. The number of adolescent girl population (20 per cent) is highest in the world.

Early marriage is also a concern for Indian girls, according to the report. 27 percent of Indian adolescent girls were married as compared to 23 percent in the sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, child marriage rate in India was 47 percent in 2007, highest in the world.

“The adolescent birth rate also stands at 45 - the number of births per thousand women between the ages of 15 and 19 years,” according to the report titled ‘State of the World's Children 2011’.

Poverty and inequity are the greatest dangers that confront the adolescents, the report says. “About 57 per cent of the poorest children in India are underweight compared to 20 per cent of the richest.”

Read the report