Despite Gujarat's impressive growth rate, the state trails less developed ones like Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam when it comes to malnutrition. 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.’

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.

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.

“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.”