We are letting our children down
To battle malnourishment, India must start a mass awareness campaign
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has always maintained that “hunger is quiet violence”. Proof of this comes in the latest Urban Hungama Report, a survey on the nutrition status of children in the 10 most populous cities in India, carried out by the NGO, Naandi Foundation. The findings should be worrying to policymakers as urbanisation is growing and, with it, the problems of how best to cater to the interests of children.
The most alarming finding is that 22.3% of the children surveyed were stunted; 30.6% of the stunted children are in Delhi. The education of the mother has a bearing on the situation of the child. 35.3% of the children of mothers with five years of schooling or less were stunted. In the case of mothers who were more educated, the corresponding proportion was 16.7% .
When India began the National Family Health Survey, its stunting and wasting statistics (among children) were on a par with Thailand. Today, Thailand has all but overcome the problem. What we lack is the proper data for planning and intervention. The need of the hours is a mass awareness campaign on the lines of the pulse polio one. Since urban areas are considered better-off, the problem of stunting and wasting among children in these places has not been considered a serious problem. Even educated mothers did not know the difference between giving their children food and giving them the right nutrition.
An undernourished child cannot easily be differentiated from a healthy one until she suffers from full blown malnutrition. Unless the mother is involved in nutrition projects, progress will continue to be indifferent. We talk of the demographic dividend but the economic consequences of stunting and wasting in children can be devastating. In a country with surplus food grain and which guarantees the right to food for all, it is morally, politically and economically unacceptable that children are denied the right nutrition for entirely avoidable reasons.