India: Rich man, starving child
New Delhi, February 25:
Crying
as she is put on an electronic scale, two-year-old Rajini's naked
shrivelled frame casts a dark shadow over a rising India, where millions
of children have little to eat.
The children are scrawny, listless and sick in this run-down nutrition clinic in central India with its intermittent power supply. If they survive they will grow up shorter, weaker and less smart than their better-fed peers.
Rajini weighs 5kg, about half of what she should.
"She's as light as a leaf, this can't be good," says her grandmother, Sushila Devi, poking her rib-protruding stomach in the clinic in Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh state.
Almost as shocking as India's high prevalence of child malnutrition is the country's failure to reduce it, despite the economy tripling between 1990 and 2005 to become Asia's third largest and annual per capita income rising to $489 from $96 (Dh1,796 from Dh353).
A government-supported survey last month said 42 per cent of children under five are underweight — almost double that of sub-Saharan Africa — compared to 43 per cent five years ago.
The statistic — which means 3,000 children dying daily due to illnesses related to poor diets — led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to admit malnutrition was "a national shame" and was putting the health of the nation in jeopardy.
"It is a national shame. Child nutrition is a marker of the many things that are not going right for the poor of India," said Purnima Menon, research fellow on poverty, health and nutrition at the Institute of Food Policy Research Institute.
India's efforts to reduce the number of undernourished children have been largely hampered by blighting poverty where many cannot afford the amount and types of food they need.
Poor hygiene, low public health spending and little education and awareness have not helped. Age-old customs discriminating against women such as child marriage have also contributed, but are far harder to tackle, say experts.
In addition, shoddy management of food stocks, subsidised carbohydrate-rich food that fuel and fill the poor rather than truly nourishing them and real shortages in its poorest states have worsened the problem.
At the Shivpuri clinic, health worker Rekha Singh Chauhan tends to emaciated young children in a ward with a ganglion of electrical wires running cross its paint-chipped walls.
Three to a bed
"We only have a handful to take care of now, but come April, the cases will shoot up," says Chauhan, adding that diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria will cause an influx of sick underweight children with the onset of summer.
"The situation becomes bad. Three children are made to share a bed and many have to sleep on the floor."
That picture jars with an India clocking enviable 8-9 per cent growth over the last five years that has put money in the pockets of millions of its people and fuelled demand for everything from cars and computers to clothes and fancy homes.
It has also catapulted the country onto the world stage, boosting its claim for a bigger role on forums such as the UN Security Council. This month, it moved closer to buying new fighter jets worth a whopping $15 billion.
Yet while the urban middle classes dine in swanky shopping malls where eateries offer everything from sushi to burritos, millions of children are dying due to a lack of food.
Last month's report by the Indian charity Naandi Foundation, the first comprehensive data since a 2005/6 study, said India's "nutrition crisis" is an attributable cause for up to half of all child deaths.
Yet India's public spending on health, estimated at 1.2 per cent of its GDP in 2009, is among the lowest in the world.
While India has several schemes already running to battle malnutrition, the Indian government is now vaunting a multi-billion-dollar food subsidy programme as a possible solution.
But the Food Security Bill, which guarantees cut-price rice and wheat to 63.5 per cent of the population, may be more a political gimmick, experts worry, than about providing nutritious food to those who need it most.
Plans mean little
"The Food Security Bill is a very good development, but it is a food security bill, not a nutrition security bill," said Lawrence Haddad, director of the UK-based Institute of Development Studies.
For the children at Shivpuri's nutrition centre, government plans mean little unless they put enough of the right food in their stomachs.
"You see her arms? They are almost the width of my thumb," says Jharna, as she carried her limp, emaciated one-year-old granddaughter, Sakshi, into the clinic. "She is too weak. She can't even sit by herself."
The children are scrawny, listless and sick in this run-down nutrition clinic in central India with its intermittent power supply. If they survive they will grow up shorter, weaker and less smart than their better-fed peers.
Rajini weighs 5kg, about half of what she should.
"She's as light as a leaf, this can't be good," says her grandmother, Sushila Devi, poking her rib-protruding stomach in the clinic in Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh state.
Almost as shocking as India's high prevalence of child malnutrition is the country's failure to reduce it, despite the economy tripling between 1990 and 2005 to become Asia's third largest and annual per capita income rising to $489 from $96 (Dh1,796 from Dh353).
A government-supported survey last month said 42 per cent of children under five are underweight — almost double that of sub-Saharan Africa — compared to 43 per cent five years ago.
The statistic — which means 3,000 children dying daily due to illnesses related to poor diets — led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to admit malnutrition was "a national shame" and was putting the health of the nation in jeopardy.
"It is a national shame. Child nutrition is a marker of the many things that are not going right for the poor of India," said Purnima Menon, research fellow on poverty, health and nutrition at the Institute of Food Policy Research Institute.
India's efforts to reduce the number of undernourished children have been largely hampered by blighting poverty where many cannot afford the amount and types of food they need.
Poor hygiene, low public health spending and little education and awareness have not helped. Age-old customs discriminating against women such as child marriage have also contributed, but are far harder to tackle, say experts.
In addition, shoddy management of food stocks, subsidised carbohydrate-rich food that fuel and fill the poor rather than truly nourishing them and real shortages in its poorest states have worsened the problem.
At the Shivpuri clinic, health worker Rekha Singh Chauhan tends to emaciated young children in a ward with a ganglion of electrical wires running cross its paint-chipped walls.
Three to a bed
"We only have a handful to take care of now, but come April, the cases will shoot up," says Chauhan, adding that diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria will cause an influx of sick underweight children with the onset of summer.
"The situation becomes bad. Three children are made to share a bed and many have to sleep on the floor."
That picture jars with an India clocking enviable 8-9 per cent growth over the last five years that has put money in the pockets of millions of its people and fuelled demand for everything from cars and computers to clothes and fancy homes.
It has also catapulted the country onto the world stage, boosting its claim for a bigger role on forums such as the UN Security Council. This month, it moved closer to buying new fighter jets worth a whopping $15 billion.
Yet while the urban middle classes dine in swanky shopping malls where eateries offer everything from sushi to burritos, millions of children are dying due to a lack of food.
Last month's report by the Indian charity Naandi Foundation, the first comprehensive data since a 2005/6 study, said India's "nutrition crisis" is an attributable cause for up to half of all child deaths.
Yet India's public spending on health, estimated at 1.2 per cent of its GDP in 2009, is among the lowest in the world.
While India has several schemes already running to battle malnutrition, the Indian government is now vaunting a multi-billion-dollar food subsidy programme as a possible solution.
But the Food Security Bill, which guarantees cut-price rice and wheat to 63.5 per cent of the population, may be more a political gimmick, experts worry, than about providing nutritious food to those who need it most.
Plans mean little
"The Food Security Bill is a very good development, but it is a food security bill, not a nutrition security bill," said Lawrence Haddad, director of the UK-based Institute of Development Studies.
For the children at Shivpuri's nutrition centre, government plans mean little unless they put enough of the right food in their stomachs.
"You see her arms? They are almost the width of my thumb," says Jharna, as she carried her limp, emaciated one-year-old granddaughter, Sakshi, into the clinic. "She is too weak. She can't even sit by herself."
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