MALNUTRITION IN INDIA

INDIA’S CHRONIC BATTLE WITH MALNUTRITION

Ruth Fremson

The New York Times, January 12, 2012

Malnutrition in India is worse than in many African nations, stunting the growth of children like this girl in Shivpuri, photographed in November 2008.

“It is unrealistic to expect any major breakthroughs in dealing with the diets of impoverished Indians,” a correspondent wrote in The New York Times in an article on Oct. 23, 1981.

While the words were written thirty years ago, they might have been written this week.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday that India faced “national shame” because 42 percent of children below the age of five are underweight. The survey he referred to also found that India has failed to significantly improve the diet of almost half of its children, despite two decades of economic growth, because of everything from lack of coordination between government departments to continued lack of maternal education.

Just as it did thirty years ago, malnutrition looms large in India, and by some measures seems to be getting worse. In the twenty years preceding 1981, “per capita intake of calories has dropped from 93 percent of daily requirements to 91 percent,” The New York Times wrote. At the time, India’s population was 680 million.

Despite the recent boom years of the 1990s and 2000s, there has been little improvement in overall nutrition in India, according to United Nations data. About 20 percent of India’s over 1 billion population remained “undernourished” during that time, meaning their “food intake regularly provides less than their minimum energy requirements.” The most recent “Global Hunger Index” shows that two-thirds of the 122 developing countries studied had reduced hunger levels in recent years, but that hunger levels in India have increased.

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