Alarming Malnutrition Indicators In Some States Show Food Policy Needs Revision
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
India has always had stunted children, a result of malnutrition. The country has 46.6 million such children, a third of the total stunted children in the world. This despite the fact that the government has many policies for food security including mid-day meal in schools. But the current indicators, released by National Family Health Survey (NFHS) recently, show that over the four years since the last survey was conducted in 2015-16, malnutrition indicators have worsened alarmingly in some states. Along with that, wasting, severe wasting and anaemia (for children under-5) has also increased.By Linus Garg
First publised on 2020-12-15 02:50:06
About the Author
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
The survey shows that stunting has worsened by 5.1% in Telangana, 4.5 in Himachal Pradesh and 3.7 in Kerala while wasting, which signifies a child being underweight for his age, has worsened by 6.8% in J*K, 4.7 in Assam, 3.6 in Telangana. There is also increase in severe wasting by as much as 4.1& in J&K and 3.7 in Telangana. More than 32.7 children under-5 are anaemic in Assam, 18.9 in J&K and 17.1 in Gujarat.
These figures show that there is something seriously wrong with government policies on food security. On paper, we have a robust public distribution system (PDS) that supplies food grains to people as per their status (classified as per being below or above the so-called poverty line). We also have a mid-day meal system in government schools across the country and this has increased admission and attendance in such schools as the poor want their children to have at least one proper meal a day. Then why are the indicators not improving?
Either the food being provided through PDS is not enough or the quality is not good. The less said of the mid-day meal the better because there have been instances of children being fed just rotis and salt in many places. The government needs to study the imperfections in the policies in detail and come out with studied responses to rectify the situation. Otherwise, India will continue to waste its human resources to the scourge of hunger and malnutrition.
pic courtesy: indiaspends.com
