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The extent of under-nourishment in India being
what it is providing succor to only a lakh and a half children is actually no big
deal. The problem is huge and perhaps it would need a thousand organizations
like the Save the Children to liquidate under-nutrition from among the Indian
children. It needs huge amount of resources, both of well-trained men and women
and financial. Both being scarce, large-scale under-nutrition of children is
not likely to be eliminated any time soon.
It is, basically, a failure of the government
despite its reach in the remotest recesses of the country where poverty is most
manifest. Besides, the government has all the paraphernalia for the very
purpose to extend relief to the stricken lot. An NGO can only do so much and
not more. Any amount of donation is not going to be of help. It will not be like
even a drop in the ocean.
According
to a Rapid Survey of Children conducted by UNICEF about 30% of Indian children
below 5 years in age are malnourished. What is more alarming is that 20% of
them, which is more than a third of children of the world, suffer from wasting
due to acute under-nutrition. This distressing situation does not quite match
with technological boom in the country and its progressive economic growth.
One
would tend to think that the government’s weak outreach has also affected the
nutritional levels of children. These could be, inter alia, weak implementation
of governmental nutritional schemes, inadequate health infrastructure,
services, unsafe water, lack of sanitation and hygiene. All these, in addition
to the reigning poverty in the country, particularly in its rural areas have
contributed to severe under-nutrition of people across various age groups.
Quite clearly a high economic growth rate does
not take care of the entire population, especially those who are precluded from
its benefits. It has been consistently held that the gross product based growth
is veritably iniquitous. India has witnessed this phenomenon as since 1991 when
the country opted for the capitalistic system after opening up of the economy
rich have become richer and poor have become poorer if they have not stayed
where they were.
While
the economy registered high growth rate it did not in any way make a difference
to the deprived lots of rural and semi-urban India. The aphorism “a rising tide
lifts all boats” has not yet proved to be true for India. The country is almost
always seen to be scraping the bottom as far as its social indicators are
concerned.
And,
yet the country is chasing GDP-based economic growth. A recent release
indicating fall in the GDP growth rate was made an occasion by the Opposition
to take pot shots at the government. Censure, condemnation, criticism,
denigration, et al were hurled forgetting that under its own stewardship for
fifty-odd years the country had achieved what is deprecatingly called the Hindu
Rate of Growth of only 3.5%.
But that is neither here nor there. What is
important is that growth or no growth a large section of the country’s
population has been wallowing in poverty for decades giving rise to all kinds
of scourges, like hunger and diseases such as anemia, tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS
and so on. But what hits them most is under-nutrition that is carried from one generation
to another. Perhaps, it is time the fetish of GDP-based growth is given up in
favour of growth based on improvement of general wellbeing of people, a better
and healthier life for all.
While tackling children’s malnutrition is
important for the reason that on attaining adulthood they should, instead of
being a drain, become productive members of the society, more important would
seem to be tackling the under-nutrition of mothers. If women suffer from the
results of under-nutrition, they would be incapable of providing the required
nutrition to their new-born and other older children in the early years of
their lives.
Traditionally in the country’s patriarchal society
nutrition of daughters is neglected from childhood. On attaining adolescence or
maturity, with all the handicaps developed due to their under-nutrition, they
are married off early and are made to slog in the kitchen. Patriarchy also deprives
women the right to decide about spacing of children which is seldom observed,
draining further the strength of an emaciated mother. Besides, patriarchy demands
that women in the house get to eat only the leftovers which may not even be
enough to satiate their hunger. So the chain of under-nutrition continues. This
has got to be broken by providing succor to them by ushering in social change.
While
hunger, child-marriage, depressed social status due to the prevailing caste
system, unemployment and poverty are major reasons for under-nutrition, the
situation is exacerbated by unsafe water and lack of proper sanitation and
hygiene. Add to these the governments’ weak implementation of its policies and the
prevailing unhealthy feeding and caring practices in addition to ignorance
about healthy diets and what one gets is a lethal mix.
It is in these areas that the government needs
to mount an all-out assault, instead of chasing a higher figure of GDP. A
healthy nation will be more productive than one that is stunted, wasted and
under-nourished; in that event the gross domestic product will take care of
itself. The World Bank estimates that India loses around 2 to 3% of the GDP on
account of widespread under-nutrition. Laws like Food Security Act etc are
useless, just as inefficiently implemented nutritional Missions of the Centre
and various states. What is needed is concentrated sustained extension work in the
affected areas to educate people about all matters relevant to under-nutrition.
Curiously,
India has not used the leaves of the Moringa plant in the way Africans are
using it to eliminate under-nutrition. Several researches have proved that the
leaves of the plant have much more of the minerals and vitamins than what are
found in conventional diet of vegetables and eggs. For instance, Moringa’s
powdered leaves have 7 times more vitamin C than in oranges, 36 time more
magnesium than in eggs, 50 times more vitamin B3 than peanuts and 50 times more
Vitamin B2 than bananas. Even its seeds have been found to be capable of
eliminating contaminants from water that cause so much of rural distress in
India. It is a cheap way of dealing with under-nutrition. The plants grow with
ease in almost every part of India and can be useful in greening the countryside.
Since Africans are reported to be reaping benefits from this plant, sometimes
called the miracle tree, there is no reason why India should not follow suit.
The leaves of the plant are exported but curiously are not used to the desired
extent in India.
Despite
the Constitutional provision in Article 47 the state has not discharged its
responsibility to raise the level of nutrition and improve public health. It is,
therefore, for the government at the Centre and in the states to seriously take
up the responsibility to deal with this huge problem instead of leaving it to
ill-equipped NGOs who can only touch it only on the fringes.
15th
January 2018
*Photo of moringa leaves and drumsticks is from internet
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