A national shame …….Neerja Chowdhury
There was a significant though little noticed function on International Womens Day and this was the opening of an exhibition on the lawns of India Gate on the issue of nutrition. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and women and child development minister Renuka Chowdhury spoke on the occasion. There is nothing unusual about a meeting addressed by leaders or about an exhibition on nutrition. It was the combination of the two child nutrition taken up as an issue on Womens Day that was significant. If there is a gender issue today, which demands the attention of feminists and non-feminists alike, it is child malnutrition.
The figures on malnutrition are mind-boggling every second child, under three, in the country is malnourished. The number for under-fives is 55 million, which is two and a half times the population of Australia. Thirty-five per cent of the worlds malnourished children live in India. Half the number of child deaths take place due to malnutrition, which could be prevented. The situation has not seen an improvement between the reports of the National Family Health Survey III in 2007 and NFHS II seven years earlier. The Indian figures are all the more shocking because ours is an economy supposedly surging ahead.
It is well known that malnutrition can affect economic productivity and the ability to make decisions. Experts say that unless the problem is addressed on a war footing, it will lower the countrys GDP growth rate by 2-3 per cent. One of the reasons why the issue has remained unaddressed is because it has not been central to our thinking or the countrys agenda. There has been rhetoric but not determined action. Unlike women, children neither have a voice nor do they constitute a vote bank.
Undoubtedly, recent months have seen some stirrings. The prime minister called malnutrition a national shame. Young MPs cutting across parties have banded together to form a Citizens Alliance Against Malnutrition along with eminent professionals to give policy the necessary push.
The problem of child malnutrition starts long before the child is born. The age at which a woman marries has a bearing on the foetus. So does her nutritional intake during pregnancy and after she gives birth. Her educational status will decide whether she goes in for institutional deliveries, which prevent infections, the importance she attaches to hygiene and to immunisation of her child. In other words her nutrition, health and education and her status in the family and community determine whether the child is malnourished or not. It is not going to be possible to address the problem of child malnutrition unless the lot of the woman is improved. That is why it is the biggest gender issue today.
The Indian figures are worse than the malnutrition rates prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, even though those countries have been known for famines, pervasive poverty, dictatorships and a lack of accountability in their political systems. The main difference is the very large incidence of low birth weight of babies in India. In fact, 40 per cent of the low weight babies worldwide are Indian, below 2.5 kg. One of the major causes of low birth weight babies in India is the high incidence of anaemia among women.
Recent studies have shown that the damage is done by the time a child reaches the age of two. The critical age is therefore 0-2, and it is this group that needs the maximum attention. The governments focus needs to shift dramatically to address the nutritional and survival issues related to this group.
The answers are so elementary that they seem unbelievable. What is required, of course, is the political will cutting across parties. And, pressure from civil society that malnutrition is no longer going to be acceptable. It is the big issue today for feminists, the National Womens Commission and state commissions, to flag.
The writer is a senior journalist.
The writer is a senior journalist.