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Sujalam, Suphalam*…and yet…

15 October 2008 1,002 views 4 Comments

Here is a grim and sad reminder of Bharat’s under-development and how poor governance, bad policies and corruption have conspired to turn a land praised by Bankim Chandra as “सुजलां सुफलां...” into a country with “alarming” levels of hunger.

Courtesy IFPRI, ”The Challenge of Hunger 2008” (via BBC) which has the following depressing statistics about hunger in India:

India ranks 66 out of 88 countries on the 2008 Global Hunger Index (GHI).
India is home to the world’s largest food insecure population, with more than 200 million people who are hungry.
All Indian states have at least a “serious” level of hunger; there is not a single state with low or even moderate levels.
Twelve states fall into the “alarming” category and one (Madhya Pradesh) is considered to have an “extremely alarming” level of hunger.

As the report notes, economic development has not necessarily translated into lower hunger levels and reduction in malnutrition:

…the report identified that strong economic growth does not necessarily translate into lower hunger levels. Even states with high rates of economic growth in recent years, such as Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra, have high levels of hunger, while states with relatively slower economic growth, such as Punjab, achieved a lower hunger level.

As you sit down to have your meal today, please spare a moment’s thought for these unfortunate millions…and please think how we can alleviate at least some of their pain and misery.

Here is the sobering Hunger Map, courtesy IFPRI:

You can download the full report here (413k).

* From “Vande Mataram”. Roughly translated as ”…(You are blessed with) Richness in water resources, plenty of fruits (and forest resources)”; also “…Rich with thy hurrying streams, bright with orchard gleams…”

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4 Comments »

1. Hiren said:

Seems India not shinning is not restricted to BJO alone.

15 October 2008

2. B Shantanu (author) said:

Excerpts from As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists* by Somini Sengupta

…China, that other Asian economic powerhouse, sharply reduced child malnutrition, and now just 7 percent of its children under 5 are underweight, a critical gauge of malnutrition. In India, by contrast, despite robust growth and good government intentions, the comparable number is 42.5 percent.

Malnutrition makes children more prone to illness and stunts physical and intellectual growth for a lifetime.

…Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist, lamented that hunger was not enough of a political priority here. India’s public expenditure on health remains low, and in some places, financing for child nutrition programs remains unspent.

…While India runs the largest child feeding program in the world, experts agree it is inadequately designed, and has made barely a dent in the ranks of sick children in the past 10 years.

The $1.3 billion Integrated Child Development Services program, India’s primary effort to combat malnutrition, finances a network of soup kitchens in urban slums and villages.

But most experts agree that providing adequate nutrition to pregnant women and children under 2 years old is crucial — and the Indian program has not homed in on them adequately. Nor has it succeeded in sufficiently changing child feeding and hygiene practices. Many women here remain in ill health and are ill fed; they are prone to giving birth to low-weight babies and tend not to be aware of how best to feed them.

…

…A World Food Program report last month noted that India remained home to more than a fourth of the world’s hungry, 230 million people in all. It also found anemia to be on the rise among rural women of childbearing age in eight states across India.

Indian women are often the last to eat in their homes and often unlikely to eat well or rest during pregnancy.

…The latest Global Hunger Index described hunger in Madhya Pradesh, a destitute state in central India, as “extremely alarming,” ranking the state somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia.

…Here in the capital, which has the highest per-capita income in the country, 42.2 percent of children under 5 are stunted, or too short for their age, and 26 percent are underweight. A few blocks from the Indian Parliament, tiny, ill-fed children turn somersaults for spare change at traffic signals.

Back in Jahangirpuri, a dead rat lay in the courtyard in front of Ms. Bala’s nursery. The narrow lanes were lined with scum from the drains. Malaria and respiratory illness, which can be crippling for weak, undernourished children, were rampant. Neighborhood shops carried small bags of potato chips and soda, evidence that its residents were far from destitute.

* Caution: Original article has some shocking images.

Hat Tip: Sanjay

15 March 2009

3. B Shantanu (author) said:

From Sure, Mr PM, we’re shamed by malnutrition. But are you?, a short excerpt:

If millions of Indian children are still malnourished, if many millions more live in abject poverty, it is a commentary on the poverty of policy-making in India in the 60-plus years since independence. It’s not that taxpayers’ money has not been spent over the decades on poverty alleviation measures and providing subsidised food: it’s that throwing money around has become a substitute for effective policy that works.

It is a perversion that India, which has more per-capita arable land than China and produces as much grains and milk as the world’s biggest farming nations, is still home to the world’s largest population of malnourished people.

Right from the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, who in 1947 called for “the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity”, every Five Year Plan has paid token lip service to the poor and the marginalised, yet their absolute numbers have only increased over the years. Instead of informed policy, the poor were given political slogans: garibi hatao – and a limitless array of schemes named after dead Congress leaders.

The famed economist Dr Raja Chelliah, whom Manmohan Singh was fond of quoting in the 1990s, noted that India’s continuing poverty was the result of a failure of public policy.

He argued that the major fault of India’s economic policy was that it was largely based on “democratic socialist thought” – which invested the government with the greatest responsibilities but without the appropriate policy mechanisms to respond to the challenges.

Dr Chelliah also faulted politicians who gave in to “competitive populism” and focused on short-term political gains instead of long-term poverty alleviation programmes. It’s a fair bet that were he alive today, he would have had much to say about the Manmohan Singh government’s record of throwing good money into flawed welfare programmes that won’t deliver.

…
And what do you plan to do about it, beyond guilt-tripping us into coughing up more taxes while your government pushes through with extravagant welfare schemes that won’t address the problem but will only bust the bank?

11 January 2012

4. Ramamurthy said:

the slogan for politicians will always be ‘garibi hatao’.

11 January 2012