Editorial: A National Shame, But There is Hope Still

Its catchy name might distract from the seriousness of its contents, but make no mistake, the HUNGaMA report released by the Prime Minister on Tuesday stands for much more than the statistics it unveils on the nation’s collective failure in even feeding its young. HUNGaMA stands for Hunger and Malnutrition Report - India’s first ever comprehensive survey on childhood hunger and malnutrition. The data has been collated by Hyderabad-based Naandi Foundation from a survey which covered the 100 worst-performing districts [as listed by Unicef Child Development Index, 2009] and compares them with the six best performing districts — two each in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh. The survey itself is the outcome of deliberations of the Citizens’ Alliance Against Malnutrition, made up of 5 young MPs and other personalities. For the survey, malnutrition was measured on three parameters - underweight, stunted [chronically malnourished] and wasted [acutely malnourished]. Also, this survey, the first time, seeks to approach the problem by including the voices of the parents and includes comments of 74,000 mothers of malnourished children to understand the familial, social and economical problems basis of malnutrition. The survey has uncovered that India has the highest number of malnourished and stunted children in the world. Admittedly, our country’s huge population is bound to skew projections based solely on numbers, but even if one were to break the statistics down to percentage, the scenario remains dismal – nearly 42 per cent of the children in India [numbering over 61 million] are malnourished and stunted. The report reveals that malnutrition is extremely severe in 7,30,000 households in 112 districts in seven of the poorest states. The Prime Minister, who released the Report on 10 Jan, took the findings on the chin and put on record: “The problem of malnutrition is a national shame”.
For what it is worth, the latest data shows that malnutrition has come down in the five years between 2005 to 2010. Yet, a national shame it definitely is, because the survey reports that only one in five Indian children had acceptable levels of nutrition; but the exercise [of preparing the HUNGaMA] and the collaborations it received along the way hold up hope. For one, it demolishes the perception that politicians are only about vote-banks and slandering and that partisan posturing will defeat common cause. The Citizens’ Alliance Against Malnutrition was born when the National Family Health Survey III (2006) was tabled in Parliament and reported that almost every second child under five in India was malnourished. We are worse off in attending to the nutritional needs of our young than famine-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa! Moved by the revealation, five MPs cut across party lines and forged a common agenda to take on malnutrition. They are- Shahnawaz Hussain of the BJP, Supriya Sule of the NCP, Jay Panda of the BJD, and Prema Cariappa and Sachin Pilot of the INC. Soon, they brought in eminent people into their circle, and now the Report is out. Along the way, they visited the districts with high levels of child malnutrition and briefed senior politicians [from all parties] on their findings. This is one of the few bipartisan efforts to have progressed so well in India. Now that the findings are out, and hopefully because the Report is not just dry data and includes stakeholder comments and opinions, a more effective policy will follow. As the Prime Minister has admitted, a solution lies beyond the ICDS Centres and mid-day meals and will require wider collaborations which rope in the Civil Society involvement and corporate funding. One would have noticed that the number of ‘awareness programmes’ on nutrition and woman and child health have gone up even in Sikkim in the recent past. What is required now is for awareness to be made effective for the mothers because malnutrition is not always for want of food/ nutrition and is often born from ignorance on what a child requires to grow healthy. Sanitation has an important role to play, as does access to clean drinking water. There are independent “Bharat Nirman” schemes working in these areas, and now it is important that the implementers and beneficiaries understand that many linkages of these schemes which have a direct impact on the health of the young. This realisation will perhaps make these schemes get implemented better than the shoddiness that marks them at present.