As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists By SOMINI SENGUPTA NEW DELHI — Small, sick, listless children have long been India’s scourge — “a national shame,” in the words of its prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy. 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. There are no simple explanations. Economists and public health experts say stubborn malnutrition rates point to a central failing in this democracy of the poor. 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. Yet several democracies have all but eradicated hunger. And ignoring the needs of the poor altogether does spell political peril in India, helping to topple parties in the last elections. Others point to the efficiency of an authoritarian state like China. India’s sluggish and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy has only haltingly put in place relatively simple solutions — iodizing salt, for instance, or making sure all children are immunized against preventable diseases — to say nothing of its progress on the harder tasks, like changing what and how parents feed their children. But as China itself has grown more prosperous, it has had its own struggles with health care, as the government safety net has shredded with its adoption of a more market-driven economy. 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.
India Prosperity Creates Paradox; Many Children Are Fat, Even More Are Famished By SOMINI SENGUPTA Presenting a confounding portrait of child health in India, new research commissioned by the government finds that despite the economic advances of recent years India's share of malnourished children remains among the worst in the world. Paradox being pervasive in this country, the new data on child malnutrition comes even as public health officials confront what they call alarming levels of childhood obesity. In short, while new money and new foods transform the eating habits of some of India's youngest citizens, gnawing destitution continues to plague millions of others. Taken together, it is a picture of plenty and want, each producing its own set of afflictions. Consider the statistics from Delhi, one of the country's most prosperous states and the seat of the capital. A recent study conducted by the Delhi Diabetes Research Center among schoolchildren ages 10 to 16 found nearly one in five to be either overweight or clinically obese. At the same time, preliminary figures from the latest National Family Health Survey showed one in three children under the age of 3 to be clinically underweight, the most reliable measure of malnutrition. Most vexing, especially for the government, is that the preliminary findings of the national survey, conducted in 2005-6, suggest that India's share of malnourished children seems to have declined only modestly since the last national survey seven years ago.
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