Child Malnutrition in India

12/23/2009

It's a funny thing about life; once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
Germany Kent, American journalist

Bullish leaders of India and China often exuberantly assert that the 21st Century belongs to them. And, certainly in the past decade both nations have taken great strides to becoming economic giants. But an article, "India's Malnutrition Dilemma," in the New York Times Magazine (October 2009) points out that the Indian boom has a significant Achilles Heel — widespread child malnutrition. The article observes...

"... As China became an economic powerhouse it greatly reduced malnutrition. In an all-fronts effort, China cut child malnutrition by two-thirds between 1990 and 2002. Today only 7 percent of Chinese children under age 5 are underweight, whereas the figure for India is 43 percent. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, which most people assume to have the direst poverty statistics, the average child malnutrition rate is 28 percent.

"The youthfulness that [Indian leaders] claim as the country's great competitive advantage could turn out to be the greatest stumbling block to Indian development and make it an also-ran to China. The science is disturbingly clear: if you are malnourished until age 3, your neural formation suffers, and most of that underdevelopment is fixed for life.

"... No one is quite sure why the nutrition situation in India is so dire. The lack of women's empowerment in both rural and urban areas is thought to play a major role. And so far, at least, the central government has been very slow to act."

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