The social worker found a boy preparing a paste of garlic so that his little brother could stave off hunger until their parents returned from the fields. It is heart-rending how poor children grow up too early, how older children care for younger ones, and how the destitute just manage to cope – if they do. It is tragic that this story is endlessly repeated.
The Integrated Child Development Services program (ICDS) in India is supposed to address extreme deprivation by providing supplementary food, rations and growth monitoring through community-level anganwadis (kindergarten) for children under the age of six. However, 74% of these children do not receive any supplementary food from the anganwadi in their region.
The survivors of hunger in childhood are pursued into adulthood. More than one in three adults is underweight. The government also has a program to provide food supplements to pregnant and lactating women, but only 21% of pregnant women and 17% of lactating women receive any food supplementation.
There are many newspaper reports on children who die of hunger but whose cause of death is recorded as measles or diarrhoea. In the state of Maharashtra, a minister shamelessly announced that 80 children died of malnutrition a day over four years across the state. The urban poor are not better off. Street children and the children of construction workers are more at risk since they do not have access to health and nutrition schemes.
Surveys show that the poor are eating less today than 40 years ago. Government committees dare to conclude that this drop is voluntary and merits a reduction in the minimum calorie requirements, allowing the government to further reduce the amount of grain available through the Public Distribution System (PDS). This, in turn, forces the poor to pay market rates for food - or do without, which may mean cooking wild roots and leaves to survive.
The government programs mentioned, the ICDS and the PDS, have been sabotaged by vested interests. Health activists say that the government forges financial partnerships with companies that make biscuits and baby food. Paediatrician Vandana Prasad condemns the use of commercial products for treatment of severe acute malnutrition when locally-made foods are effective, appropriate and cheaper.
Community involvement - through feeding programs, self-help groups, grain banks, and so on - plays a critical role in tackling malnutrition, but its participation is of limited value unless the government acknowledges its obligation to ensure people’s right to food. Without an assurance of sufficient food through the PDS, people are left to the mercy of the market. The consequences speak for themselves. It is a matter of concern that even as the government talks about expanding food security, we read of proposals that would effectively slow down the PDS. People must act through civil society organizations to make the government meet its commitment to the country’s poor and hungry.
Source: infochangeindia.org
