Even as India is set to celebrate the 68th year of its independence from foreign rule, over 1.8 crore population (children included) is working as bonded labour, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The data collected in the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) revealed that as many as 4.3 crore families in rural India do not have a house. Besides, one in ten households does not have even a single literate member, as per the Census 2011. A recent international survey on poverty shows that India is home to one-third of all poor people in the world or 33 per cent of the global poor, which is pegged at 1.4 billion people.
On the other side, politicians and bureaucrats have amassed unaccountable wealth, and there is no punitive action against them. The Supreme Court is on record that offences committed by ‘netas’ and ‘babus’ seldom get properly investigated due to their influence in the governance, as a result, they are not brought to book and are able to escape punishment. The extent of corruption in the public administration system in India, has, however, been amply highlighted in the ongoing investigation in the JICA scam in Goa, which revealed that our ‘netas’ and ‘babus’ have become not only national, but international ‘chors’. In fact, the corrupt government servants, including politicians, have reduced the country’s prestige and pushed the common people to a degrading situation.
So, even while we sing ‘Vande Mataram’ and say ‘Hamara Bharat Mahan’, India continues to remain a poor country, and its human development indices are a shame. The grinding poverty coupled with growing unemployment and rapid price rise of all essential commodities, have pushed a larger section of the Indian population below the poverty line. Consequently, India has over 230 million hungry and malnourished people, according to UN Agency Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The government announces from house-top that the country is self-sufficient in food grains. But official statistics themselves show that the situation is completely the opposite. The per capita per day net availability of cereals in 1994 were 468.5 grams and pulses 41.6 grams, but in 2014, cereals available had fallen to 464.9 grams and pulses to 37 grams. Moreover, only 58 per cent population can buy this food grains, as 42 per cent are below the poverty line. The UNICEF report on the ‘Progress of Nations’ points out that 66 per cent of Indian children suffer from malnourishment. Pregnant women, too suffer because of poor nutrition and their number stands at 83 per cent, the highest in the world.
With a large percentage of its population under-nourished, nearly 44 per cent of under-five children under-weight and 7 per cent of them dying before they reach five years, India is firmly established among the world’s most hunger-ridden countries. The situation is better than only Congo, Chad, Ethiopia or Burundi, but it is worse than Pakistan, Sudan, North Korea or Nepal. This is according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which combines the three indicators to give a Global Hunger Index (GHI) as per which India is 67th among the worst 80 countries in terms of nourishment.
Global research has firmly established that depriving the foetus of essential nutrients – as will happen in an under-nourished pregnant women – seals the fate of the baby once it is born. Besides, it is likely to suffer from susceptibility to diseases and physical retardation, as also to mental faculties getting compromised. So, continuing to allow people to go hungry and malnourished, is not just more misery for them; it is the fate of future generations of Indians in balance, researchers point out.
A new study in Baran in Rajasthan and Burhanpur in Madhya Pradesh has found that preventable deaths continue to hit children in the poorest areas of the country. According to UNICEF, the statistics figure of one million children under-five dying due to malnourishment-related causes every year in India is alarming and far above the emergency threshold for acute malnutrition (as per WHO classification of the severity of malnutrition).
A recent ACF India report says that the number of children affected in India is higher than all the South Asian countries, with high burden of wasting or acute malnourishment. ACF insisted that there was an urgent need to recognize severe malnourishment in the country, and further stressed on the need for policies to tackle malnutrition and adequate budgets for implementation. Researchers are of the opinion that the biggest contribution to fighting hunger would be providing universal coverage of the PDS with adequate amounts of grains, pulses and edible oils included.
Interestingly, the government has been running two of the world’s biggest nutrition programmes; the Mid-day meal scheme for students and the anganwadi program under which infants and children upto 6 years are given ‘hot cooked’ meals. Besides, recently, the government has introduced food security scheme for those living below the poverty lines. But, unfortunately, these programmes have been mired in one controversy or the other due to lack of sincerity on the part of those involved in the implementation of the schemes.
The need of the hour is accountability at all levels of the governance. But for this purpose, the people should be vigilant. Is this possible in a poverty stricken country like India?
(The writer is a
freelance journalist)
