Children are the future pillars of a society, and a worthy asset for a nation in a larger perspective. They have to be appropriately fed and cared for, and their talent nurtured, so that they live their life to a fullest potential as possible. A nation’s future will be only as good as the way it treats and nurtures its children today. This is a much talked about issue. Sociologists and economists as well as political parties and political leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have emphasised this repeatedly.
But, unfortunately, the fact remains that nearly four of every ten children growing up in India today are not getting enough of the right kind of nutrition to help their body and mind grow to their full potential. Persistent disparities along the lines of caste, tribe, religion and gender, perpetuate inequality and the consequent social degradation. Poverty hits children hardest, because it creates life-long and irreparable damage to their minds and bodies. It is a shame of the millennium that India continues to have a large percentage of children under five years, who are underweight and stunted due to malnourishment.
A child’s development is a sequence of events for which there is no second chance. Once missed, the window of opportunity closes forever. Nutrition is key to unlocking every child’s potential. Well nourished children are better equipped to fend off diseases, they do better in school and grow up to become more productive members of society. Children are our country’s future, and every single one of them deserves a change to live a healthy and productive life. We must ensure that each and every child gets the best start in life so that they will survive and thrive, and meet their fullest potential.
India’s growth patterns over the last few years show resilience to crisis, and the country seems to be on the right track in meeting targets for access to improved drinking water and primary education. But in areas of poverty reduction, nutrition, infant and child mortality, maternal mortality and sanitation, India still falls short of national and global targets. An estimated 45 per cent of India’s children under five years are underweight due to malnourishment. This figure increases to 55 per cent for children from scheduled tribe families, and 59 per cent for children from the poorest stratum of the society. The country is witnessing a severe under nutrition happening very early in life. An estimated one-third of children are already undernourished at birth because of nutrition deprivation during pregnancy. Sub-optimal feeding compromised hygiene practices and inadequate healthcare facilities in the first two years of a child’s life, compound the situation.
A latest International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report said India has been grappling with a ‘serious’ hunger problem, ranking 100th among 119 developing countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) behind North Korea, Bangladesh and even the war-torn Iraq. India’s hunger problem is driven mainly by high child malnourishment, and underlines the need for stronger commitment to the social sector. The country has the third highest score in all of Asia – only Afghanistan and Pakistan are ranked worse. An increase in GHI indicates the worsening of a country’s hunger situation – so at 31.4, India’s 2017 GHI score is at high end of ‘serious’ category, and one of the main factors pushing South Asia to the category of worst performing region this year, followed closely by Africa South of the Sahara, the report said.
Now in its 12th year, the GHI ranks countries based on four indicators – undernourishment, child mortality, child wasting and child stunting. The report ranked 119 countries in the developing world, nearly half of which have ‘extremely alarming’, ‘Alarming’ or ‘serious’ hunger levels. India’s higher ranking at 100th on the GHI this year (it was ranked 97th last year) brings to the fore the disturbing reality of the country’s stubbornly high proportion of malnourished children – over 20 per cent of them aged below five weighed too little for their height and over a third were too short for their age. As of 2015-2016, more than a fifth (21%) of children in India suffer from wasting (low-weight-for-height) – up from 20% in 2005-2006. In fact, India’s child wasting rate has not shown any improvement over the past 25 years, the IFPRI report said.
Besides, India continues to have the largest share of deaths of children under the age of five, new data from the Global Burden of Disease – 2016 report published in the medical journal ‘Lancet’ show. Even while globally mortality rates have decreased across all age groups over the past five decades – with the largest improvements occurring among children younger than five years, India recorded the largest number of under-five deaths in 2016 at 9 lakh. Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data revealed that India has the highest burden of child deaths in the world – the country alone accounting for 22% of the 6.3 million annual under-five deaths globally, and around 52% of under-five deaths happening at the neonatal stage.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has emphasized that the need of the hour is dedicated efforts during the neonatal period through establishment of special new-born care units, systematic home visits by public healthcare workers, improved breastfeeding practices and substantial increase in institutional deliveries, inorder to check deaths of neonatal stage in India.
In a decade or so, India’s children will still number approximately 400 million; of these, around 100 million belonging to the poorest families. These children are not just a statistic in the government records, they are India’s future.
(The writer is a freelance journalist).
