The theme for March 8, 2024 International Women’s Day was “Invest in women: Accelerate Progress.” India needs to invest in daily wage earning mothers to accelerate progress in the field of fighting hunger and malnutrition among children.
Mothers in many economically disadvantaged households are to work hard to earn wages even while rearing their infant children. As a result, they do not get adequate time to feed their starving children. They face double torture in the form of anaemia for not getting adequate food for themselves plus starving children for not getting adequate time to feed them.
Vandana Prasad, a paediatrician and public health specialist said that many infants are deprived of complementary feeding because their mothers’ circumstances prevent them from providing the children with feeding care. He pointed out that maternity entitlements and childcare services could help address the issue but many women do not have access to such services. This makes 1 out of 5 infants in our country to starve for a long period of time.
It is found that in terms of the total number of zero-food children, India is at the top of the list with over 6.7 million infants and the third highest in the world percentage wise. India has 19.3 per cent of zero-food children. India’s position is better than two west African nations Guinea (21.8%) and Mali (20.5%). But much worse than other 89 low-income and middle-income countries like Bangladesh (5.6%), Pakistan (9.2), Nigeria (8.8%) and DR Congo (7.4%).
The nutrition indicators for children under 5 years shows that 1 out of 3 children (35.5 per cent) is a victim of stunting and 1 out of 5 children (19.3 per cent) is a victim of wasting as per the Union health ministry’s National Family Health Survey – 5 (2019 – 20) report. India’s child wasting and child stunting rates are horrific in both government’s NFHS report and the 2023 Global Hunger Index report.
India has slid into a horrific 111th rank among 125 countries in the 2023 Global Hunger Index. India is behind China (at the top bracket that includes 20 countries), Sri Lanka (60), Nepal (69), Myanmar (72), Bangladesh (81) and Pakistan (102) among our neighbours. The report says that India’s child wasting rate (18.7 per cent) is the highest on the global level.
The New National Educational Policy has proposed that the midday meals provided to students in government and aided schools should be supplemented by breakfast as children are unable to learn optimally when they are hungry.
A few days ago, the Supreme Court of India has left it to the states and union territories to decide on setting up community kitchens for providing nutritious food to the underprivileged to tackle hunger and starvation deaths. Community kitchens can also effectively tackle malnutrition.
Every woman should enjoy maternity entitlements and childcare services. Moreover, free milk for infants of poor families, breakfast plus midday meals for the students and community kitchens for the needy must be started. Lifting children and their mothers out of hunger and malnutrition should be given top priority.
