Going hungry

INDIA has alarmingly slid to the 102nd spot among 117 countries on the 2019 Global Hunger Index (GHI). The serious level of hunger prevalent in the nation compares starkly with its projection of being an Asian giant even as Bangladesh and Nepal race past with impressive gains, riding on better scores on the ‘nutrition-sensitive’ parameters of education, sanitation, and health. Shamefully, of the four indicators — undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality — India suffers the ignominy of having fallen to the highest rate of child wasting (low weight with respect to height) of 20.8 per cent. Our National Family Health Survey too has been lamenting this deficiency and the failure to tackle the scourge. Refuting government claims on cleanliness, GHI says that open defecation is still prevalent, compromising the nutrition-absorbing abilities of the people.

With less than 10 children up to two years of age getting wholesome food, the foundation for a healthy population is extremely weak. Add to it problems of poor maternal fitness, sanitation and education, the challenge of improving the nutrition indices only aggravates. The continued poor showing in the GHI over the years (it was pegged at 83 out of 113 countries in 2000) indicates many a slip between the schemes announced by the government from time to time, including PDS, Midday Meal and Food Security Act, and the kitchens of our starving millions.

No child would waste if all leaks leading to the criminal food wastage in our country are plugged. Though it’s been a decade since the Supreme Court directed the Centre in 2010 to ensure that foodgrains be distributed to the hungry poor rather than letting them rot due to lack of covered warehouses, they unfortunately remain deprived of food. In June this year, the CM of Punjab, rued the inability of his government to store the full bumper harvest. Nearly one-third of the 280 lakh tonnes of foodgrain stocks in the state are decomposing in the open. Haryana too is similarly placed. Imagine how many people could be fed and saved from disease and starvation if the grain reaches them.