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Booming nation, and yet millions still go hungry in India
Sydney Morning Herald - October 16, 2008
Matt Wade, New Delhi – India has a booming economy and growing political clout but 200 million of its people still go to bed hungry each night.
More than a third of India's states have alarming levels of hunger according to the Global Hunger Index, released by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the aid agencies Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide.
India ranked 66 out of 88 countries in the index. China, a country to which India is sometimes compared, was 15th.
"Despite years of robust economic growth, India scored worse than nearly 25 sub-Saharan African countries and all of South Asia, except Bangladesh," the report says. Almost a fifth of the population was estimated to be "food insecure".
Twelve of the 17 Indian states included in the study fell into the "alarming" category and the northern state of Madhya Pradesh, was rated has having an "extremely alarming" hunger problem. Madhya Pradesh ranked alongside Chad and Ethiopia on the Hunger Index.
About 60 per cent of children aged under five in Madhya Pradesh are malnourished and almost one in 10 infants die before they reach the age of five. Sachin Jain, the co-ordinator of the Right to Food Campaign Madhya Pradesh Support Group, says his organisation has registered 360 child deaths due to malnutrition in four districts of Madhya Pradesh in the past five months.
"These are just the deaths we have been able to verify in the 53 villages we could reach, the actual number would be much higher," he said.
India has been one of the world's fastest growing economies for several years but the findings of the Hunger Index suggests growth has had little or no impact in vast areas of rural north India.
Even some of India's wealthiest and most industrialised regions, such as the western state of Gujarat, registered a relatively poor hunger ranking. "Economic growth is not necessarily associated with poverty reduction," the report said.
The index, released for World Food Day, is calculated using data on child malnutrition, rates of child mortality and the number of people who are calorie deficient.
Low levels of education among rural women in India have led to poor feeding and child-care practices. The surge in the global food prices this year has reduced the capacity of poor families to buy food, making their situation worse.
The Hunger Index was critical of the inefficient government programs to combat malnutrition and poverty in India. "In South Asia, the major problem is a high prevalence of underweight in children under five, resulting largely from the lower nutritional and educational status of women, poor nutrition and health programs, and inadequate water and sanitation services," it said.
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