Combating scourge of malnutrition in India
The latest round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) has presented a grim picture of India’s social development reality. Our little ones continue to be wasted, stunted and underweight. The share of children under five in the three categories has witnessed a rise across the states and Union territories even as the country sets its sights on a $5 trillion economy. The first phase survey of the NFHS-5 comprises 22 states and Union territories. The poor state of nutrition security of the children is stark.
Let’s start with the South. Four states feature in NFHS-5 but barring Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, the remaining two, Kerala and Telangana, have reported a rise in the percentage of children under five found stunted, wasted and underweight. Andhra Pradesh, which shows a marginal improvement in nutrition indices, reports a rise in severely wasted children. Across the West coast, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa register a similar trend.
Gujarat’s story of children facing malnutrition shows little change. Maharashtra presents an almost identical picture, if not worse. The small state of Goa now has more percentage of stunted and underweight children. The Northeast region continues to be a cause for grave concern. Except for Sikkim and Meghalaya to some extent, the NFHS-5 flags the rest of the sister states for severe acute malnutrition. In Tripura, the stunted children share has jumped from 24.3 per cent (in NFHS-4) to 32.3 per cent now.
Underweight children now account for 25.6 per cent of the state’s under-five population. Nagaland presents an equally scary scenario. Over 32 per cent of its under-five children are stunted, up from 28.6 per cent in the last round of the survey. The underweight kids’ share has grown from 16.7 per cent to 26.9 per cent. Assam’s wasted, severely-wasted and underweight children percentage stands bigger now. The five UTs have a similar tale to tell. If all this is not bad enough, more and more children are found to be suffering from anaemia.
There is definitely something worryingly wrong with how India is approaching its social development goals. Having failed to free our children from the vicious circle of malnutrition over the last seven decades, we have let generations of kids down.