'2,500 kids die every day'

Every year 2,500 children in India die due to malnutrition, primarily caused by poverty, the Planning Commission told Supreme Court on Tuesday, resulting in the court expressing its anguish.

Updated on: May 11, 2011, 02:14:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Every day 2,500 children in India die due to malnutrition, primarily caused by poverty, the Supreme Court was told on Tuesday, resulting in the court expressing its anguish.

Such a figure has been brought to the notice of Supreme Court for the first time. "Around 8.8 lakh children die every year due to malnutrition of the total child deaths of 17.8 lakh every year," the Colin Gonsalves, counsel for the petitioner People's Union for Civil Liberties said.

"There are said to be 3,000 malnourishment deaths in the country. It may not be 3000 but even if it is three deaths in a country like ours, it is a matter of grave concern," a bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma said.

In India, 2.4 crore children are born each year of which 17.8 lakh die because of different reasons before they cross the age of five, of these 46% die due to malnutrition.

The annual death of malnutrition related death in India is more than the total live births in the UK and one-third of newborns in the US.

Although malnutrition is linked to poverty and poor public distribution system of subsidised foodgrains, the government informed the court that that 50 lakh tonnes of additional foodgrains will be distributed to poor in the next two weeks. The court said the food grains should be provided on subsidized rates.

The Planning Commission also explained its rationale for defining 37.2 % of India as poor as desired by the court and said it will have to be updated considering the inflationary changes.

The commission said only those spending less than Rs20 per day on consumption in urban areas and Rs15 in rural areas in 2004-05 have been categorized as poor.

"The figure is unrealistic," a senior commission official said adding that a person in Delhi cannot survive on Rs20 a day. The commission has admitted that the amount could be significantly higher if updated to reflect the price rise since 2004-05.

That figure will be known only at end of 2011 when National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) submits its large sample size survey on consumption trends in India. The commission has defined 37.2 % of Indians as poor in 2010 on basis of 2004-05 NSS data.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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