Plan panel doubts malnutrition data

The Planning Commission has cast doubt on the number of malnutritioned children in India, questioning the data generated by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 9, 2007, 02:51:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Planning Commission has cast doubt on the number of malnutritioned children in India, questioning the data generated by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD).

The figures range from 45.5 per cent to 55 per cent, with the National Family Health survey-III putting the figure around 45 per cent, whereas United Nation agencies range the number close to 55 per cent. Some states like Bihar have slipped on child nutrition since 1998.

Sayeeda Hamid, a member of the commission, points at flaws in the data collection in the anganwadi centres run by the WCD ministry. “There is no compilation of figures and registers at the anganwadi centres are not maintained properly. In that case, the data generated may not be authentic,” she told the Hindustan Times. However, she refused to comment on what, according to her, is the correct figure of India’s malnourishment rate.

After her visit to aganwadi centres in different parts of the country, Hamid has told the WCD ministry to improve its data collection methodology so that the exact count of malnourished children in the country can be ascertained.

The anganwadi centres, the base for providing nourishment to children aged up to three years, were found to be in shambles in many states. Anganwadis in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were found to be in a very bad state. The only exception was Nagaland, where community participation was higher, she said.

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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