Why MP is India’s Ethiopia

Human development indicators suggest that Madhya Pradesh (MP) has descended to a state similar to that of Ethiopia, the global yardstick for hunger and deprivation, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 10, 2009, 24:31:28 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Human development indicators suggest that Madhya Pradesh (MP) has descended to a state similar to that of Ethiopia, the global yardstick for hunger and deprivation.

The state’s annual plan document, cleared by the Planning Commission on Friday, reveals that the nutritional levels of women and children in MP have been steadily sliding over the past 10 years. MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan attributed poor health indicators to low industrialisation of the state.

At a meeting with plan panel officials, he sought a special package from the Centre for industrial development in tribal areas, which he thinks will improve the per capita income of the population.

The percentage of under-weight children less than three years old has increased from 53.5 per cent in the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2) report concluded in 1996 to 60.3 per cent in the latest NFHS-3.

The latest survey on health indicators was conducted between 1996 and 2006.

MP’s record stands in stark contrast to the national average that has fallen from 47 per cent to 45.90 per cent over decade ending in 2006.

Similarly, the percentage of anaemic children has increased from 71.3 per cent to 82.6 per cent between the two surveys. The percentage of anaemic pregnant children, too, has increased from 49.9 per cent to 57.9 per cent.

The infant mortality rate has, however, witnessed a fall from 88 per cent to 57 per cent. But it is much higher than the national average of 55 per cent.

A senior Planning Comm-ission official, requesting anonymity, attributed poor nutritional standards to increasing hunger in the state.

“It may be because of leakages in the public distribution system,” he remarked.

Madhya Pradesh was one of the first states in India to distribute foodgrains to 32.4 per cent of its poor population at Rs 3 per kilo.

According to the Indian State Hunger Index released in 2008, however, Madhya Pradesh, with a score of 30.9, had the largest number of hungry people in the country. The state was put in the “extremely alarming” bracket.

In the International Hunger Index chart the same year, Ethiopia scored 31.06. Both indices are prepared on the basis of similar parameters by the International Food Policy Research Institute. A higher score on the chart indicates more hunger.

The planners are worried to find that MP’s hunger record has worsened between 1994 and 2008, the years of two hunger indices for India.

The per capita income of the state has increased slightly from Rs 12,384 in 1999-2000 to Rs 15,346 in 2007-08. In comparison, the national average has almost doubled from Rs 16,258 to Rs 33,000 in the same period.

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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