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The umbrage of being worse than sub-Saharan African children in nutrition is finally over for Indian kids below three years of age. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Aug 15, 2008, 24:30:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The umbrage of being worse than sub-Saharan African children in nutrition is finally over for Indian kids below three years of age.

Evaluation of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-3 data, based on new WHO standards for child growth, says that only 40.4 per cent of the Indian children are malnourished.

The same survey evaluating children health on basis of American standards had shown that 46 per cent per cent of Indian kids were malnourished, two per cent higher than sub-Saharan African children, thereby inviting international ridicule.

But, the government was quick to debunk the American standard once the WHO introduced its standards in 2006 based on surveys on child health in Europe, Africa, India and China. “The WHO standards truly reflect the child health standards on the global level unlike the earlier norm which was based on a survey on a few American children,” said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairperson, Planning Commission.

It was in 2007 that the government asked the health ministry to re-evaluate the 2005-06 NFHS as per the WHO standards.

“The new standards clearly show that the government was able to bring about two point percentage improvement in nutrition levels showing that government policies had some positive impact on poor. But, this does not mean that we have done satisfactory work. We need to do better,” Ahluwalia 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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