India?s children at bottom of hunger heap

A ministry report has revealed that the Integrated Child Development Scheme has failed, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 29, 2006, 03:18:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Africa is proud — for its children fare better than those in India. If the government is to be believed, Indian children are worse than the United Nation’s sub-Saharan poster boy with rickety arms, swollen belly and protruding eyes symbolising malnutrition and hunger.

The ministry of Women and Child Development for the first time admitted that its Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) has failed to achieve the desired results. The admission comes in the wake of the Supreme Court and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen expressing dissatisfaction over the implementation of the scheme.

In an internal document on the ICDS, the ministry admitted that despite a high economic growth of eight per cent every year, malnutrition in the age group of 0-6 years has declined only by one per cent over the past eight years.

“The prevalence of child nutrition in India is among the highest in the world, nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, with dire consequences for morbidity, mortality, productivity and economic growth.”

Lack of political and bureaucratic will, especially among poorer states, has been cited as a major reason for the failure. The paper also lists the drawbacks in the scheme’s implementation, saying it was not reaching enough children, under three years of age, when nutrition interventions are the most effective.

The poorest states with the highest number of malnourished children have lowest levels of programme funding and coverage. “ICDS also faces substantial operational challenges,” the paper says.

The food schemes, as the ministry has found out, do not serve the purpose, The kitchdi-dalia staple is inadequate as children below three years require more fat content in food to meet the prescribed calories.

The ministry also wants to ban packaged food labelled “micronutrients” as it was leading to “political and bureaucratic” corruption. Instead, attempts should be made to satisfy calorie and protein needs through locally-prepared food, which may include eggs, vegetable, milk and fruits. For children below three, the ministry has recommended locally prepared take-home ration (THR).

To overcome hurdles and learn from past mistakes, minister Renuka Chaudhary has proposed restructuring the scheme with stress on more nutritious and balanced food for children. The ministry wants that restructured schemes to be first implemented in 100 backward districts, where the malnutrition level is high.

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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