India way behind in child health, sanitation

About one-fifth of the world’s children live in India. But their conditions are even worse than those in sub-Saharan Africa on many social development indicators, including nutrition and usage of sanitation, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 22, 2008, 24:55:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Union Government and United Nations Children Fund on Thursday agreed to bring Indian children out of the global hall of shame on social indicators through a five-year joint action plan. The plan aims at providing better basic facilities to children in the country’s poorest districts.

About one-fifth of the world’s children live in India. But their conditions are even worse than those in sub-Saharan Africa on many social development indicators, including nutrition and usage of sanitation.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had raised a similar concern during his Independence Day speech when he regarded child malnutrition as the biggest curse for the nation.

Dubious distinction

21% (2m) of all child deaths under 5 years of age
23% (117,000) of maternal deaths in the world
1 in 5 kids dies of pneumonia, highest in the world
29% (240m) of population doesn’t use improved sanitation
4m children die within 28 days of being born; that’s 25% of total neo-natal deaths in the world
35% (55m) of world’s underweight children belong to India
43% (8.3m) of newborns with low weight from India
50% (410m) defecate in the open

Karen Hulsh, Unicef’s country representative, said Indian children face a number of problems, especially those belonging to the disadvantaged groups like Scheduled Castes, tribals and minority communities. “Though India is investing more on social development, the disadvantaged are yet to reap the benefits,” she said.

Committing $700 million of Unicef’s help in the next five years, she said the UN body would look at providing technological support to the government to provide tangible solutions like centres for sick new-born babies. But the emphasis would be on fulfillment of child rights, which is crucial for India’s economic and social development, she added.

While outlining government programmes for welfare of children, Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury wanted that the government, civil society and private sector should come up with out-of-box ideas to improve social indicators for women and children.

She was of the view that lack of awareness is the biggest hurdle in implementing government programmes for welfare of the deprived.

The action plan aims to lower the infant mortality rate from 58 to 28 per 1,000 and maternal mortality rate from 31 to 100 per 100,000 within next five years. Special programmes for child development and nutrition would also be run, Hulsh 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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