Malnutrition impairing learning

Although India is three notches up on the global education index this year, 46 per cent Indian children are malnourished, which have severely affected their learning ability in schools, according to a UN education watchdog report. Chetan Chauhan reports.See graphics

Updated on: Nov 26, 2008, 01:30:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Although India is three notches up on the global education index this year, 46 per cent Indian children are malnourished, which have severely affected their learning ability in schools, according to a UN education watchdog report.

Linking malnourishment to learning abilities, the UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report 2008 said on Tuesday malnutrition impaired brain development of about 40 per cent of children in south Asia, including India.

Dr Arun Gupta of Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India said it was an established fact that malnourished children were poor. “Child malnutrition affect a child in the first two years of life when 80-90 per cent of the brain develops. The impact is irreversible,” he said.

The report also said 45 per cent of children in Std III could not read a test designed for students of Std I and only 50 per cent could read a simple text. About 42 per cent were not able to do simple subtractions or divisions.

In Orissa and Rajasthan, where the malnutrition rate was high, 40 per cent of Std IX students were unable to meet the international classroom learning benchmark, the report said, adding that among them, there was a huge gap between those from sound social background and those from poor socio-economic conditions.

The report criticised India for failing to ensure the benefits of high economic growth reaching poor children. UNESCO quoted the latest National Family Health Survey to state that India reduced malnutrition only by a percentage point to 46 per cent since 1998, while its economy grew by over nine per cent during the period.

India, with a ranking of 102 among 129 nations, allocated just 3.3 per cent of its Gross National Product for school education against eight to 10 per cent for countries like Maldives and the UK.

The report also blamed high absenteeism by teachers, poor-quality teaching, discrimination against the girl child and socio-economic factors for poor learning levels. India lost $2 billion a year because of absenteeism, it said.

Terming dropping out as an emerging problem in India, the report said, “Those with poor learning ability are more likely to
drop out than to be better learners.” In India, only six per cent of students joining primary schools entered higher education against 33 per cent in the developed world. And of them, about 60 per cent dropped out by the time they reached the elementary level.

India’s education ministry officials said a Rs 50,000-crore scheme for universalisation of secondary education will be introduced soon to help check the dropoutrate.

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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