Unicef report: Centre sceptical

The Unicef says India is worse than sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to feeding its children.

Published on: May 4, 2006, 02:29:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Unicef says India is worse than sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to feeding its children. But the Union government begs to differ. The Centre disagrees that India is home to the largest population of malnourished children and rebuts Unicef’s charge that the country has not done enough to reach the millennium development goal.

At a function to release Unicef’s ‘report card on nutrition’, Reva Nayyar, women and child development secretary, said the figures in the report are based on old data, from 1998 to be precise, and do not reflect the true picture. “The situation is much better now, though a lot needs to be done still. I am sure we will see improvement when the latest figures are published,” she contended, adding that these would be available soon.

However, she conceded that a paltry sum is spent on women and child health. “Only 2.5 per cent to 5 per cent of the total budget is for children and most of the money is spend on education. Only about 1 per cent goes towards improving child health and .03 per cent on child protection measures.”

She added that the 11th Five Year Plan, scheduled to commence from the next fiscal, would make budgetary provisions for child nutrition.

Nayyar stressed that the UPA government has admitted problem and allocation to the WCD has almost doubled since 2004.

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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