December 30, 2006

Many Young Indians Are Fat; More Are Famished - New York Times

Link: Many Young Indians Are Fat; More Are Famished - New York Times.

Presenting a confounding portrait of child health in India, new research commissioned by the government finds that despite the economic advances of recent years India’s share of malnourished children remains among the worst in the world.

Paradox being pervasive in this country, the new data on child malnutrition comes even as public health officials confront what they call alarming levels of childhood obesity.

In short, while new money and new foods transform the eating habits of some of India’s youngest citizens, gnawing destitution continues to plague millions of others. Taken together, it is a picture of plenty and want, each producing its own set of afflictions.

Consider the statistics from Delhi, one of the country’s most prosperous states and the seat of the capital. A recent study conducted by the Delhi Diabetes Research Center among schoolchildren ages 10 to 16 found nearly one in five to be either overweight or clinically obese.

At the same time, preliminary figures from the latest National Family Health Survey showed one in three children under the age of 3 to be clinically underweight, the most reliable measure of malnutrition.

Most vexing, especially for the government, is that the preliminary findings of the national survey, conducted in 2005-6, suggest that India’s share of malnourished children seems to have declined only modestly since the last national survey seven years ago.

In Delhi, for instance, the share of underweight children dipped to 33 percent from 35 percent in that period. In perhaps the most damning indictment of the public health system, the share of Delhi children who were fully immunized actually fell to 63 percent from a level of 70 percent.

During that period, the Indian economy soared.

“I just want to assure you, government is very aware,” Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission said at a meeting of children’s rights advocates this month. “We must really judge our success in terms of these indicators, not in terms of growth.”

Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said bluntly at the same gathering, “Our failure here is very extraordinary.”

Posted by Anupam Chander on December 30, 2006 at 07:43 PM in Globalization | Permalink