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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Enhance incomes, education and sanitation to tackle malnutrition

Enhance incomes, education and sanitation to tackle malnutrition

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published Published on Jan 12, 2012   modified Modified on Jan 12, 2012
-The Economic Times

It is a shame, said the Prime Minister, releasing a new report that says 42% of India's children suffer from malnutrition. Dr Manmohan Singh went on to talk of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), the government's preferred scheme for tackling the problem, and of the need to to focus on 100 extremely backward districts. 

An ICDS-like scheme is entirely appropriate but it would be a big mistake to rely on give-away schemes to improve basic welfare, or to expect some government agency, manned by enlightened and scrupulous people, to achieve miraculous results in the area of nutrition. 

The reality is that when people are disempowered, government schemes do not work for them. Money and material meant for them find their way into the pockets of those at the other end of the hierarchy of local power. To change their state of disempowerment, what is required is political mobilisation of these people, not evangelical zeal on the part of a bunch of civil servants. 

The primary challenge is that of political parties and their affiliate organisations, not of the government and its agencies, which can only offer secondary support. Schemes to build rural roads, electrify villages, get rural schools working, provide safe drinking water and develop rural sanitation are likely to be more effective in combating malnutrition than the ICDS. 

People need a sustained rise in their incomes, greater awareness about micronutrients, access to markets, healthcare and information, and freedom from widespread intestinal parasites that suck away whatever nutrition they manage to imbibe. 

The Prime Minister would be well advised to end a series of wasteful subsidies that eat away the government's spending power and, instead, use the money to invest in rebooting Indian agriculture and in creating a public health engineering infrastructure in rural areas. 

That would enhance incomes, allow people to buy more and better foods, and vastly reduce morbidity. It is vital that political leaders and planners conceive of people's welfare in a holistic fashion, rather than in parts, each of which is amenable to a sensational annual report.

The Economic Times, 12 January, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/enhance-incomes-education-and-sanitation-to-tackle-malnutrition/articleshow/11457135.cms


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