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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How India can boost its GDP by ensuring food for all -Vinita Bali

How India can boost its GDP by ensuring food for all -Vinita Bali

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published Published on Jul 19, 2014   modified Modified on Jul 19, 2014
-The Economic Times


The rationale for embedding nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programmes in a development agenda is compelling. And yet, strangely, it has been ignored. Planning and implementation of such programmes require collaborative, consistent and aligned effort across multiple sectors.

Currently, we have a myopic vision to pursue narrow agendas. Transformational change requires tackling one of the most obdurate challenges: malnutrition. This blight has a large human impact and a larger economic impact that is not measured and largely ignored. According to the 2014 United Nations Millennium Development Goals report made public earlier this week, one-third of the world's extreme poor live in India, making the country home to the largest number of impoverished.

The World Bank estimates that India loses 2-3% of GDP primarily because of poor nutrition, leading to lower productivity and loss of economic value. Malnutrition - protein-energy and micronutrient deficiency - is one of India's most serious development challenges as it impacts growth, development and cognitive abilities in children, health in women, and immune functions and productivity in all.

The deplorable state of India on basic social and human indicators is all too evident. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), India ranks 63rd among 78 countries in the Global Hunger Index.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) figures point to India being 136th among 186 countries in the Human Development Index. The 2012 World Health Organization report ranks India 112th among 190 countries in universal access to public health. The Economist's 2013 where-tobe-born index (the old quality-of-life index) ranks India an abysmal 66 among a total of 80 countries.

With its endemic poverty, the case for improved nutrition is especially critical in India. Inadequate nutrition leads to lower productivity and increases cost of doing business; encumbers the poor with lower immunity, making them more susceptible to illness, lost working days and disproportionately higher expenditure on healthcare; and stresses a healthcare delivery system already stretched for resources and basic infrastructure.

Despite the existence of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) since 1975 and midday school meals shortly thereafter, one in three children is born underweight (around eight million each year) and are physically and cognitively challenged for life. Also, around 61 million children are stunted and, of the 2.5 million that die every year, malnutrition is the underlying cause for half of these deaths. About 3,500 children die in India every day. That's the equivalent of fatalities in ten Boeing 737 crashes.

Rather than make statistics on under-nutrition a contentious issue, we must accept that the quality of life for most people is unacceptable. There is ample evidence to show that improvements in nutrition lag far behind income growth, and families with enough income for adequate food also suffer from high rates of under-nutrition.

Five initiatives must be considered to convert the burden of our population to an economic dividend:

Implement a single-point programme comprising multi-sectoral strategies tailored to specific causes. This has to be backed by political will and public-private partnerships, and must include supply-side factors (increased access to potable water, sanitation, primary healthcare, fortified food) and demand-side factors (women's education, sensitivity to child and maternal health, income growth).

Ensure greater focus on hygiene and sanitation. Child mortality is up to seven times higher in countries with poor sanitation and lack of access to safe water for drinking, washing and cooking.

Ensure that existing programmes like ICDS and midday meals are significantly overhauled.

Learn from the success of iodised salt which virtually eliminated diseases like goitre, and conduct largescale staple food fortification.

Develop nutrition metrics for credible and timely nutrition data and track them with the same fervour as economic or stock market data. Malnutrition is preventable. And India can no longer wait.

(The writer heads Britannia Nutrition Foundation)


The Economic Times, 18 July, 2014, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-07-18/news/51708574_1_global-hunger-index-food-policy-research-institute-human-development-index


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