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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Hunger, malnutrition major challenges for India: IFPRI chief

Hunger, malnutrition major challenges for India: IFPRI chief

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published Published on Dec 29, 2010   modified Modified on Dec 29, 2010

Prof Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington DC, said that hunger and malnutrition continued to be challenging problems among 29 countries of the world, and India was one of them. As such, food and nutrition availability should be the major development goals in the national policy of these developing nations.

Delivering a special lecture on the second day of the 93rd annual conference of the Indian Economic Association (IEA) organised by the Panjab University, Prof Shenggen said agriculture-led growth was more pro-nutrition and priorities must be country-specific. In the Indian context, agricultural growth especially in vegetable, fruit and dairy products was needed. In South Asia, especially in India, an impressive economic growth and, to a large extent, reduced poverty in the recent years, have not translated into improved nutrition. Globally, the bulk of malnutrition occurs in Asia, with South Asia having the highest rates of undernutrition and the largest numbers of undernourished children in the world-42 percent of the world’s undernourished children live in India. The disconnect between growth and reduced undernutrition is often referred to as the “Asian Enigma.”

“Forging linkages among agriculture, nutrition, and health is necessary to mitigate the adverse effects of past global agricultural, nutrition, and national development policies that have fostered only short-term, unsustainable solutions to malnutrition, and underdevelopment. To do so would be to support a new paradigm for agricultural development, whereby agricultural growth is used to not only increase production and reduce poverty but also to improve nutrition,” added Prof Shenggen.

He also talked about improving status of women and rural infrastructure, including drinking water, rural health and sanitation. Conditional factors such as land distribution, women’s status have an impact on the growth-nutrition link factor, Prof Shenggen said adding that growth strategies and investment policies were needed to integrate nutrition as one of the development goals. Governments, he said, should pay attention to tide over the alarming situation of malnutrition urgently as other development issues were related to it.

Panjab University of India, he said, was one of the best universities in research and he advocated promotion of biotechnology as one of the important areas of research that could pave way to meet food security if other institutes of India also adopted it.

Empty chairs greet speakers

On the second day, the conference failed to maintain the number of audience. While, on the first day most of the members in the audience were seen losing interest and taking a nap, the number thinned on the second day with a majority of the chairs in the auditorium lying vacant. It is expected that the number would be regained on its last day with the presence of delegates including Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, who would deliver the valedictory address in the presence of Jagannath Pahadia, Governor of Haryana.


The Indian Express, 29 December, 2010, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hunger-malnutrition-major-challenges-for-india-ifpri-chief/730527/


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