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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | New evidence on child nutrition calls for radical expansion of child development services -Jean Dreze

New evidence on child nutrition calls for radical expansion of child development services -Jean Dreze

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published Published on Dec 17, 2020   modified Modified on Dec 17, 2020

-The Indian Express

If India’s overwhelming goal is to become a $5 trillion economy within a few years, there is no reason to pay attention to children. But if it is development in the full sense of the term, then child development is paramount.

Leaving aside two or three countries like Niger and Yemen, India has the highest proportion of underweight children in the world: a full 36 per cent according to the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4). The corresponding proportion is much lower in other South Asian countries, including Bangladesh (22 per cent) and Nepal (27 per cent). If we focus on child stunting (low height-for-age) instead of low weight-for-age, India’s rank improves a little, but it still stands out as one of the most undernourished countries, in the company of a dozen other countries such as Ethiopia, Congo and Afghanistan. These startling facts, based on the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, are rarely discussed in India’s prolix democracy.

Early data from the National Family Health Survey 2019-20 (NFHS-5), released a few days ago by the health minister, reveals another alarming fact: Child nutrition indicators have not improved between 2015-16 and 2019-20. In fact, in seven out of 10 major states for which data has been released, the proportion of underweight children increased in that period. In six of these 10 states, stunting increased.

The proportion of undernourished children in these 10 states combined (about half of India’s population) can be estimated with reasonable precision as a population-weighted average of the state-wise figures. This comes to 36 per cent for stunting and 34 per cent for underweight — the same, in both cases, as the corresponding weighted-average for 2015-16, based on NFHS-4 data. This suggests that the progress of child nutrition in India, modest as it was earlier, has come to a standstill.

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The Indian Express, 17 December, 2020, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/new-evidence-on-child-nutrition-calls-for-radical-expansion-of-child-development-services-7107810/


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