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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The Budget’s Big Focus on Malnutrition-Geeta Anand

The Budget’s Big Focus on Malnutrition-Geeta Anand

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published Published on Mar 20, 2012   modified Modified on Mar 20, 2012

The finance minister’s budget includes a big boost in spending on reducing malnutrition, clearly the priority among the social services programs of the Congress party-led government.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India will increase spending on malnutrition programs by 58% in fiscal 2012-13 to 158 billion rupees, or about $3 billion.

Included in this new spending is a plan to reorganize the Integrated Child Development Services, the central government-led initiative that has been in charge of the nation’s malnutrition programs, which are run by the states.

Despite its rapid economic growth, India has struggled with persistently high rates of malnutrition, far worse than many worse-performing economies. A recent Indian survey, which covered about a fifth of the country’s children, found 42% of those under the age of 5 are underweight. India fares worse than some much poorer regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, with an underweight rate of 24%, according to the United Nation’s Children’s Fund. In China, the rate is 6%, according to the U.N. group.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently announced India’s latest malnutrition survey results and pledged his support for the new program that Mr. Mukherjee funded in Friday’s budget.

The goal, Mr. Singh said, was to create a program that tackles the many causes of malnutrition—among them, poor maternal health, bad sanitation, dirty water –in a comprehensive fashion.

India plans to focus first on the 200 districts with the highest rate of malnutrition, officials involved say. The government is developing a massive education campaign, with one of the country’s most famous movie stars, Aamir Khan, as spokesman. The campaign plans to use media, from TV to mobile phones, to educate mothers about the symptoms of malnutrition and strategies for feeding children better, officials involved say.

The Wall Street Journal, 16 March, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/03/16/the-budgets-big-focus-on-malnutrition/


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