India ranks 102nd among 117 countries, in the recently published, Global Hunger Index 2019. In 2018, India was 103 out of 132. In 2017, India was at 100 out of 119. Despite being the highest growing, developing country, what made India stagnant in the Global Hunger Index? A major embarrassment is that India is now behind its neighbours – Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar in the Report.
The hunger problem in India is serious, and the marginalised communities are the worst affected. Despite India’s 50% increase in GDP since 1991, it has failed to address the Human Development Index, which is a grave concern for a developing country like ours.
Government of India started a scheme known as Poshan Abhiyaan. It was launched on International Women’s Day (March 8) in 2018 to boost nutrition among children and women. The Abhiyaan aims to reduce stunting, undernutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and low birth-weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum, respectively. The target of the mission is to bring down stunting among children in the age group 0-6 from 38.4% to 25% by 2022. Recently, Poshan Maah was observed during September to increase awareness regarding nutrition in India.
In Jharkhand, only 57.3% of the rural women have access to institutional births, as per the Government of India’s National Family Health Survey 2015-16. And around 63% of the rural pregnant women are anaemic. The statistics for children are equally disturbing. More than 48% of the children (under the age of 5) in the state’s rural region are stunted, and 29.5% of the children (under the age of 5) are wasted.
The migrants who leave their homes due to economic reasons are also deprived of the rationed food in other states. However, a new scheme by the government, ‘One Nation, One Ration card’ intends to help migrant workers to avail food items from ration shops across the country. Only time will tell how effective this scheme would be in solving the hunger and nutritional problems of the vulnerable sections.
Some surveys show that India is improving in various domains of health and nutrition. However, this improvement is not only slow, but the margins remain low too. Therefore, India needs to bring development across different dimensions to reduce vulnerability to malnutrition.
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