Show A An old d stain on the he new Ind India Henry Chu ChuLos Los Ange Angeles cs Times Sitting in the basket of a hanging scale month 20 old Deep Kumar epitomizes the s silent lent but monumental crisis gripping this country The needle stops at 14 pounds A healthy child his age ought to weigh nearly twice as much But very little about Deep peep is healthy Whereas a normal toddler would runaround run runaround runaround around the boy seems to struggle to keep his stunted frame sitting upright His limbs are pitifully thin the bones within as fragile as glass These are classic signs of severe malnutrition and they are branded on the wasted bodies of millions of youngsters across India Astonishingly an estimated 40 percent of all the worlds world's severely malnourished children younger than 5 live in this country a dark stain on the record of a nation that touts its high rate of economic growth and fancies itself a arising arising rising power Spiraling food prices and ineffectual government threaten to push that figure even higher Officials are beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the emergency as experts warn of grave consequences for the future of Indias India's economic boom if the state fails to improve the well-being well of its youngest citizens Already the proportion of malnourished children is several times greater eater than in China Asias Asia's other developing giant and double the rate found foun d in most countries of sub- sub Saharan Africa This is a stunning fact said Banerjee a professor of economics a athe at atthe atthe t the Massachusetts' Massachusetts Institute e of Technology who has ha s studied the problem To its credit India hain has ha hasin hasin s in the last several decades decade s succeeded in wardin warding g off the specter specter of famine e that regularly haunted th the e subcontinent well into th the e century As a result o of f better farming techniques technique s and security food-security policies mass starvation is no longer longe r the dread concern it once one e was But that achievement a awell as aswell aswell s well as the recent euphoria a over Indias India's rapid economic c expansion has obscured obscure d the governments government's failure e to help provide its people particularly the young wit with th the nutrients needed to build buil d healthy productive lives Many officials were e shocked when a 2005 06 6 government study revealed d hardly any progress in to reducing child malnutrition n over the last decade and anda a half exactly when the Indian economy was exploding and attracting international attention This has not been a policy priority for this country for forthe forthe forthe the last 40 years said Victor M. M Aguayo chief of ch child ld nutrition and development at the United Nations Childrens Children's Fund office in New Delhi There was an underlying assumption that as soon as economic growth takes place this will vanish So lets let's focus on economic growth lets let's focus on getting rich Instead Indias India's performance in combating child malnutrition has been worse than that of other countries with similar economic conditions Close to half of all young children in India or a staggering 60 million are malnourished Only Bangladesh and Nepal have a higher percentage of underweight children In a a speech last year Indian Prime Minister Manmohan I Singh acknowledged the gravity of the situation calling it a national shame We cannot deny that it itis itis itis is a crisis said Loveleen Kacker a senior official at the central Ministry for for Women and Child Development Maybe we didn't treat it like a crisis earlier which we should have Then we would have taken corrective steps much earlier than now And what were we're thinking of doing now we should've started 10 years back The World Bank estimates that malnutrition and its negative effects on health and productivity cost India as much as 3 percent of GDP a year Beyond the economic fallout is the damage to Indias India's image and credibility as it tries to assert itself as an important play player r on the world stage Its ts t's not nice to want to have an international role and then find that youre you're having to defend such an indefensible position Kacker said Just why malnutrition remains such a stubborn problem here is due to a constellation of causes that tend to reinforce and aggravate each other creating the perfect st storm rm of risk factors as Aguayo put it At root is the abject t poverty so pervasive in India where third one-third o of f the population of 11 billion n squeaks by on less than 1 a day Another r third makes do with 2 a day That deprivation can stac stack k the cards against a child chil d before he or she is even n born bom Too many women n e y t 2 i r- r I 1 Photo for the Los Angeles Times by Anita Raju Devi right feeds old month 1 at the UNICEF center in India About 30 percent of Indian babies weigh less than 5 2 1 pounds at birth here are underweight and undernourished themselves the major reason why 30 percent of Indian babies enter the world weighing less than 5 2 1 pounds Afterward inthe in inthe inthe the crucial first two years of life m many ny children are fed sugary water animal milk rice and other foods lacking the fat protein and vitamins necessary for proper physical and mental growth Women too thin and anemic giving birth to tiny babies who are poorly fed fedin fedin fedin in the first two years of life That's the synopsis of the tragedy Aguayo said India needs to break this intergenerational cycle of malnutrition That cycle is plainly evident with month 20 old Deep and his mother Devi here in the poor dirt-poor eastern state of Bihar where the proportion of malnourished children younger than 3 has risen not dropped in recent years from 54 percent to 58 percent Like her sons son's Devis Devi's arms are thin stick-thin the bangles adorning them sliding up and down with no resistance The sinews of her neck protrude while her chest seems lost far below the folds of her her canary- canary yellow sari Her careworn face suggests an age much older than her 45 years With a blind husband who is unable to work Devi dep depends on her parents to help out with buying food She reckons that rupees a day would be enough to guarantee two square meals for her husband herself and the three of their five children who live at home But from her modest vegetable stall she earns an average of 30 rupees a day the equivalent of 70 cents There are four or five days a month when the pot doesn't boil and we wego wego go hungry Devi said At home little Deep her youngest child and only son eats one roti or piece of flatbread a day plus some rice and occasionally some vegetables Im a poor woman Devi said What more can I afford As she spoke her sleeping son twitched fitfully on a bed lied bedin bedin in a nutrition rehabilitation center here in sponsored by UNICEF which in effect provides triage for the worst The ward is a study in cheated childhood at 22 months looks less than half her age her rib cage can be easily felt beneath her clothes 1 2 1 lies still under her mothers mother's watchful gaze a blue hand towel covering nearly her entire body Vikas almost 4 and suffering from cerebral palsy can barely sit up without help from his gaunt mother who is 45 and pregnant with her fifth child There are flickers of hope After 10 days of eating nutrient laden eggs and other foods not available at home Deep has gained almost a pound and a bit more energy Other children in the ward also exhibit small signs of improvement All the youngsters are so chronically malnourished that they belong to a category known as severely wasted India is home to 8 million such cases needing immediate therapeutic feeding and treatment t tf d FI fJ However TT the government accepts no foreign food aid and has had not imported any of the high-energy high to ready-to-eat food packets on the market that can be administered to badly malnourished youngsters to start jump-start their recovery Aguayo said None of the country's biotechnology firms finns among the most advanced in the world manufactures them though the cost would probably be only about a dollar a pound These triage packets would help the worst-off worst cases But if India fails to cut its overall rate of child malnutrition experts warn it faces a future dragged down by an ve workforce and ballooning numbers of malnourished youngsters As Farhat Saiyed a nutritionist here in Bihar state put it We are entering a dangerous world |