How we can save children from malnutrition

Poverty, gender imbalance, poor sanitary and environmental conditions, restricted access to quality food, health, education lead to malnutrition

Over the decades, the physical and mental growth of children has not been in sync with India’s development ambitions. The ‘State of the World’s Children 2019’ report of UNICEF said malnutrition was the primary reason behind 69% of child deaths below the age of five in India; every second child belonging to that age group is affected by some form of malnutrition, which inhibits the child’s physical and intellectual growth.

As 90% of brain development happens by the age of 5-6 years, children with malnutrition always lag behind in study and sports. Experts say malnutrition causes brain damage, night blindness, rickets, anaemia, poor immunity, diarrheal disease and acute respiratory infection, etc. Today, India is home to 15 million blind people, the most in any country; over three million children suffer from corneal disorder.

Poverty, gender imbalance, poor sanitary and environmental conditions, restricted access to quality food, health, education and social care services, etc., lead to malnutrition. Only 9% of children in the country get proper nutritious food, said Smriti Irani, the Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare.

Centuries back, when the British cultivated commercial crops like indigo, coffee and tea, etc., it eroded much of our crop diversity. India was clueless to handle hunger and malnutrition in the 1950s and 60s until the US scientist Norman Borlaug planted the dwarf wheat variety Sonaro-64 across the country. Many agricultural scientists believe that though Borlaug had brought about the ‘Green Revolution’, the pesticide-hungry hybrid wheat wiped out many native crops. India did not wake up to protect its crop diversity after the ‘Green Revolution’.

In the 1990s, Vidarbha farmers converted 75% of their farmland to cotton crops. “The soil of Vidarbha is not suitable for growing cotton. Still, farmers here have been concentrating on cultivating BT cotton. This is the reason behind crop failure and farmers’ suicide,” said Surendra Kumar Singh, director of ICAR National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Nagpur. In Vidarbha, 70% of the suicide victims were cotton farmers who lost much of their other crop back-up.

Extensive cultivation of paddy and wheat in Punjab has caused serious damage to crop diversity, farmers’ indebtedness and suicides. Similarly, over-cultivation of tea, coffee, vanilla and rubber in Kerala has destroyed its agricultural sustainability and made the state depend on its neighbours for food supply.

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Indians grew more than 1,000 types of crops in its 20 agro-ecological regions. Unfortunately, the focus of our research and planning has always been on a few crops linked to the global supply chain; this has aggravated the malnutrition crisis in the country.

Over-damming of rivers, disappearance of water bodies, water pollution and unsustainable high-tech fishing activities, etc., has drastically reduced the aquatic animal population, leading to nutrition deficit among coastal people. Extraction of gravel from 36 fresh water streams in Jammu and Kashmir had wiped out more than 70% of the large-size freshwater trout fish; the trout loss contributed to nutrition shortage among locals.

Many land species have also faced extinction. The nomadic Gujjar and Bakarwal communities in Kashmir have lost at least a dozen rare indigenous species of sheep, goats and horses. Nearly 17 tough indigenous poultry breeds like Aseel, ‘naked neck’ and Kedarnath, etc., have been replaced by imported breeds to boost commercial farming; this has made poultry food inaccessible to poor people who reared those local breeds. “Domestic animals have unique genetic traits. Unfortunately, their economic value has not been understood,” says P N Bhat, officer from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi.

High input cost, unseasonal rain, depletion of ground and surface water, urban-centric education, lack of interest among village youth towards physical work, phenomenal increase in land cost, low profit margins on farm produce, distribution of subsidised food and freebies for votes all discourage farming activities. A recent study by the RBI showed that a potato farmer gets only 28% of what the consumer pays for it. Across all crops, the farmgate price is 40-60% less than the consumer price; this situation discourages food production.

For centuries, Indians have known the preparation of a wide range of nutrition-rich foods. Dalma of Odisha, Khar and Masor Tenga of Assam, Kaju Kothimbir Vadi of Maharashtra, Kambanggool, Ragi Soru of Tamil Nadu and Rajma of North India, Sambar dal, Buttermilk, Arhar dal, Sol kadhi, Daliya, Lobhia and Chilla, etc., have high nutritional value. But these homemade foods are fast disappearing due to lifestyle change, lack of awareness and crop diversity loss.

To achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals — zero hunger, good health and well-being for all Indians by 2030 — the Centre has launched POSHAN Abhiyan to make India malnutrition-free by 2022 through cross-sectoral convergence and contextualised planning in three phases. India, instead of making nutrition programmes complex, should take simple steps to preserve water bodies, groundwater, crop diversity, indigenous drought-resistant animals and home-made foods, and eradicate food adulteration from its roots.