What’s the first thing that came to your mind when you read the title? Dominoes, I bet! Well this piece has nothing to do with pizzas! It’s about something somber, inspired by an article I read yesterday. What with the switch from paper to screens for reading, I’ve now taken to reading articles on EPW (economic and political weekly) instead of the articles on Outlook/Week Magazines. Sounds boring? Well this sort of reading is great food for thought (you’re hungry, remember?)
Speaking of hunger, I’m sure most people reading this, including me, haven’t felt hunger in its truest sense (induced hunger attributable to fasting/for intentional weight loss etc. does not count!). A distress associated with lack of food, that’s hunger for you. There may have been a few stray incidents, but going hungry for long periods of time?! Nope, not us, that’s for the invisible people we choose not to see.
Well, the article I read in the August 26th issue of EPW, was about something fancy, called “Global hunger index”. Let’s picture this as a three-dimensional scale that measures how truly ‘hungry’ a nation is. The three dimensions of the scale are:
- How many adults in your country are underweight?
- How many children under five years of age in your country are undernourished (split further into: (a) How many do not have correct weight for their height (called wasting) and (b)How many do not have correct height for their age (called stunting)
(And note that stunting is the worst form of undernourished state, because it means that this child has been deprived of food, care for prolonged periods of time, months or years!)
- How many children do not live to see their fifth birthday in your country?
So, using this complex scale and doing some seemingly complex calculations, in 2016, 122 countries in the world were assigned a score for the Global hunger index. The minimum a country could score was zero (zero hunger) and the other extreme was 100 (everyone’s hungry, a worst sort of scenario).
The 122 countries were then given ranks, rank one, would be the lowest score, hence with hunger as a very small problem and rank 122 would mean that the country was facing hunger as a huge wrath.
Now dear reader, guess where our beloved country India stands here?
India stands at a dismal rank of 97. Well, you read right, India is not shining! This horrible rank/score is largely attributed to the percentage of children under five years who are stunted in India; and it’s a whopping 38%! That means two out of every five children in our country are not adequately/appropriately fed.
The other countries in the BRICS nations; Brazil, Russian federation, China and South Africa, are much better than us, with lower ranks, and lesser hunger burden. The percentage of stunted children in these countries are all <10% , with India being worse off by about three times.
The article in EPW focuses also, on key areas like gender and education, literacy rates, especially of women and shows how our economic contemporaries are way better in these indicators. Only 67% of India’s adult women are literate, as compared to >95% in the rest of the countries mentioned above. Strong links have been found between a mother’s education status and a child’s nutrition.
In this light, it is indeed heartening that a “National Nutrition Strategy” has been drafted just the previous week. The focus, it states, is on food, water,sanitation, health access and income. Education and gender are missing, though!
Well, somewhere between education, gender bias, ration shop supplies and deeply rooted visceral corruption; we are losing children and productive adults to the hunger monster!
We have questions and circumstances that loom large. The answers, solutions need to be found and implemented!
This SOMBER, SERIOUS stuff, not your cup of tea?
Well, I promise to write something to lighten up your mood the next time round, Till then Ciao!