India Home to 2.3 Crore Malnourished Children: Study

BANGALORE: India’s problem of poverty and malnourishment is not a new thing. This evil has gripped the nation since ancestry and continues to overwhelm the land. It is reported that Increasing amount of children die each year out of malnourishment or hunger. India can push forward for economic growth and development but without tackling this issue first, this nation will still lag behind.

A face of poverty that hurts the very root of the nation, that although it is rising in its status as a global economy has to face the ugly truth that there is still much to be done to bring dignity to its name India.

Recent reports show that the country is gripped with a massive number of children who are malnourished or under weight. Delhi, the capital of the country reported that over 35 percent which is about 7 lakh children going to anganwadis are under weight. The northeastern states have a lesser rate of malnourished children of about 10 percent. The other two larger states with relatively lower malnourished rates are Tamil Nadu (18 percent) and Maharashtra (11 percent).

States such as Andhra Pradesh (37 percent), Uttar Pradesh (36 percent), Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh (both 32 percent) have a higher rate of malnourished children and in Bihar it has 50 percent children that are malnourished. These statistics are in relation to those presented by Times of India. This is the situation of the ugly Indian where children do not have food or even if they did, it does not contain the right amount of nutrition to keep them healthy.

The 2011 Global Hunger Index rated India in the 15 position among the countries with hunger situation. India is one among the four countries to have actually increased in the percentage of hunger situation according to the statistics reports compiled from 1996 to 2011, going from 22.9 to 23.7 percent. Other developing countries, even neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan have actually battled this crisis and reduced their number of hungry people.

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