Malnourishment

There are 925 million hungry people in the world (2010) with a third of them living in India. Hunger is the No. 1 cause of death in India. India also inhabits 1 in 3 malnourished children worldwide as per UNICEF reports.
Under nourishment results in decreased activity levels, decreased social interactions, decreased curiosity, and decreased cognitive functioning with children getting more susceptible to infections, diseases and having more days of sickness over school... Hunger and under nourishment also play key role in increase in dropouts, shortened lifespan, poor health which inevitably leads them in choosing menial labor over education.
An estimated 8 million children between ages of 6-13years were out of school in 2008.  One in four children left school before reaching Grade 5 and almost half from the rest before reaching Grade 8, as per UNICEF Reports.
UNICEF report of 2011 states “It is clear that India is not likely to reach the MDG on child malnutrition, which uses children underweight as the indicator”. About 54 million children under five years in India are underweight which constitutes to about 37 percent of the total underweight children in the world.

It is imperative to act now to ensure that hunger and malnutrition are tackled with nutritious food. A scheme like nutritious mid day meal every day in schools can alleviate hunger and create a healthy life giving the marginalized children an opportunity to exercise their right to health and there by their right to education.

One can start with joining hands with organisations like Akshaya Patra. 

Disability

Disability is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. Impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives. —World Health Organization

World Health Organisation says there are 15 persons disabled for every 100 people in the world. May be Indian numbers are much more; however we are waiting for the census report of 2011 which claims to have collected close to accurate data.

We all look at people with disability and feel pity, sorrow and some times find them stronger than us. Yes they are heroes in their own accord and most of us feel that no body has to be disabled. I don’t know about all but I question myself when I see someone with disability, why in the world should someone suffer that way.

How would you feel if somebody blamed you for somebody’s disability? How would you feel if You got to know it is because of our corrupted government that disability still exist at such large number. That just proper implementation of policies can not only prevent some disabilities but also prevent deaths of children between 0-14yrs of age.

I am writing about an organization’s attempt to prevent disability and their fight right now. Almost year ago lot of health workers and field workers around Chamrajpet area started going to houses to identify children with disability in order to bring them to CLC, government school in the locality. Their aim was to provide nutrition food, therapy and possible education to children with disability in order to mainstream them when its time. Many children with disability are not sent to school at the time when the rest of us start going to because either they are not expected to achieve the miles stones on time or many a time because of non-conducive infrastructure in our buildings.

When these workers went in search they started finding lot of malnourished children not enrolled in Anganwadis (for those who don’t know, malnourishment could also lead to various disabilities) and many children with disabilities not enrolled in Anganwadis due to their condition resulting in disability which will result in severe disability due to malnourishment.

Government of India run Anganwadis for the poor and below poverty line children in rural and urban areas to ensure they get nutrition, health related services such as vaccination etc… In order to counter the health and mortality issues gripping the country.

Jan 2011 TV9 came out with report stating 2000 children are with severe disabilities in Raichur alone and Government is not taking action. There was a PIL and lot of media hype due to which High court immediately said that action has to be taken ensuring full rehabilitation and proper working of Anganwadis. But as the focus was only Raichur district, the organisation took up a study to show government of Karnataka that the entire state’s status is same by doing studies in Bijapur, Chikkaballapur etc. The re-study ordered by court itself resulted in finding that in Raichur alone there were 7000 children with severe disabilities as per WHO standards. Now imagine what will be other districts and the entire state stats would be.

So back to our workers, this news made them curious about status in the capital as it is urban and fast developing. I would guess as it is urban the status should be far better because we hardly see people with disability in city let alone children. When they further continued their search it was not just malnourished children they found but also dead ones. Now they started getting curious as to how in a span of couple of months four children between the ages of 6-14 have died due to reasons like high fever etc. So they took up a study just in the area and found that total of 9 children have died in the surrounding area in a year’s time so just imagine if this study is conducted all over Bangalore what staggering numbers you’d see. There are no records of the children available at hospitals death records because the poor heart broken parents have no purpose for a death certificate.

So for those who have known about infant mortality think about 0-6 yrs and 6-14 yrs children’s mortality? It seems that Anganwadis were babies of rural areas and due to rural population it was decided that every area has 1 Anganwadis and each of Anganwadis cover 1000 people population. i.e. a anganwadi worker not only receives children at Anganwadis but also visits home and covers about 1000 people in giving them awareness on health and hygiene, monitors health of children from age 0-6 yrs old and advices on vaccinations etc. At Anganwadis of course children get nutritious food and education. And same is implemented in cities! How many people live in an area that is as big as a taluk in cities?

There are very few Anganwadis in Bangalore urban with Anganwadis teachers covering 1000 no. population of their choice avoiding children with disabilities and malnourishment. This literally is leading to deaths and malnourishment. Where does corruption lie? Children with malnourishment are entitled to receive more nourished food and vitamin supplement free at Anganwadis and PHCs. Food is suppose to be nutritious, the cristified food that children get for nourishment is supposedly stinking and inedible. PHCs are supposed to give disability cards to children with disabilities so that they can claim for certain services. To get these services an individual might need almost a Lakh to get the authorities issue what is theirs.

The association for People with Disability is now ready with case studies of death cases, severely disabled children and also malnourished, it has prepared reports on Anganwadis and other problems of children with disability. Filed PIL and is ready to fight for the rights of the children on Jan 6th 2012.

‘What is India’s biggest concern in the next decade?’

India is a fast developing economy. It has one of the huge markets, talent and resources. At the same time being a large nation with multi-religion multi-cultured, highly populated country India comes with great many problems. The sub-continent faces issues right from poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, underemployment, gender issues, caste issues, trafficking, brain drain, corruption, multi-party, communalism, climate related concern, health – malnutrition, HIV, infant mortality, female feticides, less hospitals and practitioners etc. The list could go on; if I need to single out the biggest challenge, it will be inequality in development. Like the great economies of the world India too is creating a huge gap between rich and poor which is phenomenally increasing.

HDI of India is 128 out of 177 countries. For a country to develop literally, widening of economies and infrastructures are not the only key. Even though GDP is growing the per capita income is just above Rs 35000. Considering growth in gap between rich and poor one can easily gather the actual situation.

In the next decade India’s economy will grow fast. India will completely consume itself for this growth, but with little interest in human development. There will be chaos with in the nation as concentration will only be on growth of economy itself. We are already at the starting point. We see every day the number of people getting displaced, losing farming lands, traditional occupation, and property in name of development, farmer’s suicide for example.

Increase in gap is usual situations found in most developed nations and so we cannot call it as normal indicator of development. When recession hit, it was the nations that had huge gap which trembled the most. “Greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hardworking people to get the rewards they deserve, It polarizes societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor.” said OECD’s Gurria. With population as huge as India with such diversity and already existing caste and communal issues, with capitalism the path to increase in gap is wide open. With increase in gap there’ll be difficult in bringing about any change in current issues forget resolving them. Quality education, food, health care etc will only become affordable by riches leaving hardly any competition. Poor will start fighting for social security - for the most basic needs, quality is one thing they’ll be forced to compromise on. These concerns already exists with so many well distributed classes today, imagine what will be the condition with phenomenal gap in a decade.

Concentration on controlling the gap, in fact bringing it down is very essential. One of our goals has to be equality in development. We have to concentrate on Human development as it is one of the key elements to cut down the growth in gap.

If we consider increase in gap between the rich and poor, with rich is becoming richer and poor

becoming poorer achieving millennium goals will become severely difficult. Every citizen of this

country can ensure that we do end up making same mistake as many other developed economies, as we cannot survive as they did. They have option on feeding on developing countries, we don’t.

Our resources is all we have and if that is not reasonably equally distributed then our huge nation cannot take from others. How can we ensure that we do not take that path? There is nothing we can do to prevent it as we have already in it! It will take a very detailed well thought planning on side of government, right amount investment of time, money, personnel etc from our end. It is not easy as problem is complex. We need to divide it into simplest units and solve it. It is at these units level is where an individual can contribute. A unit could be for example: Buy ‘made in India products’, increase production at home rather than importing thus increase employment, ensuring higher distribution of monies. It is of course not as easy as it could be said, but we have to start somewhere!