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India's Boom Does Little for Malnourished Children

42.5% remain underweight despite efforts to fix crisis

By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff

Posted Mar 13, 2009 10:22 AM CDT
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(Newser) – India’s economy has soared for a decade, but what its prime minister calls its “national shame” remains: malnourished, underdeveloped children, the New York Times reports. While growing China has cut its proportion of underweight children to 7%, India’s stands at 42.5%. Some say the government doesn’t put enough into its efforts to turn things around; others blame a lumbering bureaucracy.

India has the world’s biggest child-feeding program, but analysts say it’s badly designed and ineffective. It doesn’t focus enough on kids under 2 and struggling mothers. Even in New Delhi, with the highest per-capita income in the country, 42.2% of kids are stunted, 26% underweight. “I see a system failing,” said a researcher. “It is doing something, but it is not solving the problem.”

Children of workers sit near a smoldering fire to keep warm at a construction site in Gurgaon, India.
Children of workers sit near a smoldering fire to keep warm at a construction site in Gurgaon, India.   (AP Photo)
A child of construction workers sits near her parent's work site, in Gurgaon, India.
A child of construction workers sits near her parent's work site, in Gurgaon, India.   (AP Photo)
A man carries his 5-year-old son as his wife looks on. The boy is said to have lost his vision after his undernourished mother was unable to breast-feed him.
A man carries his 5-year-old son as his wife looks on. The boy is said to have lost his vision after his undernourished mother was unable to breast-feed him.   (AP Photo)
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COMMENTS
Showing 1 of 1 comment
Derni
Mar 13, 2009 12:23 AM CDT
In some ways we are like India-not as poor-but when 1 in 5 of our childrne go homeless what can we say about our country and how we take care of our own? AWe also have 50 million without any medical coverage-we are hardly the star on the planet. India has the wealthy and the poor and a hint of a middle-class. Many of those jobs they had for 3-6 thousand a year that came over to India from the USA are now gone-so we're back to have's and have not's.

 
India • hunger • economic growth • children • breast feeding • malnutrition • underweight

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