The Hindu Business Line : Tribal youth remain undernourished: Study

Young boys and girls in tribal India, continue to remain below the national Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), as far as intake of required daily food nutrients was concerned.

In short, their diets are poor in Vitamin A, iron, folic acid and riboflavin, which are important in the growth chart, according to a nationwide study done by the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Nutrition (NIN).

This in effect, means they are exposed to health problems. The risk is higher, especially with adolescent tribal girls who enter womanhood with poor nutritional status and are in danger of bad obstetric outcomes.

Given, the general scenario of inadequate healthcare facilities, illiteracy and socio-economic disadvantage among the tribal population, this poor start in the youth, could well have discouraging results.

In this background, the NIN has recommended that a comprehensive programme for the overall development of the tribal population with special focus on adolescents was necessary.

Tribals roughly constitute 8 per cent of the country’s population with varying distribution in different States. The NIN study covered nine States and 4,772 households (HHs) with adolescents. In each State, 120 villages were selected randomly from the list of ITDP villages. And from each village 40 HHs were covered.

The average intake of cereals and millets among tribal adolescents was lower than in their rural counterparts. In the case of protective and income elastic foods such as pulses, milk and milk products, oils and fats and sugar and jaggery it was also low.

The only exception, where the tribal youth seemed to be better off than the rural youth was in the average intake of green leafy vegetables, the NIN study revealed.

These findings should be viewed in the perspective that the Union Government has been implementing several programmes for the overall development of the tribal communities. Programmes such as the ITDP (Integrated Tribal Development Project), Modified Area Development Approach (MADA), for smaller areas are under way.

At present, there are 194 ITDPs and 259 MADA pockets in the country. In addition, there are 75 micro projects for the development of primitive tribal groups living in secluded regions of the country.

While social scientists and experts who see India as a major economic power in the 21st century, never tire to argue that the country’s big strength is its demographic advantage of having nearly 70 per cent of its population in the 15-35 productive age group, the sizeable percentage of its tribals continuing to languish in undernourished conditions, should be a cause of concern.

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