A weighty conundrum

Recent developments have once again focused attention on the problem of hunger and malnutrition in India, especially in the vulnerable child population. While there is no denying the seriousness of the problem — which is exacerbated by inequalities in income distribution and a creaky food security mechanism — the issue is whether it is as bad as some believe it to be. As recently as last week, India’s alternative permanent representative to the UN, Vimlendra Sharan, was quoted in news reports as lamenting that though India may have managed to send a mission to Mars, it maintains the “dubious distinction of being the world capital of malnutrition”, at a food and nutrition summit. He also said the “prevalence of underweight children in India is nearly double that of sub-Saharan Africa”.

Others, particularly those who are keen on debunking the advances made during the era of economic liberalisation, have arrived at the same or similar conclusions. What such people either ignore, or intentionally fail to disclose, is that such gloom is a consequence of using a common worldwide index to measure malnutrition in terms of weight and height. By implication, and quite incorrectly, such common indices place no emphasis on racial or genetic differences or to physical environment; in effect, they assume, and probably mistakenly, that the varied average heights and weights in different populations will be ironed out with identical nourishment. According to the FAO, one-third of the world’s malnourished children are Indian and the undernourished population in the country numbers more than 190 million. The Unicef Global Nutrition Database says 48 per cent of children under five are ‘stunted’ in India. India ranks 120th out of 128 developing countries in the Global Hunger Index rankings for 2014, released last month by the International Food Policy Research Institute.

We have much to be worried about on the under-nutrition front and the prevalence of ‘hidden hunger’ due to the lack of micronutrients is undeniable. But it flies in the face of common sense to presume, as economist Arvind Panagriya has forcefully argued, that Kerala, which is ahead of every part of sub-Saharan Africa in pretty much all human development indices suffers from a greater malnutrition problem because its children are relatively more ‘stunted’. As he states, global standards of height and weight used to measure malnutrition need to be corrected for genetic traits and food consumption patterns. “If appropriate corrections are applied, in all likelihood,” he says, “India will be found to be ahead of sub-Saharan Africa in child malnutrition, just as in other vital health indicators ( EPW , May 2013).” It is time that India developed its own matrix to measure malnutrition. And although it is useful to have a common global index — at least as a sort of benchmark — it is important to recognise that it is open to both misunderstanding and misuse. A possible solution is for international agencies to develop regional metrics which capture the phenomenon of malnutrition more accurately.

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