India's Malnutrition Measures Need to Be Remodelled

India’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for 2015 mandates child mortality to be cut down by two-thirds.A low rate of progress and a range of associated factors have nearly made it a tall order, virtually out of reach.Currently, the nation ranks even below some of the sub-Saharan nations with its population of underweight children among the highest in the world, reports the World Bank.

India accounts for nearly one-third of the poor in the world. Nearly one-fourth of its population -- over 400 million people -- are given to poverty and impoverishment. More than half of those (sixty percent) come from a group of seven states with the lowest income quintile.

Furthermore, one-third of the new-borns are weak and fall below optimal birth weight. About forty-three percent of the children under the age of five are underweight, forty-eight percent stunted, nearly seventy percent highly prone to be anaemic, and over fifty percent exhibit a lack of Vitamin A.

In 2001, the Supreme Court mandated in a statutory ruling that the ‘Right to Food’ be implemented as one of the fundamental citizen rights. That brought immediate legal binding to the nutrition-intensive schemes running at that time. The central government further announced, in 2005, the enactment of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to aid the unemployed poor.

The most current of all malnutrition reforms has been the National Food Security Bill, which aims at providing highly subsidized food grains to nearly seventy percent of the population, passed by the Parliament in 2013. Even with a host of reforms, and a central Integrated Child Development System (ICDS) in place, the malnutrition rate in the country still exhibits an extremely high percentage, with children affected the most.

The problem, as observed by the Ponty Chadha Foundation and other institutions dedicated to the cause, does not lie in shortage of food, but in a lack of adequate means of supply. The Foundation also observes that government and other beneficiary schemes get scuttled because the benefits do not reach the intended target.

Taking strong view of this particular concern, the Foundation has started off a campaign to set up food banks across the country. These banks directly reach the poor with nutrition-intensive supplies procured from government charities, NGOs, and subsidiary associates of the Ponty Chadha Foundation.

The pilot trial in Noida and Ghaziabad itself has earned the backing of the India FoodBanking Network (IFBN), and the underlying aim is to take the program further into the country.

The Ponty Chadha Foundation: Serving the Malnourished

The World Bank has stated that one in three malnourished and poverty stricken people in the world live in India. According to the Global Hunger Index compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute, 60 million children under the age of five and 21% of the overall population in India do not get proper food to eat. These statistics have made the nation to rank 68th out of 79 countries in the world in terms of malnutrition and poverty, even behind most sub-Saharan counties. The facts are in sharp contrast to the strong economic growth that India has been experiencing in the last fifteen years, and could leave everyone, from the man on the street to malnutrition experts, baffled.

A nation that boasts of economic growth but has a sizable population dealing with malnutrition and its aftereffects has got to revisit its growth fundamentals. A century ago, famines were held to be the main cause of malnutrition, but today, it’s a broken down supply chain infrastructure that’s hurting India more than anything.

Roadways, especially those that lead to agro-industrial areas, are not up to the mark, and, the produce goes through a plethora of middlemen and handlers before it reaches the marketplace. A considerable portion either rots along the way or loses wholesomeness. Moreover, such a long supply chain delays food from making it to marketplace, jacking up end-consumer prices in the process.

Rising prices, coupled with lack of quality control, makes it extremely difficult to create equitable nutrition standards, as is evident from the fact that India was among just three countries worldwide where nutrition situation actually worsened in the period from 1996 to 2011.

The National Food Security Bill was introduced in the parliament in early 2012 in the first attempt by the government to address this issue. Though well intentioned, it suffered from fundamental flaws. While it aims to subsidise food grains, it fails in accounting for the ambitious scale of the initiative, given India’s size and economic bindings. Most experts recommend improving transportation infrastructure and supply channels for a solution, a costly proposition in itself, but one which promises a more long term solution.

Improving the supply chain network so that food supplies directly reach the neediest of the needy is the mission of the Ponty Chadha Foundation, and it has set off by aiming to achieve the target in 18 villages around Noida and Ghaziabad in the NCR. Partnering up with India FoodBanking Network (IFBN), the foundation organises free food drives in the vicinity of their commercial projects as well as in a wider network of villages surrounding the metropolitan areas of the NCR, with talks of expanding the reach of the program pan-India.

The Ponty Chadha Foundation works to Keep Malnourishment at Bay

Malnutrition is defined by a lack of some or all nutritional elements essential for human health, and in India alone, children are the most visible victims of malnutrition. According to the latest UNICEF data, in India, one in three children is malnourished while 58% under the age of five are underweight or stunted. It might also come as surprise that in a survey conducted by the World Bank, one in three malnourished people in the world reside in India. In another study published by UNICEF, 68.7% of Indians survive on less than INR 124.00 a day.

India ranks 68th out of 79 countries in terms of malnourishment and hunger according the Global Hunger Index (GHI) and was among only three countries where the hunger situation actually worsened in the last few years (from 22.9% in 1996 to 23.7% in 2011), behind other developing nations such as Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In olden times, it was fair to attribute malnutrition to widespread and frequent famines. However, in the present day, the production of food has increased dramatically and better means of agriculture are made available, but ironically, malnourishment has correspondingly increased. Studies make it abundantly clear that lack of enough food production is not at the root of the problem, but as majority of the experts agree, it’s that food does not reach the people most in need. It has become less of a production issue and rather a problem of the food supply chain.

The Ponty Chadha Foundation is looking to distribute food and help ease the problem of malnourishment through the concept of food banking. To this end they have partnered up with the reputed India Food Banking Network (IFBN) organising campaigns under the Ghaziabad-Noida Food Bank banner to distribute food to the poor through frequent free food drives in the villages around Noida and Ghaziabad. At present, the scope of the program is limited to the NCR region, but there are plans to extend the reach of the program to cover the whole of the country to further Mr. Ponty Chadha’s vision of a progressive India.