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 Takes On Poverty at the Grassroots

Hunger is a massive problem in most developing nations and India, in particular, is one of the worst affected nations globally in terms of food distribution and poverty. Although a governmental welfare system of rationing food supplies is in place which caters to low income families, as for most of those living below the poverty line, this system is not adequate. Various studies have reported India as just slightly higher than the poorest of the poor nations in the world. The World Bank states that as many as one in three undernourished and poverty stricken people of the world reside in India. 

The problem lies with the fact that many of the welfare programs and food distribution drives are unable to reach out to majority of people in need, with bribery and corruption failing even the most well-intentioned efforts. This is largely why India ranks 68th out of 79 countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) and starvation rate actually increasing from 22.9% in 1996 to 23.7% in 2011. 

The news is not all bad though. The Poverty Development Goal Report has said that almost 320 million people in India are on their way to being lifted out of poverty by 2015 and that out of all the South Asian countries, India is the only one that is on the right path to halving the poverty rate by the target of 2015. 

Helping to meet this demanding target is the Ponty Chadha Foundation, established in the memory of Mr. Gurdeep Singh (Ponty) Chadha; which established the Ghaziabad-Noida Food Bank in collaboration with the reputed India FoodBanking Network (IFBN). By putting in place concrete steps to ensure welfare of poor people through free food programs, the foundation aims to enhance the lives of those below the poverty line in villages around Ghaziabad and Noida, and helping out people in the vicinity of its Wave City projects near NH-24, Ghaziabad.

The Ponty Chadha Foundation: Need to Tackle Malnutrition

Malnutrition is a burning issue and accounts for nearly 50% of infant mortality in India alone. Every third adult aged between 15 and 49 years is reported to be malnourished. According to the latest report on the state of food insecurity in rural India, more than 1.5 million children are threatened by malnutrition because of the rise in global food prices.

India ranks 65th out of 79 countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) that document nations worst affected by hunger. It also states that India’s starvation rate has increased from 22.9% to 23.7% over the past decade. This indicates that development drives have failed to reach out to those who need them the most. Thus, the importance of tackling poverty is crucial rather than simply reducing the number of welfare recipients.

The Ponty Chadha Foundation is tackling the complex issue of hunger through various community services. These include organizing food distribution drives in rural areas around Ghaziabad and Noida, with the most recent one organized at the Genesis Global School, Noida on October 12, 2013.

The Ponty Chadha Foundation, established in the memory of Mr. Gurdeep Singh (Ponty) Chadha, works towards combating hunger and malnutrition. The Foundation has collaborated with the reputed India Food Banking Network (IFBN), organizing free food distribution drives to eradicate malnutrition in rural areas around Noida and Ghaziabad. It is committed to working towards the betterment of society and dedicated to feed the poor. The foundation aspires to gather and utilize resources towards the upliftment of the underprivileged and spread its scope of work nationwide.