Malnutrition is widespread in Madhya Pradesh and the reasons for it are well known. Most children belong to abysmally poor tribal families whose daily earnings -- when they are able to find work as labourers -- rarely cross Rs 50-70

Severe malnutrition has claimed the lives of around 125 children under six years of age in four districts of Madhya Pradesh since May 2008, say representatives of non-government organisations (NGOs).

The state government maintains that the child deaths were unrelated to malnutrition and were caused by diseases like pneumonia, viral fever and diarrhoea.

According to a petition filed recently in the Supreme Court by Right to Food Campaign, 64 Bhil tribal children have died of malnutrition in Satna district within the past four months. Similarly, Spandan, which works among the Korku tribe in Khalwa block of Khandwa district, has reported the deaths of 39 children in the past 45 days.

The Saharia Mukti Morcha, which works with the impoverished Saharia tribe in Shivpuri and Sheopur districts, said 16 children had succumbed to malaria in Shivpuri and five in Sheopur over the last few days, because their immunity was destroyed by severe malnutrition.

Right to Food Campaign’s Sachin Jain and Prashant Dubey said they had arrived at the figure of 125 deaths from malnutrition after a two-month intensive survey as part of their work to ensure food security to people in the state.

The NGOs said nearly 100 children were still undergoing treatment at various government hospitals in the district. “We have told the government about the large number of malnourished children in these districts but no action has been taken resulting in the loss of so many lives,” Dubey said.

The wide publicity given to the deaths in Satna district did however prompt the state government to take some corrective measures, seeking support from Unicef and the World Food Programme, and launching a number of special schemes like the Bal Shakti Yojana, Shaktimaan and Bal Sanjeevani Abhiyan specifically aimed at improving child health.

Still, there are around 33,000 malnourished children in Madhya Pradesh in the 0-5 age-group, according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. That is about 60% of the state’s total child population.

The recent deaths have come even as the 12th phase of the Bal Sanjeevani Abhiyan (campaign to bring down the level of malnutrition among children) was conducted by the state’s women and child development department across Madhya Pradesh, from May 15. The campaign was carried out in cooperation with Unicef.

A government release quoting Women and Child Development Minister Kusum Singh Mahdele called the reports of deaths due to malnutrition totally “baseless” and “misleading” and said the deaths in Khandwa district had occurred because of diseases like viral fever, pneumonia, diarrhoea and liver-related illnesses.

The local authorities too have stubbornly refused to accept that the deaths were due to malnutrition. Satna collector Vijay Anand Kuril insisted in his reply to the commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate seven infant deaths that occurred in Satna’s Uchrecha block, that these were due to heat stroke, encephalitis and food poisoning.

Likewise, although Khandwa district collector S B Singh has ordered an inquiry after media reports of 21 child deaths in Khalwa block, he too refused to concede that they were caused by malnutrition.

The report of a survey by the committee appointed last month by the divisional commissioner, Indore, conceded that some of the deaths in Khandwa could have been due to “undernourishment”. “I can categorically state that Jamwati, the four-year-old child who died on Thursday in our hospital was suffering from acute malnutrition, along with pneumonia and septicaemia,” said Dr Laxmi Baghel, chief medical and health officer at the Khandwa district hospital.

In Satna, a report submitted by a Unicef consultant to the women and child development ministry reiterated that malnutrition could well be one of the reasons for the recent abnormally high mortality rate among children in a couple of villages surveyed.

Malnutrition is widespread in Madhya Pradesh and the reasons for it are well known. Most children belong to abysmally poor tribal families whose daily earnings -- when they are able to find work as labourers -- rarely cross Rs 50-70.

“Their villages are so remote and most of the bureaucracy so indifferent that many of them don’t even have BPL (below the poverty line) cards,” says Prakash, an activist with Spandan. “It is symbolic of a deep-rooted problem afflicting over 80,000 underprivileged children in this state.”

The government claims to have made efforts to curb malnutrition for which it has spent millions of rupees in the past three years. The state’s budget for the development of women and children went up to Rs 5.9 billion this year -- Rs 1.9 billion more than the previous year.

On the basis of its own data, the state government has been claiming that the ratio of undernourishment has come down to somewhere around 49%. However, according to NFHS data, the percentage of underweight children in Madhya Pradesh has increased from 54% in 1998-99 to 60.3% now, and the percentage of wasted (extremely malnourished) children has gone up from 20% to 33%.

The NFHS report says that only 14% of children in the state are breastfed within one hour of birth, and 82.6% of children between six and 35 months (the most critical period of life for mental and physical development) are anaemic.

“The main problem is that whatever the state provides under schemes to curb malnutrition can only be supplementary nutrition, whether it is through the Integrated Child Development Services programme or the midday meals scheme. It is hard to tackle malnutrition if non-availability of food and livelihood is the problem,” says director of the women and child welfare department Kalpana Shrivastava.

A report by the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) of India says government schemes do not reach 52-62% of children and 46-59% of pregnant and lactating mothers. Activists say one can assess the level of nourishment provided to children from the state of the various anganwadis (government-run crèches). “Anganwadis remain closed. Foodgrain is never available at fair price shops. How do we feed our children in such a case,” asked Bandelal Kol, a resident of one of the affected villages. He had come to the Majhgawan block headquarters of Satna district for a meeting convened by the Adivasi Adhikar Manch.

“The government claims to be providing us jobs under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) but payments are not being made to those who work, with the result that many people are migrating elsewhere in search of jobs,” said Dalari Bai, another participant at the meeting.

Residents of 150 villages present at the meeting in Majhgawan have now resolved to boycott the polls if the government fails to secure the health of their women and children.

Source: The Economic Times, September 14, 2008
           Hindustan Times, September 13, 2008
          IANS, September 2008