Madhoun: India's government is spending billions of dollars on welfare schemes, and plans even more this year. But that is news to Poona, whose daughter may soon die from that stain on India's growth story — malnutrition.
Poona, who married at 14 and breaks quarry stones for a living, shielded her daughter's sunken face from a harsh summer sun with her blue sari. She does not know Urmila's weight, but the whimpering 18-month child looked more like a newborn baby.
"She eats nothing," said Poona, a lower caste woman from a northern Indian tribal community in Uttar Pradesh state. "I feel scared of losing my child."
Since helping the Congress party win re-election last year, welfare has fast become the government's knee-jerk answer to policy dilemmas as it tries to ease food inflation, help growth trickle down to the poor, and win hearts and minds in a Maoist insurgency, many experts say.
But these often corruption-ridden and badly run programmes may add to deficit spending and hinder India from following rival China by broadening an economic boom to transform millions of its population from poverty to well-fed middle class consumers.
http://gulfnews.com/news/world/india/economy-booms-welfare-struggles-to-work-1.616859
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