MALNUTRITION: India, Scheduled tribes

TODAY MAUSAM will not eat. There is just enough wheat flour left for three rotis but she stretches the dough thin to make four. She grinds a chutney of raw green chillies with salt and spreads it on each roti – one roti each for her two, three, five and sixyear- old. They eat slowly and despite the struggle to swallow the spice, waste no morsel. The bread it covers is the only solid food they will get for the next day. They finish in a few minutes – mouths on fire and stomachs numb. Hunger has vanished. The chillies have served their purpose. Water will fill the rest of their stomachs. One more day has passed. Mausam has to wait until her husband returns from town with wages to buy this month’s food grains from the ration store.
In 2010, a report published by the Asian Legal Resource Centre, a human rights organisation with a General Consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, stated that 71.4 percent of tribal children in Madhya Pradesh are malnourished. The figures pose pressing questions to the state. How has Madhya Pradesh really dealt with its tribal population in the face of new development and wildlife conservation projects? What is the root cause of malnutrition – is it a lack of proper government schemes, an unsustainable source of income, poor agriculture or abysmal healthcare facilities? Can the state conceive of an inclusive policy where the tribal population contributes to its development, instead of being hand-held to even pass the basic benchmark of survival?
http://rohitkumarsviews.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/tribals-battling-hunger-and-starvation-in-the-heartlands-of-madhya-pradesh/