POVERTY: India: The poverty game

Barun Roy / Dec 29, 2011,


Deep down, our rulers don't want the aam admi to get out of his rut
In this largest of all democracies – India that is Bharat – politics has a million different views but only one common cause: welfare of the aam admi, the general public. Not just any kind of general public, certainly not those who shop in malls, wear designer dresses, watch movies in multiplexes or frequent pubs and night clubs, but precisely those who work on farms, slog in factories, live in slums and are generally classified as poor. There’s no government or political party that doesn’t swear by these wretched millions, no serving politician who wouldn’t do anything to improve their lot and even die in the service of these people.
Yet, in this hallowed land of democracy, the poor remain poor; farmers commit suicide because they can’t pay off their debts; villages go without electricity, safe water or passable roads; the sick are treated like dirt in public hospitals and; slums are the only shelters for millions. How’s that possible? Why is it that, in spite of so much of tear-shedding and breast-beating for the aam admi, India continues to be burdened with so much poverty?
Politicians will have their theories and explanations ready – they always do – and it’s next to impossible to win an argument against an Indian politician. For us, however, it’s just a game they play. Deep down, nobody wants the aam admi to get out of his rut. Oppositionists don’t, because they’ll lose a convenient stick to beat the government with. The government doesn’t, because poverty offers a spending opportunity too lucrative to give up.
So, when, after a long period of policy inertia, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a much-needed reform allowing majority foreign direct investment in retail trade, with likely far-reaching benefits for rural India, we were encouraged by his reassertion of courage. But when politicians of all shades, including some members of Singh’s own party, rallied to nip the initiative in the bud, we weren’t surprised either. The game was all too familiar. Courage yielded to politics, and things returned to normal. The agitators and the administrators were both relieved that poverty wasn’t going to be disturbed after all.
One feels bemused. What constitutes public interest? Letting a marginal farmer be a marginal farmer all his life? Leaving the poor at the eternal mercy of governments and politicians, to languish and live their lives only on guarantee of employment and subsidised food? Or creating opportunities that will help them improve their lot, acquire economic power, develop new hopes and aspirations and become positive contributors to economic growth?
Of course, foreign direct investment isn’t the only way to do it. But it’s surely an important one for a country like India where needs are vast, growth is acutely unbalanced, the underpinnings are pitiably weak and expectations are so aggressively rising. There are many examples of nations seizing foreign investments to make a rapid conquest of their backwardness. It’s pure practical economics, serving both sides in the bargain.
Japan’s dramatic rise from the ashes of World War II wouldn’t have been possible without money and technology coming from beyond its borders. The Japanese set aside all false notions of nationalism and used that money and technology wholeheartedly to make the country the economic giant it is today. They absorbed foreign technologies and systems to develop their own and sharpen their future economic dominance.
South Korea, another country devastated by war, followed in the same footsteps and took the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) route to arrive at its present state of economic prosperity in a relatively short period of time. OEM helped South Korea lay a sturdy industrial base where there was none, create a vast technology pool, develop a highly skilled industrial workforce, sharpen work ethics, and learn marketing and management techniques suitable for a highly competitive world.
China is yet another nation that looks at foreign direct investment as an asset and not a liability. Its philosophy is simple: in a world in which the balance of economic power is never constant, you don’t have an eternity to reach your development goals. You must grow fast to stay in the game and not be run over by competition. Once you have acquired the ability to flex your muscles, foreign investment no longer remains a stigma.
This is what India’s politicians don’t understand. They don’t realise that their false sense of nationalism in a globalising economic environment only stunts India’s growth and constitutes a downright betrayal of its poor. Besides, they miss another important point. As they keep massaging their nationalist egos, deriving a pleasure that’s sensual in its intensity, China is forcing its way ahead, using whatever help it can get, and the achievement gap between the two countries is steadily widening. At that rate, India’s voice in the world might soon be reduced to only a feeble cry in the wilderness.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/barun-roy-the-poverty-game/460016/

MALNUTRITION: India: West Bengal: 24 infants dead in 72 hours in Murshidabad govt hospitals

Murshidabad/Kolkata, July 11, 2011

 26 children die in 3 days WB: 24 children die in 3 days Infant deaths: Mamata orders probe As many as 24 infants were reported dead within 72 hours till Sunday in two government hospitals in Murshidabad district of West Bengal.
Earlier, 18 newly born babies had died within 48 hours in Kolkata's BC Roy Hospital for Children late last month. After Kolkata, death of infants in Murshidabad has put the West Bengal government in a spot.
While 13 children died in the paediatric section at Berhampur Sadar Hospital, 11 others died at Jangipur Mahakama Hospital. The hospital authorities denied any negligence and cited malnutrition and pneumonia as the cause of deaths.
West Bengal's Minister of State for PWD Subrata Saha said, "Low blood levels, infection and malnutrition seem to be the reasons for the deaths. I have instructed them to form a taskforce to combat the situation."
Surprisingly, some of the parents also did not blame the hospital authorities for the infants' death.
Chandranath Mondal, father of one of the dead babies, said, "I admitted my child in the evening and he died at night. I will not blame the doctors because they did not get enough time to treat him."
These hospitals were also hit by abysmal hygiene standards and bare minimum medical facilities. However the health department authorities had an excuse for that.
Murshidabad CMO Dr S. Siraj said, "We are building up the infrastructure. It should come up in a month or two had this been with us. Had more doctors been there, had the right equipment been there, it could have been done much better."
A team of paediatricians has been formed to take care of such cases in future, Siraj said.
Ironically, a probe panel set up by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee earlier, had given a clean chit to the BC Roy Hospital authorities in the infants' death episode. However the latest series of deaths might prompt the state government to take a re-look at the healthcare facilities in West Bengal.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/story/24-infants-dead-in-72-hours-in-murshidabad-government-hospitals/1/144358.html

POVERTY: ASIA: Indigenous people gain greater forest rights

JAKARTA, 12 July 2011 (IRIN)


 Photo: Angela Dewan/IRIN
Indonesia is clearing its forests faster than any other country, Greenpeace says

More and more Asian governments are giving indigenous people greater control over their natural resources and habitat in a bid to stem deforestation, a new report states.
Countries such as China, India and Vietnam are making "dramatic" progress, not only in stopping deforestation, but also in expanding their forests, thanks to reforms that include giving more rights to communities and indigenous groups, according to the report by the Washington-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) released on 12 July.
"The state remains the predominant actor in the region's forests, but the trend towards increased and legally recognized local control now emerging is incredibly important," Andy White, coordinator of RRI, a global coalition of groups advocating forest land tenure and policy reforms, said in a statement accompanying the report.
"It's no coincidence that the countries granting more rights to communities and indigenous groups are the same ones making progress toward more sustainable management of their forest resources," he said.
According to the report, The Greener Side of REDD+: Lessons for REDD+ from Countries where Forest Area is increasing, between 1990 and 2010, 78 nations in the world with significant forest cover either maintained or increased their forested areas.
REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a global initiative to help developing countries reduce carbon released into the atmosphere by tropical forest destruction.
And while Nepal, Thailand and Cambodia have all increased the amount of land devolved to communities since 2002, the report says the pace of change in the region remains uneven.
Indonesia, home to the world's fifth-largest forested area, remains excluded from the promising regional trend, the report said. There are almost 30,000 villages on land claimed by the Indonesian government, yet communities have rights to less than 1 percent of the nation's forests.
Indonesia reserved 600,000 hectares for communities in 2002 but the area appeared to shrink to 230,000ha by 2008, according to government figures cited by RRI.
The new data shows that in 2010, fewer than 100,000ha had been legally recognized as under local control, far short of an Indonesian government target to devolve at least 500,000ha per year, the report said.

Signs of progress
But RRI also reported signs of progress. In the past few years, the country has made efforts to improve its policy, including creating a process for designating new areas as "community" and "village" forests that would be under local control.
Moreover, Indonesia is co-hosting an international forestry conference on Lombok island focusing on forest tenure and governance from 11-15 July.
That fact alone "says a lot about the realization at very high levels that the status quo is not a perfect one and it needs improvement", Boen Purnama, an adviser to the country's Forestry Ministry remarked.
According to Hedar Laudjeng, chief of community affairs at the government-sponsored National Forest Council, conflicts between local communities, companies and the government stem from unclear regulations governing forests.
"Foresty-related laws are not in favour of local communities, making the risk of conflicts high," he said in a statement at the start of the Lombok forestry conference.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93203

POVERTY: India: Microcredit banks applaud possible changes to regulation

July 08, 2011

From the Wall Street Journal's LiveMint, writers Remya Nair and Dinesh Unnikrishnan detail the pending bill.


The microcredit industry in India is applauding the draft of a bill that could give new oversight to the industry. The good news has even seen the stock price of microcredit giant SKS microfinance rise up in the last couple of days.
The draft calls for microcredit to be regulated under the central reserve bank instead of individual states. Currently the state of Andrea Pradesh has tight restrictions against microcredit with laws that treat responsible lenders no better that predatory moneylenders.
The Microfinance Institutions (Development and Regulation) Bill gives more powers to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to regulate microlenders. It will cover all MFIs, including the smaller ones. MFIs give tiny loans to poor borrowers at around 24% interest. The Bill has to be approved by the cabinet and Parliament before it becomes law.
The industry welcomed the draft, saying it offers more clarity to the future of India’s Rs.20,000 crore microlending sector. The Bill, which has been posted on the finance ministry website for public comment, says MFIs registered with the apex bank won’t be treated as moneylenders, thereby keeping them out of the purview of the Andhra Pradesh Micro Finance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Act, 2010.
“This (the new draft Bill) covers all types of MFIs, including the smaller companies, which gives confidence to the sector,” said Vijay Mahajan, president of lobby group Microfinance Institutions Network. “The regulations have been drafted in line with the recommendations of Malegam committee, but go well beyond that to provide comfort to the sector. It is a new generation Bill.”
More than a quarter of the industry is concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, which promulgated a law in October restricting operations of microlenders. This led to a drastic rise in bad loans as borrowers stopped repaying debt. Banks in turn stopped lending to MFIs. The state law, which had been preceded by an ordinance, followed reports of coercion in recovering loans that allegedly led to suicides.
Early this year, RBI issued regulations to govern MFIs operating as non-banking financial companies, based on the recommendations of an expert committee headed by noted chartered accountant Y.H. Malegam. The new rules capped the interest rate MFIs can charge at 26% and made a minimum two-year tenure mandatory for all loans above Rs.15,000.
http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/microcredit-banks-applaud-possible.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FEOch+%28Poverty+News+Blog%29

MALNUTRITION: India: British MPs back aid to India

14 June 2011

A parliamentary report says that despite its huge economic growth India should receive aid until 2015 to ensure it meets the millennium development goals


The committee of UK MPs said future aid to India should be targeted to improve sanitation, tackle malnutrition and challenge social exclusion. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP

Britain should continue to give aid to India until 2015 to ensure the country meets the millennium development goals (MDGs), a UK cross-party group of MPs recommends.
In a report published by the House of Commons international development committee on Tuesday evening, MPs said that despite India's huge economic growth over the last 25 years, average per capita income is one-twentieth of that in the UK, and more than 400 million people still live in poverty. According to the UN MDG monitor, more than a third of India's population live on less than $1.25 a day.
The committee called for future aid to be targeted to improve sanitation, tackle malnutrition and challenge social exclusion. But it also recommended that after 2015 the UK's aid relationship with India should "fundamentally change", suggesting the Department for International Development (DfID) begins drawing up an exit strategy.
Aid to India has proved a contentious issue. Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, has defended his decision to give £280m a year over the next four years to a country that is the 11th largest economy in the world against critics who view its economic development and its billion-dollar space programme as evidence it does not need aid. Mitchell has already said aid to India until 2015 will be targeted on the poorest, with half the money spent on pro-poor private sector development.
The committee said it had examined the arguments for and against aid. Its chairman, Malcolm Bruce, said: "The test of whether the UK should continue to give aid to India is whether that aid makes a distinct, value-added contribution to poverty reduction which would not otherwise happen. We believe most UK aid does this."
He added: "The Indian government has primary responsibility for poverty reduction. It has put up taxes and increased its social spending, but the poverty there is on such an extreme scale that it will take many years for India to achieve internationally agreed millennium development goals. Poverty levels remain high in some parts of India, and these are states where UK funding is targeted"
The committee found that the Indian government invested "significant funds" in social programmes for health, education and employment.
The report noted that India's space programme was often used as an example to illustrate the country's wealth, but MPs insisted the programme also delivered socio-economic benefits, such as mapping weather patterns and the extent of floods.
The committee is calling on DfID to redirect resources for India from health to sanitation and recommended the department's nutrition programme becomes a central plank of its funding to tackle malnutrition.
The committee also wants the department to do more to challenge discrimination against certain castes, ethnic or religious groups and people living with disabilities.
Robin Greenwood, Christian Aid's head of Asia, welcomed MPs focus on discrimination. "Christian Aid's experience in India is that the exclusions from society of whole groups - Dalits, tribal people, religious minorities and also women - are the most important causes of continuing extreme poverty in India," he said.
A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), also published on Tuesday, found that poverty in India has fallen faster than in many other emerging economies over the last 10 years, although it said the government needed to focus on more pro-poor policies, including strengthening the welfare system and improving access to healthcare. At 1% of GDP, India's health spending is among the lowest in the world.
The OECD report highlighted India's high rates of school drop-outs, despite education being a government priority, and called for better regulation and funding, more incentives for teachers, and more student loans for higher education.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jun/14/uk-politicians-back-aid-to-india

MALARIA: New vaccination strategy fights malaria better

16 Jun 2011 : The Times of India
Scientists have discovered a powerful strategy to combat malaria that may be described as the most effective next-generation vaccination approach for the disease. The new approach works by eliciting an immune response that can combat the malarial parasite during multiple stages of its complex life cycle. "Halting Plasmodium infection during the clinically silent liver stage represents an attractive goal of antimalarial vaccination, but is challenging because, if not complete, some parasites can get into the blood and cause disease," noted study co-author Stefan Kappe, from the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute.
Irradiating the parasites elicits extensive and random DNA damage that arrests the parasite early in the liver and provides the immune system with an opportunity to develop an immune response that can combat the native parasite. However, very high irradiated-sporozoites doses are needed to generate full liver-stage protection and there is no protection against blood stages.

"In our study, we examined whether genetically attenuated parasites (GAP) generated by targeted gene deletions to stop replication late in liver-stage development were a better vaccine option," said co-author John Harty from the University of Iowa. Using mouse malaria models, the researchers discovered that immunization with late-liver-stage-arresting GAP provided superior and long-lasting protection against liver-stage infection when compared with irradiated parasites or early-liver-stage arresting GAP.
Importantly, late-liver-stage-arresting GAP also provided protection at the blood stage of infection and across different malaria parasite species, as well as by the route of immunization that can be used in humans. The research was published online in the journal Cell Host and Microbe , June 15.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/New-vaccination-strategy-fights-malaria-better/articleshow/8877334.cms

MALNUTRITION: India: Gujarat needs to focus on better child feeding practices: UNICEF

01/06/2011 : Ahmedabad, May 31 2011

Gujarat needs to focus more on community-based approaches and communication strategies to strengthen feeding practices for infants and young children to prevent malnutrition, said UNICEF India Country representative, Karin Hulshof, today.
Hulshof, who met Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi here, discussed about the overall strategies to improve nutrition among children in the state, adding that the scenario of malnutrition as a whole has not "changed much" across India in the last decade.
"In Gujarat too the situation has been the same. It has improved marginally. The chief minister was also concerned with the high number of malnourished children, especially new borns in the state. We spent more time on discussing nutrition during the meeting," she told reporters after meeting Modi here.
"For Gujarat, malnutrition is no longer an issue of either poverty or food security. It has good infrastructure in place, near universalisation of access to schools, anganwadis and water," she said.
It is an opportune time to lay emphasis on the community-based approaches and communication strategies at the household level for infant and young child and to strengthen feeding practises to prevent instances of under-nutrition, Hulshof said.
"Gujarat in now on the threshold of improving the Human Development Index as well as progressing rapidly towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals with equity for all children," she added. .

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5186187

POVERTY: India: Oxfam drive to fight poverty

STAFF REPORTER Guwahati, June 1:

Oxfam, an international confederation of 14 organisations working worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice, launched its anti-poverty campaign, Grow, in the state today.
Talking to the media, Oxfam’s national humanitarian hub manager, Zubin Zaman, said the organisation would work for food sovereignty of the small farmers and try to explore the factors that contribute to hike of food prices in Assam, as a part of the campaign.
Oxfam has undertaken sanitation works in disaster-prone areas of Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Majuli and Morigaon, along with the local NGOs.
Grow, a global campaign, aims to fight poverty in collaboration with governments, companies and international bodies like G20.
In India, the campaign was simultaneously launched today in Guwahati, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai and Patna. Zaman said the campaign has been launched for four years initially.
Oxfam observed that despite Indian economy having grown considerably between 1990 and 2005, the number of hungry people increased by 65 million, more than the total population of France. This was because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them
“Around 60 years later, unfortunately, hunger and malnutrition remain major issues in India. About 44 per cent of children under the age of five are underweight and 48 per cent are stunted. Because of the country’s large population, India is home to 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children and 31 per cent of stunted children,” Zaman said.
He, however, said the condition of Assam was not as bad as the other states of the country in terms as food availability. However, continuous erosion and population increase point to tough times ahead. Zaman said in the agricultural field, they would give emphasis on research activities in a bid to make farmers dependent on their own seeds rather than imported ones. Besides, they would also examine the role of the imported cost factor in increasing food prices in Assam.
Zaman said Assam would be affected by the imminent global food crisis in the coming days. According to the projection of Oxfam, demand for food will rise by 70 per cent by 2050 globally while food production capacity will steadily decline.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110602/jsp/northeast/story_14059288.jsp

MALNUTRITION: India: Apology for an anganwadi

Uttam Mukherjee, May 25, 2011,

LOHARDAGA: Anganwadi centres, originally started by the central government in 1975, to combat child hunger and malnutrition, are languishing under apathy and neglect, at least in Lohardaga. The 10-year-old centre at Oyena-Alakdiha village can safely be singled out as a typical example of the state of anganwadis across the district.
While the focus of the centres, run by women helpers called sahayikas and sevikas, is to provide nutritious food to under-five children and their mothers, the ambit of the centres was expanded over the years to include games and creative activities for all-round development of pre-school children. however, children at Oyena-Alakdiha centre can only be seen playing with their food plates, till the time some boiled rice is slapped on to them in the name of a nutritious meal. For its 40 registered but the average presence of 25 children, the centre has only two small plastic balls (of tennis ball size) and a pair of play pots in the name of activities, apart from the single dose of rice served to the children daily.
On Monday Leelavati Devi, a non-matriculate sevika, was not present at the three-room centre. About 22 children were playing with their plates waiting for rice being cooked by sahayika Manki Devi on the same verandah at about 11 am.
When asked what facilities the centre offered, Leelavati counted a couple of kitchen utensils, a register, rice, two balls and a pair of play pots. About the absence of slates, a weighing machine, activity charts, a noticeboard and sports kits, she said, "Sab saman kharidna hai par paisa nahin mila hai (have to buy everything but money has not been provided)."
The sahayika blamed Leelavati for not taking enough interest in teaching the children. "The sevika does not take any interest in the education of the children. Most of the time she stays away," said the sahayika, adding that she cooks with whatever ingredients that are given to her by the sevika. She further accused her of not spending money on nutritious food for the children.
Apart from lack of hygiene and cleanliness, the small toilet built outside the centre looked non-usable because of lack of proper walls and a door for privacy. Neither was there a septic tank. The toilet was built last winter.
District social welfare officer, L S Kureel, when contacted said he would look into the matter and take action.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-25/ranchi/29586646_1_anganwadi-centres-nutritious-food-rice

MALNUTRITION: India, Africa to cooperate for increasing agricultural output

From ANI : Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), May 25:

India and Africa on Wednesday reaffirmed their commitment to cooperate for increasing agricultural output and achieving the millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people, who suffer from hunger and malnutrition by 2015.
The Framework for Enhanced Cooperation between India and Africa said: "Africa and India reaffirm their commitment to cooperate for increasing agricultural output and achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and malnutrition by 2015."
"They emphasize the importance of harnessing the latest scientific research for raising productivity and for the conservation of land and the environment in order to ensure food security for their people and to bring down the currently rising cost of food prices so as to make food affordable for all. In this respect, they agree to collaborate in the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP)," the statement said.
Recognizing that enhanced trade and economic linkages would further contribute to sustainable growth, the statement said: "Africa values private investment and financial flows on a concessional basis, which have been received from India and wishes to enhance their usage for building its infrastructure and enhancing the capacity of Africa to increase its exports."
"The value addition provided by Indian investment in Africa contributes to Africa's exports to third countries and to the development of intra-Africa trade. Both Africa and India will continue to work together to take these initiatives further," the statement added.
Africa has also welcomed the Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme for Africa's LDCs unilaterally announced by India at the time of the first India - Africa Forum Summit in 2008.
"It has significantly contributed to the ability of African countries to access the growing Indian market and contributed to the creation of complementarity in their export baskets. Africa and India will together endeavour to increase awareness and usage of this Scheme," the statement said.
"Africa and India propose to continue to develop more such initiatives so that the growing young population of Africa finds suitable training and integration into the increasing economic opportunities in Africa," the statement added.
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/441651.php

The end of poverty: What globalization did that aid could not

May 28, 2011 Peter Goodspeed National Post



Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP/Getty Images : A girl plays in a park near Kolkata, India. 
In 2005, the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, was hijacked by the politically fashionable.
More than three billion people worldwide witnessed Live 8, a multi-city music marathon dedicated to Making Poverty History; 26 million people signed online petitions; 250,000 protesters marched through the streets of Edinburgh and dissidents around the world wrapped landmarks like London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral and Australia’s Harbour Bridge in Sydney in white banners as part of a global movement to press for international debt relief, trade reform and increases in foreign aid.
After the music ended and the pious tributes and promises of political action faded, people went back to their daily lives.
Still, something did happen.
Most people haven’t noticed yet, but according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution in Washington, we have just lived through the most dramatic decrease in global poverty in history.
And the transformation has almost nothing to do with debt relief or higher aid flows.
According to the Brookings report, Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015, we are living in a period of rapid global poverty reduction that is driven by high, sustained economic growth across the developing world.
Nearly half a billion people escaped living at or below the poverty threshold of US$1.25-a-day between 2005 and 2010, say the study’s authors Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz.
“Never before in history have so many people been lifted out of poverty in such a short period,” they said.
The change, driven by the highest levels of sustained economic growth recorded in the developing world, has been so dramatic that the United Nations Millennium Development Goal to halve the rate of global poverty between 1990 and 2015 was probably already achieved by 2008 — seven years ahead of schedule, the Brooking report says.



“A lot has changed in the past six years,” the study says. “The economies of the developing world have expanded 50% in real terms, despite the Great Recession. Moreover, growth has been particularly high in countries with large numbers of poor people. India and China, of course, but also Bangladesh, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Uganda, Mozambique and Uzbekistan — nine countries that were collectively home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s poor in 2005 — are all experiencing phenomenal economic advances.”
Over the next four years, the report predicts, another 300 million people should escape poverty.
“At that point, the 1990 poverty rate will have been halved and then halved again,” the study says.
“Today growth is being driven by a number of big countries which are home to large poor populations,” said Mr. Chandry. “Between 2005 and 2015, India (current population of 1.233 billion) Bangladesh (169 million), Vietnam (89 million) and Ethiopia (87 million) are each expected to grow by at least 6.3% per year. In the process, each is likely to see a quarter of its population lifted out of poverty.”
That economic growth generates a momentum all its own.
This week a UN report on the world’s economic prospects for 2011 predicted large economies in developing countries such as China, Brazil and India, will continue to lead the global recovery, amid weaker performances in relatively richer nations like Canada, the United States and Britain, which are all plagued by concerns over huge public debts.
India and China have boomed since they abandoned central planning and adopted globalized, market-driven economies powered by young, well-educated, low-wage workforces and underwent rapid industrialization and urbanization.
“In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach US$123-trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000,” predicted economist Robert Fogel, director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago.
“China’s per-capita income will hit US$85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union, and also much higher than that of India and Japan,” he said. “In other words, the average Chinese megacity dweller will be living twice as well as the average Frenchman.”
In light of such economic development, said Mr. Chandry, “The Gleneagles Summit and the hoopla surrounding it appear both antiquated and naïve.”
Despite significant increases in foreign aid, anti-poverty activists accuse G8 countries of falling US$19-billion short of their 2005 promises to increase foreign aid by US$50-billion.
The G8 has also shifted its focus away from debt relief and foreign aid to trying to salvage failed and failing states and concentrating on issues like climate change.
Nevertheless, “the development landscape has shifted immeasurably, with some emerging countries becoming key drivers of the global economy,” Mr. Chandry said.
Income poverty in China “could all but disappear by 2015,” he said, predicting that by 2015 only 0.3% of the Chinese population will be living on less than $1.25-a-day.
“This would mean that, between 2010 and 2015, 50.1 million Chinese people would lift themselves out of income poverty, potentially bringing the total reduction in Chinese citizens living on $1.25-a-day since 2000 to 203.3 million,” the Brookings report says.
That’s second only to India, where rapid economic growth is expected to lift 367 million people out of poverty by 2015.
In India, however, up to 7% of the population will still live on $1.25-a-day or less.
While the landscape of global poverty is changing, it is also becoming much more complex. The arrival of emerging markets and a shift of economic power away from the West have the potential to change everything from global investment opportunities, to the balance of military power and the way international institutions function.
For one thing, the face of world poverty is increasingly going to be African.
In 2005, China and India accounted for more than half the world’s poor, but now they are responsible for three-quarters of the global reduction in poverty and Asia’s share of the world’s poor is shrinking from two-thirds to just one-third.
As a result, Africa’s share of the world’s poor is expected to more than double to 60% of the total.
Since 1999, India has been home to more poor people than any other country, but by 2015, that burden will pass to Nigeria.
“Poverty will increasingly be seen as an African problem, despite the clear progress the continent is now making,” says the Brookings report.
The Brookings economists estimate poverty in Africa “dropped below the 50% mark for the first time” in 2008 and predict that by 2015 it will fall below 40%, a feat China did not achieve until the mid-1990s.
Still, the rapidly changing landscape of global poverty is going to require a matching change in strategies to fight it, say Mr. Chandry and Mr. Gertz.
In addition to major regional changes, the world’s poor no longer live in poor countries. They are increasingly found in middle-income countries and in fragile states.
That makes it more difficult to do something for them.
For one thing, the need for financial assistance is less compelling, since middle-income countries do not face the same financial constraints, such as access to capital markets, as low-income countries.
Fragile states also present more political than economic problems for aid donors, because there is little consensus on what interventions are most successful in unstable environments.
Aid donors also don’t have as much leverage on middle-income and fragile states as they do in stable, low-income states.
In the long run, aid donors may have to think about moving away from the idea of helping poor countries and refocus their attention on helping poor individuals, the Brookings study says.
It even suggests a global welfare system might someday be possible.
“Our results suggest that providing every person in the world with a minimum income of $1.25-a-day — in other words guaranteeing the right not to live in absolute poverty — is rapidly becoming feasible,” the study says.
“In 2005, supplementing the income of each poor person in the world to bring their daily income up to $1.25 would have cost US$96-billion, or 80% of the total volume of foreign aid disbursed that year. In 2010, with poverty less widespread and larger global aid volumes, the cost of such a global safety net would be just $66-billion, or slightly more than half of all official aid.”
Still, it is global economic growth, not aid, that seems to have the biggest impact on poverty reduction.
“There is growing recognition that our understanding of what causes growth, and how we might ‘make poverty history,’ remains incomplete,” Mr. Chandry said.
“Nevertheless, the rate at which the developing world is now pulling people above the $1.25 threshold is tantalizing,” his report says. “The ‘dream of a world free of poverty,’ the oft-ridiculed motto emblazoned at the entrance of the World Bank, is, year by year, coming closer to reality.”

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/05/28/the-end-of-poverty-what-globalization-did-that-aid-could-not/

POVERTY: India: NAC members protest against plan panel's move for new poverty line

Nitin Sethi, May 24, 2011,
NEW DELHI: A spoon, 25 grams of dal, half a slice of bread, some washing powder and a torn piece of kurta, in total worth Rs 20. That is what three key National Advisory Council members -- Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander -- brought for the deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Monday protesting against the Rs 20 per day person expenditure poverty line it has decided upon as a cut off.
The three NAC members led a group of about 60-70 noisy protestors carrying dozens of packets – all worth Rs 20 – and asked the Planning Commission members to survive a day in Delhi on the contents and shouted slogans waving placards mocking the poverty line
The presence of the trio, who have been locked in an argument against the 'fiscal prudence wallahs' in the government while pushing for an expansive food security bill, marked a scaling up of the battle between the two sides.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-24/india/29577569_1_food-security-bill-poverty-line-nac-members

POVERTY: India: fixing the "Below the Poverty Line"

K Balchand
The Below the Poverty Line (BPL) census, approved by the Union Cabinet on Thursday, will be an exercise in identifying households that will fit the bill within the poverty cap of 46 per cent of the rural population of India.

The identification of the 46 per cent poverty cap, estimated by the Planning Commission, will be done through a set of automatic exclusion and automatic inclusion criteria, and the remaining households will be classified through seven assigned deprivation indicators.
At the same time, State-wise caps based on the S.D. Tendulkar methodology have been allowed for better targeting of those living below the poverty line.
The 46 per cent cap is lower than the 50 per cent suggested by the N.C. Saxena Committee. Officials have remained silent on the displeasure of the Supreme Court on placing a cap on the BPL list.
The same process will be adopted for the urban population as well, but the poverty cap to qualify for social benefits during the 12th Five Year Plan will be decided later by the Planning Commission and the Union government.
Union Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said the headcount would start on June 30 and be completed by December as per the criteria decided.
With the modifications of the Saxena Committee recommendations, the preferential treatment to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been scaled down, while Muslims have been left out of this treatment.

Exclusion criteria
At least 28 per cent of rural households is likely to be excluded under the automatic exclusion criteria, which includes owning at least one two-wheeler; a fishing board; three-wheeler mechanised agricultural equipment; a kisan credit card with a limit of Rs. 50,000; 2.5 acre irrigated land with one irrigation equipment; having government employment; earnings of more than Rs.10,000 per month; and paying income tax.
At least three-four per cent of the households will be compulsorily included under the five automatic inclusion criteria, according to Rural Development Secretary B.K. Sinha.
The Ministry has accepted four suggestions from the Saxena Committee and one from the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia Gandhi — households without shelter; the destitute or those living on alms; primitive tribal groups; legally released bonded labourers; and manual scavengers.
The rest will have to satisfy the seven other deprivation indicators on a scale from a minimum to seven, where the order of priority in the BPL list will be from the largest number of deprivations to the smallest number of deprivations.
These factors are: households with only one room with kucha walls and roof; households with no adult member between 16 and 59 years of age; female-headed household with no adult male; households with a disabled member; households with no able-bodied adult member; SC and ST households with no literate adult above 25 years of age; and landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual casual labour.
The enumeration will be conducted electronically by a team of two members including a computer data entry operator. The computer will be loaded with the scanned national population register data and the enumerator will only be required to enter the caste or religion of the household for the caste census.
For the BPL census, household information will be elicited through a question-answer process where the incumbent will be required to confirm or deny the information. After completion of the process, the answers will be read out and an acknowledgment slip issued to the household.
While the information related to caste and religion will be loaded into the central server and passed on to the Registrar-General of India for statistical processing, this information will not be placed in public domain. Information relating to households will be displaced later at the gram sabhas for public verification.
The Ministry has placed an order for six lakh pieces of such equipment, each of which costs Rs. 3,900, and the equipment will be given to the gram panchayats after use. All the information will be UID compatible.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2032676.ece

POVERTY: India’s Anti-Poverty Programs suffer widespread corruption

HEATHER TIMMONS : May 18, 2011
NEW DELHI — India spends more on programs for the poor than most developing countries, but it has failed to eradicate poverty because of widespread corruption and faulty government administration, the World Bank said Wednesday.
“India is not getting the ‘bang for the rupee’ that its significant expenditure would seem to warrant, and the needs of important population groups remain only party addressed,” John D. Blomquist, lead economist at the World Bank, wrote in a nearly 400-page study released Wednesday.
India spent 2 percent of its gross domestic product, or $28.6 billion last year, on social programs to alleviate and prevent poverty, the World Bank said, a higher percentage than any other country in Asia and about three times China’s spending.
The programs, central to the Congress party’s platform, include food distribution and health insurance initiatives that are supposed to reach hundreds of millions of households. The report was written at the “request of the government of India” and with full participation from various government bodies, the report said.
The World Bank on Wednesday recommended a radical overhaul of India’s social programs. “Marginal changes alone may not deliver the kind of safety net which a changing India needs for its poor and for its economy,” Mr. Blomquist wrote.
One of the primary problems, the World Bank said, was “leakages” — an often-used term in development circles that refers to government administrators and middle men stealing money, food and benefits. The bank said that 59 percent of the grain allotted for public distribution to the poor does not reach those households.
Instead of distributing food, the government might be better off giving out food stamps or cash transfers that can be easily traced through technology, the World Bank said.
India, the world’s the second-fastest growing major economy, after China, has had an economic boom in recent years that is transforming urban areas and creating a new class of extremely wealthy people. But social problems, including poverty, disease and illiteracy, remain widespread.
About 455 million Indian citizens live on less than $1.25 a day, the World Bank’s poverty line. A United Nations study released last year found more people living below the poverty threshold in eight states in India than in all of sub- Saharan Africa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/world/asia/19india.html?_r=1

MALNUTRITION: India: Legislators to be on panel monitoring anganwadis

Himanshi Dhawan, May 18, 2011,
NEW DELHI: Faced with complaints of poorly run anganwadis and rising malnutrition indices in children below six years, the government has sought political help. The ministry of women and child development has introduced a state-level monitoring committee that will include MPs and MLAs as members. The state committee will be chaired by the chief secretary and include other officials associated with the Integrated Child Development Scheme.
The move comes at a time when the PM's Nutrition Council is monitoring the progress in revamping of one of the oldest food programmes targeting children. With about 70% children under five years suffering from anaemia and nearly 50% affected by malnutrition, the government has been shaken out of its complacency to take drastic steps in its intervention. The PM's council will hold its next meeting on May 20.
WCD minister Krishna Tirath said, "There was a demand from MPs and MLAs for structured monitoring of the nutrition programme. We felt that the five-tiered review will be in keeping with nutrition gaining centrestage in national consciousness.''
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-18/india/29555702_1_nutrition-programme-icds-monitoring

POVERTY: India: Not getting "bang for rupee" from poverty schemes

May 18, 2011: Henry Foy
(Editing by Matthias Williams and Alex Richardson)



A homeless woman prepares food on a roadside in Ahmedabad : Credit: Reuters/Amit Dave/Files

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's key social development programmes, which have formed the core election promises of the ruling Congress party at a cost of over 2 percent of its GDP, are failing to effectively tackle widespread poverty, a World Bank report said on Wednesday.
The government's schemes to distribute food and guarantee work in rural areas suffer from poor implementation, red tape and corruption, the report said, common ailments that worry investors in Asia's third-largest economy.
Congress has trumpeted costly welfare schemes to lift hundreds of millions of Indians out of poverty and share the spoils of years of economic boom, propelling it to two successive victories in federal elections.
Though home to 69 billionaires, the country has more people living in poverty than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.
While the Bank commended specific innovations and the impact of schemes in some states, it warned that welfare schemes were yet to make significant progress in helping up to 500 million people living below the poverty line in India.
"While India devotes over 2 percent of GDP to her social protection programmes... the poor are not able to reap the full benefits of such large investments," the report stated.
"India is not getting the 'bang for the rupee' that its significant expenditure would seem to warrant."
Costly social sector spending will likely make it difficult for the government to meet its fiscal deficit target of 4.6 percent of GDP in the fiscal year ending March 2012.
A decade of booming economic growth has pulled millions out of poverty, but its failure to provide for its 1.2 billion population means it lags other developing nations, such as China, in key development indicators.
The programmes assessed by the report have been praised for driving growth in rural areas, which rely heavily on agriculture and were largely bypassed by the mostly urban-centric economic boom that has swollen the middle class.
The impact of the Public Distribution System, which spends up to 1 percent of GDP on providing food to the poor, is limited, with leakage and diversion of stocks through corruption resulting in only 41 percent of grains reaching poor households.
The Congress party-led coalition's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREG), to provide poor households with work, is undermined by payment delays and administration errors, and fails to promote social mobility.
"Studies suggest the ability of MGNREG to be promotional has started but has not reached its potential," said John Blomquist, the report's author.
"For the most part, it has been much more of a reactionary programme for existing poverty, and has a way to go."
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/05/18/idINIndia-57103420110518

POVERTY: India: Left unshaken in red earth, so is poverty

May 7 , 2011 : MANINI CHATTERJEE
Bankura: As you turn off the expressway just before Durgapur and then cross the long bridge spanning the Damodar and enter the district of Bankura, the landscape changes completely.
The lush green of Hooghly and Burdwan give way to a harsh and arid topography — fields are few and far between, herds of bedraggled sheep graze on the scrubland, patches of sal forests appear and the undulating red laterite terrain gets more rocky and hilly the further inwards you go.
Politically, too, it had been different in Bankura, parts of which go to the polls tomorrow. Bankura, famous for its iconic terracotta horse and baluchari sarees, kept at bay the “poribortoner hawa” that began blowing through Bengal since 2008 and that is why the CPM’s district headquarters wears an air of smug complacency.
At the reception, we overhear an elderly comrade telling former MP Shamik Lahiri with boyish glee: “Kono chinta nei, ekhane chhoy hobe, chhoy.” He later explains to us: “Here, we don’t score in ones or twos, nor even fours, here we only hit sixers.” In other words, the Left will win all 12 Assembly seats in the district as it almost always has.
A little later, CPM district secretary Amiya Patra says much the same thing. Is Bankura, too, up against the winds of change? “Poriborton hobe — margin aaro baarbe” (There will be change — we will increase our margin), he says, absolutely confident that the Party will do even better than before this time.
He has history on his side. Since 1977, the CPM has made a clean sweep of Bankura in both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections seven times in a row. Before delimitation, Bankura had 13 Assembly constituencies and the CPM had lost the Bankura seat — thanks to its urban areas — in 1982 and 2001. In 2006, it hit a “sixer” again and bagged all 13 seats.
In the 2008 panchayat polls when much of Bengal reeled under the Singur-Nandigram effect, the CPM and its allies managed to win 144 of the 190 gram panchayats, all 22 panchayat samitis and an overwhelming 41 of the 43 seats in the zilla parishad. In 2009, the CPM won both the Lok Sabha seats — Bankura and Bishnupur, the former represented by the CPM’s parliamentary party leader, Basudeb Acharya. Acharya led in 11 of the 12 Assembly segments, trailing only in Bankura town by 6,500 votes. “We will make that up in this innings,” says the grey-haired comrade at the reception who revels in cricketing analogy.
Left sympathisers, in search of a bit of Red hope, may find succour in these glorious electoral statistics. But if they travel through interior Bankura, the more sensitive among them may also be driven to deep despair — because the stark truth is that even after 34 years of Left Front rule and uninterrupted CPM dominance, the levels of poverty and under-development are staggering.
According to the West Bengal Human Development Report published in 2004, in terms of income Bankura ranked second from the bottom, outranked only by neighbouring Purulia, also a CPM bastion.
Bankura, however, beat Purulia in having more than 50 per cent people living below the poverty line in both rural and urban areas. In Bankura, the number of households living below the poverty line in rural areas was 59.62 per cent and in urban areas 52.38 per cent. In Purulia, rural poverty figures are much higher (78.72 per cent) but in urban areas just 6.47 per cent. Contrast this with another neighbour — Burdwan’s figures were 18.99 per cent (rural) and 17 per cent (urban.)
These figures are almost a decade old, but if things have improved in Bankura there is little to show for it on the ground. In Guruputua village that falls under the Chhatna seat, all the 50-odd houses barring two are mud hovels inhabited by agricultural workers who make Rs 50 a day when they get work at all. Some of them have “job cards” and get MNREGA work — mostly digging ponds — but only get work for 15 days a year, not hundred. A group of villagers, thinking we have something to offer, tell us they desperately need a tubewell. The only one around is in disrepair and others, far away, are also running dry.
“Money comes from above but it never reaches us,” one of the villagers complains, refusing to give names. And yet despite their dismal lives, they tell us they know no other party but the CPM, no other symbol but “kaaste hathuri tara” and cannot think of giving up what they have always done — vote for the CPM.
But elsewhere things are changing. In Chhatna town, where there is less abject poverty, we listen in on a raging debate between Trinamul and CPM supporters, centred on the issue of development. Bankim Mitra, who has stopped for a cup of tea, has bagfuls of Trinamul posters and is confident that the CPM will lose half a dozen seats in Bankura this time because people are finally rising up against the deprivation that has clung to their lives for so long.
“The people of Bankura are very hard working. They can turn this land into gold if only there was irrigation in these parts. But the government has done nothing all these years, we are still dependent on the monsoons, and that is the main cause of so much poverty,” he says.
Shibdas Rai, the chai shop owner and local CPM worker, butts in. “We have done a lot. We have built colleges, schools,” he says, but before he can complete the sentence, Mitra says: “What’s the point of schools, when the teaching is so bad? Half the time, the teachers have to go off to join CPM michchils. Even a higher secondary pass cannot read and write properly in the villages.”
Rai soldiers on. In the face of a chorus of voices backing Mitra, Rai admits that “lack of irrigation and absence of industry” have kept the region poor but lists other achievements of the government --- building ‘pucca” houses for the poor under the Indira Awas Yojana, providing work under the “100 day scheme”, mid-day meals in schools. He is entirely oblivious of the fact that they are all central government schemes.
And what is more ironic is that it is these very schemes that are fuelling a very vocal rage in many parts of Bankura today. Since poverty here is so widespread and even the best government schemes cannot reach everyone, all those left out feel doubly deprived and accuse the CPM of partisanship in choosing the beneficiaries.
As we crisscross through half a dozen Assembly constituencies --- Barjora, Bankura, Chhatna, Saltora, Sonamukhi, Bishnupur --- in the district, this is one recurring complaint, a complaint we have heard often enough in other parts of Bengal but never as forcefully as in these parts where under-development is endemic and sources of income few.
In Jambedia village of Barjora, an area where water is scarce and rampaging wild elephants routinely destroy the meagre crops that the parched land yields, Shanti Karmakar cannot contain his anger against the CPM. His main ire is that “CPM cadres corner all the benefits” --- they are the ones who get houses under the Indira Awas Yojana even if they are rich while the “real poor” are bereft of BPL benefits. Everyone around him agrees.
In Bondolhati village that falls under Sonamukhi, Sheikh Niyamat Ali says the same thing. “The government has so many schemes but it never reaches us. The only people who have gained are members of the Party.”
In Sonamukhi town, a large group of men surrounds us and there is only one man who insists that the CPM will win all 12 seats. All the others are vociferously rooting for change. “The CPM thinks nothing has changed. But take it from me, this time they will lose six and win six,” says 21-year-old Ganesh Shaha, giving a new twist to the “sixer” metaphor.
And why will the CPM win six seats if the Party’s dolotontro (cadre raj) is so widespread? “That’s because they still have complete hold in the most backward seats, dominated by Adivasis and Scheduled Castes, seats such as Kotulpur, Indus, Ranibandh and Raipur,” he tells us, admitting that the Trinamul has yet to make inroads among the most wretched of this bit of red earth.
In Deohati village which is part of Saltora constituency, Narayan Mondol agrees. “The CPM keeps winning here because the people are too poor and illiterate and lack political consciousness.
“Things are changing now and there are many people like me who have seen through the CPM’s false promises. But do you know what --- I am not sure even my wife will listen to me. I have been telling her about dui phool but she is so used to the CPM symbol, she might end up pressing it.”
He goes on to say: “Look at Kerala -- the people there are educated and that is why they keep changing their government every five years. The CPM cannot take them for granted.”
He has a point. Bankura’s backwardness stems partly from its inhospitable geography but the CPM’s repeated victories and resultant complacency have certainly added to it.
The Kerala model, then, might be the best thing for Bankura --- and indeed Bengal --- from the point of view of both development and democracy.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110507/jsp/frontpage/story_13951263.jsp#

MALNUTRITION: India's child malnutrition puzzle

NEERAJ KAUSHAL, Associate Professor of Social Work, Columbia University
Apr 29, 2011
One of the least talked about issues in the debate on India's demographic dividend is child malnutrition. India is home to about a third of the world's underweight and stunted children under the age of 5. A child under 5 is almost twice as likely to be chronically underweight in India as in sub-Saharan Africa.
Sadly, the impressive economic growth of the past decade has made only a modest dent into the obstinately high incidence of severe underweight and stunting of children in the country.
Poverty is one obvious underlying cause. But it does not explain the wide difference in malnutrition between India and sub-Saharan Africa. Unicef data show that about 47% of Indian children under 5 are underweight; the corresponding figure for sub-Saharan Africa is 24%.
The overall poverty rate is lower in India than in many sub-Saharan countries. Besides, the incidence of child malnutrition in India remains high even in non-poor families. According to data from the National Family Health Survey for 2005-06, a quarter of all children below the age of 3 in the wealthiest 20% of families are stunted and 20% chronically underweight.
Of course, children living in families with lower incomes and wealth are at a much higher risk of being malnourished. But the incidence of severe underweight and stunting in non-poor families is not trivial.
What then explains this puzzle that India has much higher rates of underweight and stunting of children than countries with higher poverty and relatively stagnant economies? Is it per capita food availability? No, India has somewhat higher per capita food availability than countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
Is it higher mortality among children under the age of 5 in sub-Saharan Africa? Yes, but only to some extent. Mortality among children under 5 is 140 per 1,000 in sub-Saharan Africa and 66 per 1,000 in India.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation would show that about a third of the gap in chronic underweight among children in India and sub-Saharan Africa is due to higher child mortality in the latter, which simply removes from the data a large number of undernourished children in sub-Saharan Africa.
What explains the remaining two-thirds of the gap? Are we Indians less caring about our children than people in sub-Saharan Africa? Is there something in our traditional social and cultural values and practices that hurt the health and welfare of our children? The answer, sadly, is yes.
In 1996, Vulimiri Ramalingaswami, Urban Jonsson and Jon Rohde wrote a commentary for Unicef investigating the various possible determinants of child malnourishment and concluded "the exceptionally high rates of child malnutrition in South Asia are rooted deep in the soil of inequality between men and women."
How? Here it is worth repeating how the three experts on child health and nutrition reached this conclusion. They studied weights of children at birth in India and sub-Saharan Africa. In India, a third of the children have low birth weight; in sub-Saharan Africa, only one sixth.
A child's birth weight is an indicator of the health and nourishment of the mother when she is pregnant as well as her overall health and nourishment as a child and while growing up. Most African women gain 10 kg of weight during pregnancy, but women in South Asia gain only half as much. They also found that while about 40% women in sub-Saharan Africa suffered from iron deficiency, as many as 60% women in South Asia and 83% of pregnant women in India were anemic.
Dr Ramalingaswami and his co-authors also found a major difference in the feeding practices of children in the two regions. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of breast-fed children aged to 6-9 months receiving complementary foods was almost two-thirds; in South Asia, less than one-third.
Indeed, age-wise pattern of undernutrition studied in a World Bank report on South Asia published in 2006 shows that most of the growth retardation occurs early in life. The difference in length-for-age and weight-for-age between Indian and South African children begins to widen around the time the child is three to four months of age. The report finds that most of the retardation in growth in India occurs either during the pregnancy or during the first two years after birth.
Critics often argue that the economic reforms have failed to reach the poor and deprived sections of society. But malnutrition also prevails in families that are neither poor nor deprived. While it is true that the implementation of government programmes such as the ICDS needs a lot to be desired, and such programmes are not aimed at changing gender relations at home.
A sustained long-term dent in child undernourishment can only be achieved by improving the health, opportunities and rights of the mother, the primary caregiver of children. Not just legislative rights but rights to participate in decision-making both at home and outside it, opportunities for social interactions, rights to improve their lives through education and employment.
The historical pattern of the state and status of women in India reveals that it is largely unrelated to economic growth. Let's look at sex ratio - a number that has been much discussed since the release of the provisional 2011 census results. At 914 women per 1,000 men, the sex ratio at birth is the lowest since Independence. In two of the richest states, Punjab and Haryana, preference for the boy child results in many families abort the girl child or kill her soon after birth. But the story does not really end there.
Women's subjugation continues throughout their lives. One would hope that an adverse sex ratio would increase the value of women in society. Alas, our beliefs are too deeply embedded in traditional cultural norms to allow us to respond to the forces of demand and supply.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-04-29/news/29487240_1_saharan-child-malnutrition-underweight

MALARIA: India: Health workers in Orissa work with rural communities to raise awareness

19 April 2011

Milu Jani and his family under their new bednet. Picture: DFID

Milu Jani lives in Labangi, a small village in a remote area of Western Orissa – one of the poorest states in India. The village is around three hours from the nearest district town of Angul and part of the journey needs to be done on foot. There is no health centre, no electricity and no school in the village. Milu works as a forest guard at the Satakosia wildlife reserve, earning a mere 90 rupees (£1.20) a day.
Like most villagers, Milu has lost a loved one to malaria. His eyes tear up as he recalls his father's death last winter. Milu's father fell ill with a high fever and was tragically diagnosed with malaria only a day before his death, leaving no time for proper treatment. Malaria can be treated effectively with drugs, but treatment is most effective when administered within 24 hours of the onset of fever.
Milu knew mosquito bites can cause malaria but didn't know the deadly mosquitos were breeding in the water pools around the village. After his father passed away, Milu met a local health worker who explained the risks of malaria and how to prevent his family from becoming ill with this deadly disease.

Getting healthcare to rural communities
The DFID supported state health programme in Orissa trains health workers to help raise awareness of malaria prevention and treatment among vulnerable tribal communities like Milu's. Health workers like Suhasini Behera in Milu's village are trained in the use of diagnostic tests and how to administer appropriate medicines. They also distribute bednets and promote the proper use of nets to prevent malaria.
"It was not easy to convince people to use bed nets," Suhasini says. "People feared the nets were poisonous as there had been reports of rashes and itching from the insecticide" – misconceptions that she sought to dispel while visiting their homes.
By working with the community to raise awareness of malaria, Suhasini and her fellow health workers help to prevent people from contracting malaria and help the villagers to understand how to access treatment.

Bednets - a simple prevention tool
DFID's support to the Orissa state health programme has helped Milu and his family purchase bednets that will prevent them from contracting malaria in the future. By subsidising the cost of the nets, DFID enables poor families like Milu's to purchase two bednets for only 20 rupees (25p). The nets are treated with insecticide and last up to five years.
Milu's mother is content with her new net. "I always had disturbed sleep due to the mosquitoes. This new net has brought me a lot of comfort and I also use it for my afternoon nap".
Milu is equally satisfied. "Malaria was a huge problem in our area. Now everyone in the village is using a net. I have lost my father but now I can keep my family safe from malaria".

Key facts
DFID India has committed £100 million over 2007-12 to Orissa's state health programme to tackle malaria, among other health and nutrition initiatives. The programme increases efforts to prevent malaria, improve diagnosis and provide access to treatment for pregnant women and tribal children, who are most vulnerable to the disease.
DFID support has helped provide an extra 300,000 bed nets to young expectant mothers, to prevent anaemia and malaria-related deaths.
Orissa's state health programme has trained 20,000 health workers to use diagnostic tests, administer medicines and distribute bednets.
The state health programme distributed 1.2 million bednets to villages in February and March 2010, supported by the education and awareness activities of health workers.
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Media-Room/Case-Studies/2011/Battling-malaria-in-India/

MALNUTRITION: India: Court on starvation deaths, ‘There cannot be two Indias'

J. Venkatesan Share : April 21, 2011

The Supreme Court  questioned the Centre's approach to eradication of malnutrition and its failure to take steps to prevent starvation deaths in certain pockets of the country.
A Bench comprising Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Deepak Verma, hearing petitions relating to the streamlining of the public distribution system (PDS), expressed serious concern over the increasing number of starvation deaths.
Justice Bhandari told Additional Solicitor-General Indira Jaisingh: “See what the stark contradiction in our whole approach is. You say we are a powerful economy. You have a bumper crop this year and our godowns (stores) are full, and it is a happy situation, no doubt. When you have your godowns full and people are starving, what is the benefit? You cannot have two Indias.”
When the ASG explained the various steps being taken to prevent malnutrition and said the percentage was coming down, Justice Bhandari said: “Coming down is not the answer. You must eradicate malnutrition as early as possible.”
Earlier, senior counsel Colin Gonsalves submitted that though India was a signatory to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, starvation deaths were still taking place in the country. He wanted the court to direct the Centre to release foodgrains to the 150 most starved districts as a one-time measure to prevention starvation deaths.
Justice Bhandari told the ASG: “On the one hand you say adequate quantity of foodgrains is allocated to BPL [below the poverty line] families, and only thereafter APL [above the poverty line] families are supplied. But malnutrition has increased in large pockets in Maharashtra, Orissa, Bihar and a few other States. They [people who starve] are also citizens of this country. You are bound to protect them. They cannot be denied foodgrains. You take instructions whether adequate foodgrains could be released to these districts as a one-time measure and file an affidavit in this regard within one week.”
Justice Bhandari also asked the Planning Commission to explain on what basis it estimated that 36 per cent of the population were BPL when several States, including those ruled by the Congress, had disputed this figure and said the actual percentage was much more even by the parameters fixed by the Planning Commission.
He wondered how the Planning Commission, which was impleaded as a party, could fix Rs. 20 and Rs. 11 per capita daily income for urban and rural areas respectively to determine BPL status.
Justice Bhandari asked counsel: “How can you justify such a meagre amount? Let the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission file a comprehensive affidavit in one week because the entire case rests on your figures.”
The Bench took on record an affidavit filed by the Centre on computerisation of the PDS. Mr. Gonsalves suggested that the Chhattisgarh model on computerisation of the PDS be adopted in other States as well.
The Bench asked the Justice Wadhwa Committee to take into account the Chhattisgarh model, as well as the model in other States, and suggest a suitable one for adoption by all States and submit a report by July 8. It said that a proper system to prevent pilferage from procurements and distribution till the end user must be put in place, and that the modules followed in the U.S. or U.K. could be implemented here as well. The Bench posted the matter for further hearing on May 10.
http://www.thehindu.com/health/policy-and-issues/article1712967.ece