In his book Development as Freedom, Nobel-prize winning scholar Amartya Sen wrote that “no famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy,” tying that claim to the presence of elections, opposition parties, and a relatively free press.
The press in Gujarat, India is giving a current example of how politicians are being held accountable to metrics of child malnutrition.
As reported in Indian news, quoting the independent, population-based National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), the opposition party in Gujarat is criticizing the government for a 41% rate of stunting in Gujarat state (or some 260,000 children), whereas the government is quoting a lower rate based on self-selected clinic-based screening of children. The NFHS also reports 19% of children under age 5 were wasted (acutely malnourished).
The opposition has claimed, “Despite this BJP government with more than 150 seats and 28 years of rule, only one figure comes on record, that 40 out of 100 children are malnourished. A very large section of them are tribals.” In districts like Panchmahal and Banaskantha, the numbers are objectively worse than the state average, which is why they were the focus of the March 12th debate.
Over roughly the last two decades, Gujarat’s child malnutrition record has improved, but unevenly. But wasting moved the wrong way for a long stretch: about 19% in 2005–06, 27% in 2015–16, and still about 25% in 2019–20/21; severe wasting also rose from about 7% to 11% and then stayed around 11%. Several underlying determinants improved substantially over time in NFHS: by NFHS-5, Gujarat had higher coverage of improved sanitation (74.0% vs 63.6% in NFHS-4), clean cooking fuel (66.9% vs 52.6%), improved drinking water (97.2% vs 95.9%), and continued high use of iodized salt (95.6%). Those changes usually point in the right direction for nutrition security.
Reference about the recent controversy:
