Despite...despite

"Growth has seen the poor get poorer," says Dunu Roy, of Hazards Centre, an independent thinktank in Delhi.

Despite the investment of billions each year and initiatives ranging from employment guarantee schemes to school meals, malnutrition in India is rife. Figures for child mortality, underweight children and other basic health indicators have showed no significant improvement in seven years. This, despite the world's biggest organised feeding schemes for young children, which according to government estimates reaches 58 million children. A Unicef report published this month said "In India… there was no meaningful improvement among children in the poorest households..." According to the World Bank, 43% of Indian children are underweight – the highest level in the world and a figure that has remained constant for at least 20 years. In sub-saharan Africa it averages 28%.

One reason for the persistence of malnutrition in India is that the schemes set up to combat it are hugely inefficient. Corruption on the part of both food distributors and officials, combined with administrative incapacity and poor logistics all impede delivery. The entirely predictable monsoon rains destroyed around £8bn of food because of poor storage.

"We estimate that around half the food actually gets distributed," says Roy.

Nurmila, a NGO worker explained "Very few of the families with ration cards actually get their rations. The shops are never open or they just don't hand over the right amount. Some families go for months without the food the government says they should get."

Better-quality wheat purchased by the government is often replaced with a poor substitute by the shop owners. As for the food doled out on the doorsteps by the anganwadi, many complain it is often inedible.It is also, being largely rice, pulses or wheat porridge, unsuited for very young infants.

There are more poor in the eight poorest states of India – 410 million people – than in the 26 poorest nations of Africa. Levels of poverty in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are roughly comparable with those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo despite economic growth that has more than quadrupled India's per capita gross domestic product since 1992.