Malnutrition in India is on the rise, despite nutrition rehabilitation centres and ration shops. According to a 2004 study by the Planning Commission, only 40% of the food allocated to the poorest people by the public distribution system reaches them. The rest ends up on the black market or rots in warehouses.
Food is expensive. "It's not like the forest here; you always have to pay to eat," says Lal.
Every day at 4am he sets out to pick up waste. Economic growth has created work in the city but most jobs are casual: you only eat what you can earn. Lal must collect enough shoe-soles and plastic bottle-tops to feed his wife and seven children. He earns $3 to $4 a day. "At every meal we eat chapatis with salt, chili and sometimes, on good days, onions and vegetables," his wife says.
Their children, in theory, qualify for access to one of the nutrition rehabilitation centres. The government has set up more than a million such centres nationwide for malnourished children and pregnant women. Despite the nutrition centres, more than two-thirds of children under the age of five in the towns of Madhya Pradesh are anaemic.
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