Less than 2 percent of Indians now go without two meals a day, and far fewer still die of starvation. They eat enough to fill their stomachs; not enough to stay healthy.
In 2010, 64 percent of the calories consumed by villagers came from cereals, about 9 percent from oils and fats, less than 5 percent each from sugar and pulses like the lentils. Fruit and vegetables, meat, eggs and fish together made up about 2.5 percent. In 1973, villagers ate just under 2,300 calories a day, according to the National Sample Survey Office, a branch of the ministry of statistics. By 2010, that number had dropped to about 2,020, compared with the government floor of 2,400 a day to qualify for food aid. The bountiful harvests of Indian fields are denied to the very farmers who produce them. Forty-six percent of children under three were malnourished in 2005, the last time a nationwide survey was carried out, compared with 47 percent the decade before. Twenty-one percent of Indian adults are malnourished, against 17 percent 10 years earlier.
Half of all children under three weigh too little for their age; eight in 10 are anemic. Ninety-two percent of Indian mothers hadn’t heard or didn’t understand the Hindi or local-language terms for malnourishment, a 2011 survey of 100 districts with the worst child development indicators found. If every child in a village is malnourished, the survey concluded, then every mother assumes her own child is normal.
1,000 children a day from diarrhea, hepatitis and other diseases resulting from bad sanitation. Open defecation is a national crisis for some 665 million Indians
A decade-long economic boom and bumper harvests have failed to nourish millions of children doomed to stunted, shortened lives; record stockpiles of grain rot in warehouses; supplies meant for the poor are stolen, sold in local markets, even overseas. As much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians in the state of Uttar Pradesh alone. Other causes are bureaucratic barriers that stop families getting the free rations they are entitled to; shrinking access to land and forests to grow or gather food; the rising unpredictability of agricultural work.
Tuberculosis infects 2 million Indians every year,
400 million Indians have no access to electricity at all.
62 years after India’s first constitution declared caste discrimination illegal, the system still dictates the daily lives and constrains opportunities for hundreds of millions of people.
Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist, pointed out that in healthy countries, the average adult height increases by about a centimeter every 10 years -- Scandinavians have grown by just that rate since 1950. Indians have managed to grow at half that pace -- it would more than 200 years to reach the five-foot, 8-inch average height of an American male in 2006.
In 2010, 64 percent of the calories consumed by villagers came from cereals, about 9 percent from oils and fats, less than 5 percent each from sugar and pulses like the lentils. Fruit and vegetables, meat, eggs and fish together made up about 2.5 percent. In 1973, villagers ate just under 2,300 calories a day, according to the National Sample Survey Office, a branch of the ministry of statistics. By 2010, that number had dropped to about 2,020, compared with the government floor of 2,400 a day to qualify for food aid. The bountiful harvests of Indian fields are denied to the very farmers who produce them. Forty-six percent of children under three were malnourished in 2005, the last time a nationwide survey was carried out, compared with 47 percent the decade before. Twenty-one percent of Indian adults are malnourished, against 17 percent 10 years earlier.
Half of all children under three weigh too little for their age; eight in 10 are anemic. Ninety-two percent of Indian mothers hadn’t heard or didn’t understand the Hindi or local-language terms for malnourishment, a 2011 survey of 100 districts with the worst child development indicators found. If every child in a village is malnourished, the survey concluded, then every mother assumes her own child is normal.
1,000 children a day from diarrhea, hepatitis and other diseases resulting from bad sanitation. Open defecation is a national crisis for some 665 million Indians
A decade-long economic boom and bumper harvests have failed to nourish millions of children doomed to stunted, shortened lives; record stockpiles of grain rot in warehouses; supplies meant for the poor are stolen, sold in local markets, even overseas. As much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians in the state of Uttar Pradesh alone. Other causes are bureaucratic barriers that stop families getting the free rations they are entitled to; shrinking access to land and forests to grow or gather food; the rising unpredictability of agricultural work.
Tuberculosis infects 2 million Indians every year,
400 million Indians have no access to electricity at all.
62 years after India’s first constitution declared caste discrimination illegal, the system still dictates the daily lives and constrains opportunities for hundreds of millions of people.
Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist, pointed out that in healthy countries, the average adult height increases by about a centimeter every 10 years -- Scandinavians have grown by just that rate since 1950. Indians have managed to grow at half that pace -- it would more than 200 years to reach the five-foot, 8-inch average height of an American male in 2006.
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