That India performs much worse on stunting than countries poorer than it. India has one of the highest rates of child stunting in the world: more than a third of its children under five years are short enough for their age to be counted as “stunted” under the World Health Organisation’s guidelines. This is more than the stunting rate in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world.
Researchers have theorised that it has to do with unhygienic conditions found in India due to the prevalence of open defecation as well as the fact that daughters are mistreated in India compared to sons.
Along with hygiene and gender, a third factor might be making India’s rates of stunting shoot up: caste and communal discrimination.
A new paper by Ashwini Deshpande, professor of economics at Ashoka University and Rajesh Ramachandran, a post-doctoral researcher at the faculty of economics at Heidelberg University, finds that stunting varies starkly when it comes to caste and community in India.
Most research till now has compared India as a whole in trying to determine why it lagged other countries so severely when it came to child health. Contrary to the all-India trend, upper-caste Hindus actually have stunting rates (26%) lower than sub-Saharan African children. However, Indian children from Dalit and Adivasi communities (Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe) have stunting rates significantly higher than those of African children. A similar trend holds for Other Backward Classes, a vast group of castes in between upper castes and Dalits in the social order. for Dalit children, their rates of stunting sharply increase in relation to the practice of untouchability.
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