Hunger and malnutrition are outcomes of food insecurity or the inability to access adequate food and nutrition. Hunger-related poverty remains one of the major deprivations of India. An even greater cause of concern is the status of malnutrition among children. Malnutrition directly affects the development of the child by retarding their physical and cognitive growth and increases the risk of infection and disease. If lack of income means vulnerability to food insecurity and malnutrition, then the latter also reduces the lifetime-earning potential.

The deprivations relating to hunger and malnutrition, morbidity, mortality and physical environment often reinforce each other and the general condition of economic poverty. To give an example, an illness like diarrhoea is one of the major causes of infant deaths in India, along with malaria, pneumonia and measles contributing to the high infant-mortality rates. Diarrhoea also leads to loss of absorption of nutrients, causing severe malnutrition among children. On the other hand, malnutrition has been estimated to be associated with about half of all child deaths and more than half of child deaths from diarrhea. Access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation facilities greatly reduces the incidence of diseases like diarrhoea. India’s achievement in terms of proportion of population having access to either of these basic facilities is woefully low.

There is a gender dimension to hunger and malnutrition in India as well. Half of the country’s women suffer from anaemia and the prevalence of anaemia is even higher among the pregnant women. Anaemia is one of the major causes of maternal mortality and also contributes to nearly 30 percent of babies being born underweight. The low birth weight means that there is greater risk of growth retardation, most of which occurs by the age of
two and is often irreversible.

A greater prevalence of undernourishment can be seen among the children from scheduled-caste and scheduled-tribe communities. The rate of decline of undernourishment among these sections of the population is also found to be lower in comparison to the general population. It leads to a widening gap in terms of nutritional status among these communities and the general population. A similar observation could be made about the divergence between rural and urban areas in terms of nutritional status. The overall picture that emerges is one of growing urban-rural, inert-caste, male-female and economic class disparities in nutritional status.

It is the dark irony of our times that hunger and malnutrition are so pervasive in the country, while the Indian economy has achieved self-sufficiency in foodgrain production. The Indian government maintains buffer foodgrain stocks to guard against serious food shortages arising from drought and other crop failures. But starvation deaths are often reported from various parts of the country as they continue to be affected by droughts. These happen at the same time when the Food Corporation of India find it difficult to manage the millions of tones of surplus food grains rotting in its warehouses. It is such cases which led to the ‘Right to Food’ campaign and an ordinance on it thereafter, even as the bill ensuring food security has been introduced in the Parliament. Though chronic hunger and malnutrition are not as visible and shocking as starvation deaths but they happen to be more widespread and persistent.