Chronic food insecurity is the most prominent symptom of poverty in India. According to UNICEF, 42.5% of all young children were underweight in 2008, many of them in the more serious categories of wasting and stunting. Any improvement in this indicator since 1990 has been far too slow to satisfy the MDG target of halving hunger.
Poor standards of nutrition undermine all health indicators. Almost half of all Indian babies are born underweight and 5% die within a year of birth. The risk of haemorrhage in childbirth is aggravated by anaemia, a diet-related condition which affects almost all pregnant women in India.
Per capita consumption of the crucial protein in pulses has declined to about 20% of recommended intake. Less food is available to rural households than in the 1950s. This is a worrying platform on which to build food security strategies for 2050 by which time India’s population is projected to grow from 1.2 billion to 1.7 billion.
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