NEW DELHI - India is still struggling to properly feed its children even as its economy booms, according to a survey of its citizens' health and development on Thursday.
While many development indicators are improving, including literacy and child mortality rates, malnourishment is by some measures getting worse, according to the survey by the health ministry with the help of several multilateral aid agencies.
The wealthy, mostly urban Indian middle class enjoying the fruits of an economy growing annually at near double figures, seem all but invisible in the new data.
Instead, hundreds of millions of poor, undernourished, under-educated agricultural workers dominate the picture.
The same groups continue to be the worst off: girls and women, people born into the bottom of the Hindu caste system and those from tribal communities.
The two-thirds of Indians living in its villages are starkly worse off than those living in cities.
A representative sample of around 200,000 people were interviewed for the survey. Here are some of the main findings of the 2005-06 National Family Health Survey:
NUTRITION
- Nearly a quarter of infants are wasting (have low weight for their height), up from a fifth of all infants found by the last survey in 1998/99. Nearly half of all children under 3 years have stunted growth, a sign of prolonged undernourishment. That figure was 51 percent in 1998/99.
- Nearly 80 percent of infants now have anaemia, up from 74 percent in 1998/99. The condition can damage mental development in young children. More than half of all women are anaemic.
- Three percent of all women are obese, as are one percent of all men -- most of them live in cities.
MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN
