{"id":3792,"date":"2018-11-29T08:14:01","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T08:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/?p=3792"},"modified":"2018-11-29T08:14:01","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T08:14:01","slug":"what-india-could-learn-from-ethiopia-about-food-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/what-india-could-learn-from-ethiopia-about-food-security\/","title":{"rendered":"What India Could Learn From Ethiopia About Food Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Source-\u00a0thewire.in<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite India\u2019s fast economic\u00a0growth\u00a0and\u00a0poverty reduction\u00a0over the past few decades, food insecurity remains\u00a0very high. This puzzle has been named the\u00a0\u201cSouth Asian enigma\u201d. Some indicators of food insecurity, especially child undernourishment rates, are now worse in India than in Ethiopia. This is despite the fact that Ethiopia has only\u00a0a quarter\u00a0of India\u2019s per capita income and has suffered\u00a0many famines\u00a0in the 20th century.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0comparison\u00a0of how the governments of these two countries manage food insecurity suggests that the key to resolving the South Asian enigma lies in the nourishment and sanitation of children in their first 1000 days of life \u2013 from conception to their second birthday.<\/p>\n

Support for pregnant women<\/strong><\/p>\n

The malnutrition of Indian children often starts in the womb.\u00a0Just over half\u00a0of adult Indian women are iron deficient,\u00a0compared with 23%\u00a0of Ethiopian women. Iron deficiency in pregnancy can\u00a0lead to\u00a0the child having a low weight and health problems.<\/p>\n

One reason for the difference is the lack of support for poor pregnant women in India. India\u2019s\u00a0National Food Security Act, passed in 2013, ruled that all pregnant Indian women should receive a stipend of 6,000 rupees. But the money usually manages to cover only the\u00a0costs of delivery. It is also given only in a woman\u2019s first pregnancy, excluding\u00a0more than half\u00a0of India\u2019s annual births.<\/p>\n

Many poor Indian women bear\u00a0heavy workloads\u00a0throughout their pregnancies, which compromises both their own and their unborn children\u2019s nourishment. In contrast, poor Ethiopian women receive support from the government-run\u00a0Productive Safety Net Programme\u00a0from the fourth month of pregnancy until their child\u2019s first birthday.<\/p>\n

Infant nutrition<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a result of the nutritional deficiencies in pregnancy, proportionally more children in\u00a0India\u00a0than in\u00a0Ethiopia\u00a0are born \u201cvery small\u201d. This difference in average weight widens with age. While\u00a036%\u00a0of Indian children under five years old are underweight, only\u00a024%\u00a0of Ethiopian children are.<\/p>\n

Different trends in child weaning in these countries contribute to the growing gap. The\u00a0World Health Organisation\u00a0(WHO) recommends supplementing infants with solid or semi-solid food after six months of age when breastmilk alone no longer meets their nutritional needs. But almost\u00a0a third of Indian one-year-old children still consume only liquids.<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian government made nutrition education for parents an important part of the latest version of their\u00a0Productive Safety Net Programme. Government-funded childcare centres, called Anganwadi centres, have traditionally provided nutrition education in India but their workers, mostly women, are\u00a0severely underpaid\u00a0and their service consequently\u00a0poor.<\/p>\n

Clean India<\/strong><\/p>\n

As well as unbalanced diets, children\u2019s undernourishment across the world has been increasingly linked to\u00a0sanitation. Both India and Ethiopia have suffered from high rates of open defecation, associated with frequent diarrhoea and\u00a0slower growth\u00a0among young children.<\/p>\n

Indian governments have tried to fight the practice by building toilets. As part of the latest\u00a0Swachh Bharat\u00a0(Clean India) campaign, millions of new latrines have been constructed.<\/p>\n

But many Indian families\u00a0refuse\u00a0to use the toilets, often for reasons to do with\u00a0caste. Sanitation work in India has traditionally been reserved for the lowest (\u201cuntouchable\u201d) caste, as a result, many people from other castes are unwilling to clean or empty their own toilets and would rather defecate outside.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Indian government, the Ethiopian government approached open defecation as a\u00a0public health problem\u00a0and focused on providing sanitation and hygiene education. The approach was widely\u00a0praised by the WHO\u00a0as Ethiopia reduced open defecation rates from 92% in 1990 to 29% in 2015.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s reduction in that time frame was much smaller, from 70% to 46%. But even in the most recent sanitation campaign, India\u2019s government\u00a0devoted only 1%\u00a0of the campaign\u2019s budget to providing sanitation education to communities.<\/p>\n

India sees itself as an\u00a0emerging world power, but\u00a0doubts about the direction of its developmentremain. The country\u2019s global image would undoubtedly improve if it finally managed to overcome the South Asian enigma and substantially improved its food security. Ethiopia\u2019s recent success in this respect indicates that focusing on the nutrition and sanitation of pregnant women and young children may be the most effective way forward.\"The<\/p>\n

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