By Sujit De
Recently Public Health Foundation of India in collaboration with other institutions has come out with a report that four out of ten children of our country suffer from stunted growth as a result of malnutrition and poor socio-economic conditions. These children display reduced growth during early childhood and are at risk of its long term consequences like poor learning ability, poor school performance and unachieved potential. The position of our country is at rock bottom when it comes to taking care of our children or in other words the future of the nation. Only Niger, Malawi and Madagascar currently have higher stunting prevalence levels than our country. This shocking report is the icing on the rotten cake of India’s dismal performance in human development where we are to sit behind 134 nations with a score of meagre 0.586. Even Sri Lanka has got a score of 0.750 that enables her to sit much ahead at the 73rd position. Having gained the 9th position in Human Development Index, Singapore has shown what all round development means.
Our politicians can give speeches taking pride in the fact that ours is a young country, but they are not interested in developing this huge human potential. Being a backbencher in Human Development Index, our political leaders fight shy of seeing why inclusive growth is a must for getting a better place in the class of civilised welfare states. Without trying to get a better bench by giving top priority to the welfare of the people, our leaders are tend to follow the mindset of school backbenchers who resort to all sorts gimmicks to cover their negligence to do what they are supposed to. However, it is difficult to find a family whose head manages resources curtailing expenditure in health and education to finance travel to foreign countries like Chad (read the moon) and Mongolia ( read Mars) while 39 per cent of his children are stunted and 35.6 per cent of the family members illiterate. It is a mockery to the idea of a welfare state. Ramanan Laxminarayan, vice president of Public Health Foundation, New Delhi has rightly said, “We’re staring in India at the largest loss of human potential in history”. India is still home to 40 million stunted children.
A popular myth is doing the rounds in our country that had there been no subsidy for the poor, India could have become a superpower. Amartya Sen has rightly pointed out how incorrect such notions are. He said, “Reading the papers and hearing broadcasts, you would think that it is subsidy for the poor- food and employment- that strains India’s public resources, even though more than twice as much public funds are spent in subsidiziing the better off”. Yet the creamy layer of the society is still hungry to gobble up even the subsidy for the poor which is only one third of the total subsidy. Another myth that has been nurtured to cover up India’s lack of investment in human development is India being too densely populated to achieve inclusive growth. But this argument does not hold water either. The density of population is 436 per square kilometre in India but it is 501 in The Netherlands. While the former is stuck at the HDI rank of 135, the latter is at the 4th position with a score of whopping 0.915. India has committed a blunder of neglecting her asset of huge human resources and thus making it her liability.
The United States of America in particular and European countries in general have promoted themselves from police state to welfare state. The welfare state which ensures freedom of an individual as well as guarantees his or her social security is a synthesis of the thesis of capitalism and antithesis of socialism. Surprisingly, India is made to walk backward from welfare state as enshrined in our constitution (Article 38) to a caniballistic state of survival of the fittest raj that has been discarded by the civilised countries. The disinvestment policy and the policy of gifting the education and health sectors to the private players without meaningful control negates the concept of a welfare state as it causes unemployment and robbing of one’s social security. The employment to population ratio is a clear indicator of what is the general outcome of our liberalisation policy. While employment to population ratio was 58.6 per cent in 1994, it has, alarmingly, come down to 52.2 per cent in 2013. The liberalisation policy helps carry coal to Newcastle leaving the suicide door open for the unemployed who have, now, become almost half of the employable persons in our country. Unemployed receive a handsome allowance from the state in the countries like the United States of America but there is no such security in India although protection of life (Article-21) is a fundamental right and right to work (Article-41) is a directive principle in our constitution.
According to the constitution of India the name of our country is India that is Bharat ( Article-1). But over the years our country has, most unfortunately, become India in Bharat as a result of her trying to grow at a superpower rate having totally ignored human development in the process. Thus we have got a stunted Bharat with pockets of rising India. Any lopsided growth in the body can turn out to be malignant. It is time to realise that the growth of greedy India in needy Bharat has caused cancer to our Motherland and those 40 million stunted children are the symptoms of the disease.