Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

`India needs to invest in nutrition'

By Feroze Ahmed

CHENNAI MARCH 5. Is India deceiving itself with its proud claims of grain surplus and food security? That might well be the case when the country still has starving individuals, suggests Lawrence J Haddad, director of the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). "National food security is a hollow victory. It might make the politicians feel good, but it does not mean household food security."

"India might have national food security but definitely not household food security," adds his colleague, Stuart Gillespie, senior research fellow, IFPRI.

The two nutritional experts - co-authors of `The Double Burden of Malnutrition in Asia - Causes, Consequences and Solutions' - are in Chennai to participate in the 30th Session of the Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN), a five-day international programme on nutritional security. Speaking to The Hindu on Wednesday, they also made it clear that food availability did not mean nutritional availability.

On the nutritional and public distribution systems (PDS) in India, Dr. Gillespie felt Kerala was better off in many respects but "Tamil Nadu should be doing a lot better in terms of general food handout. Besides, the PDS are not targeted well and do not do much in combating malnutrition." Targeting it better and giving it greater coverage, Dr. Haddad says, could improve the PDS.

That aside, a crucial aspect for battling malnutrition was to improve the status of women. "Women tend to need more micronutrients than others because they are biologically vulnerable. But in Asia, women and girls are usually discriminated against. Here, in India, women usually eat last and least," points out Dr. Haddad.

Children, importantly, have to be targeted really early if the State has to make a dent in the generational malnutrition cycle. "Whatever is not done in the first 18 months is lost forever. The brains do not develop as well as they should, and this alone would have lots of negative consequences later. It would add up to a loss of three to five per cent of GDP a year, and that is a big amount," says Dr. Haddad. "It is important to establish a health-care-food cycle. It is not just about the food, it is about feeding," notes Dr. Gillespie.

In childhood nutrition, the two experts have a solution for bettering India's economic standard. "Investing in nutrition is a great economic investment," points out Dr. Haddad. "Politicians should be as interested in infant growth as in economic growth. The Government has to make it their policy to ensure food security if it is interested in economy."

Another aspect the country should be concerned about is the issue of linkages between HIV and food and nutrition security. "India should study how HIV, because of the high death rates it will cause, would affect national food security. It will have a great impact on India in the next five years," warns Dr. Gillespie.

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