EDITORIALS

Perpetual Areas of Darkness

Malnutrition deaths in Maharashtras tribal belt expose indifference of successive governments.

e ought to be scandalised even if one child dies because

it does not have enough food. But when thousands of
tribal children die from malnutrition in a state that is one
of the better off in India, it is not just scandalous but criminal,
as the Bombay High Court observed recently. In Maharashtra, the
annual ritual of reporting child deaths from malnutrition in tribal
areas has begun. While the parents lament that their children died
because they had no food, the state government, in a perpetual
state of denial, claims they died of disease, not hunger. The
established fact that malnourished children will succumb to
disease more easily appears to have bypassed the states policymakers. And so the same litany plays out year after year, decade
after decade, while the states tribal hamlets remain areas of
perpetual darkness where pro-poor developmental programmes
have failed to make a difference to the lives of people.
Data from the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
for Maharashtra reveals that just in the month of August, 1,588
children below the age of five died, the majority of them from
tribal pockets. In addition, there are 95,743 children below the
age of five who are extremely vulnerable because they are
grossly underweight and another 5.98 lakh moderately underweight. This is not a breaking story; it tells us the consequence
of decades of indifference and negligence of tribal settlements
in Maharashtra. The facts remain virtually unchanged since the
1980s. And the tragedy is that each time there is reporting about
such deaths, the government machinery springs to action, offers
band-aid relief in the form of food and monetary assistance,
and then hopes the problem will disappear.
What compounds the tragedy is the fact that Maharashtra
was actually something of a pioneer in dealing with child malnutrition. In 2005, the state government recognised the seriousness of the problem and realised that it could not be tackled
without putting in place long-term measures to address economic
backwardness. It established a nutrition mission that brought
together all the departmentswomen and child welfare, tribal
welfare, health, etcand gave it political backing so that it could
go ahead with programmes that addressed the deeper systemic
problems responsible for malnutrition and child deaths. The mission
had completed its first two phases where it trained anganwadi
workers in direct contact with the communities, addressed the
need to encourage a change in agriculture practices, advocated
using locally grown ingredients to prepare nutritious food for
children (instead of the current governments desire to go for
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pre-packaged food), pointed out the need to look at issues such

as early marriage and the health of adolescent mothers, etc.
Essentially, the mission provided a structure to make a coordinated intervention and put in place a system of accountability.
Despite data that established that this kind of concerted intervention was already making a difference, the current state government has suspended the nutrition mission and decided
instead to revert to the old and failed strategy of leaving it to the
women and child welfare department to tackle the problem. We
see now the familiar knee-jerk reaction of the minister rushing
to the area where malnutrition deaths have been reported, giving cash compensation to affected families, and advocating
short-term solutions. Furthermore, even programmes such as
establishing village child development centres (VCDCs) under
the National Rural Health Mission, which could have dealt with
emergencies, were discontinued in the last three years for lack of
funding. Meanwhile, the tribal pockets that report the largest
number of such deaths continue to suffer from perennial developmental neglectpoor roads, non-existent healthcare facilities, few sources of livelihood resulting in outmigration, nonfunctioning public distribution systems, etc, a familiar story that
repeats itself in state after state across India.
While the Maharashtra governments decision to abandon a
system that worked indicates how low the welfare of its tribal
communities is in its list of priorities, it also exposes the turf wars
taking place within the government. Apparently miffed that the
credit for the improving child health statistics was being given to the
nutrition mission, Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde, who had been sidelined by the Devendra Fadnavis
government, insisted that the programme be brought under her
ministry, thereby destroying the concept of inter-ministerial
coordination. Whether the strong language used by Bombay High
Court judges hearing a petition filed by the Kasturba Adivasi
Mahila Sangh on malnutrition deaths, compels the government
to think again, remains to be seen. The petitioner reported to the
court that 18,000 children had died of malnutrition in the state
last year. This is unconscionable. An earlier petition filed in the
Bombay High Court in 2010 rightly emphasised that malnutrition is
not a disease. Our children die because they pay for the unequal
developmental policies of successive governments. Those without
a voice are simply forgotten, or at best remembered when they die
in noticeable numbers. The responsibility for these deaths has
to be placed before an indifferent and blind state government.
september 24, 2016

vol lI no 39

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly