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Despite surplus, India can't feed the hungry

Terry Friel in New Delhi

India, the world's second most populous nation, produces more food than it can eat but its tens of millions of poorest are growing hungrier and more malnourished by the year.

In the teeming cities, the poor are eating fewer calories and nutrients and their deficient diets are further undermined by poor health and sanitation, according to a UN report completing India's most comprehensive food and nutrition study yet.

"The (report)...shows child malnutrition is very high in urban areas: 36 per cent of urban poor children are stunted -- being shorter than they should be for their weight and age," the UN World Food Programme said. Almost 40 per cent of poor children in cities were underweight, it added.

The World Food Programme report on food in India's cities follows its earlier study on rural hunger and is aimed at giving Indian authorities a clear map of how many of the country's one billion people don't have enough to eat and where they are.

"Despite a surplus of food, there are a great number of people who suffer from malnutrition or in some cases famine," Mohammed Zejjari, special representative of WFP chief James Morris, told Reuters in New Delhi ahead of the launch.

India had made great strides in increasing its food production, but "there is a contradiction between food availability and food security", he said.

Farming hit hard

The report found many of India's urban poor were driven to the cities, some of the world's most overcrowded, by problems in the country's drought and flood-plagued agricultural heartland, but could not afford decent food once they were there.

Low-calorie diets -- averaging less than 1,900 calories a day for the poorest 10 per cent -- plus the extra problems of poor sanitation meant vital micronutrients were not absorbed properly.

Citing limited earlier reports, the study said the average calories eaten by India's poorest 10 per cent had fallen for three decades, dropping to 1,890 in 1999-2000 from 1,893 in the mid-1990s alone as the national average rose to 2,640 from 2,540.

"Many children and adults belonging to the poverty groups cannot...absorb nutritionally rich foods," the study said.

"Frequent sickness reduces their capacity to absorb and assimilate food. Availability of safe drinking water, pollution-free air, dirt-free surroundings, personal hygiene and primary health facilities determine the incidence of disease."

Said Zejjari: "The factors that make life more difficult for people in the urban areas are health, pollution and sanitation.

"Urbanisation is perhaps the most dominant demographic phenomenon of recent times," he said, adding 600 million people would be living in India's cities by 2025.

"It is therefore imperative to understand the particular circumstances of the urban poor if we are ever to overcome the monumental problems they face, foremost of which is hunger."

Zejjari said India desperately needed to combat the loss of full-time jobs -- what the report called the "casualisation of the unskilled workforce" -- to increase buying power to help the poor feed themselves better.

The worst-hit sections of society, including women and children, could be targeted for short-term food aid in the meantime, he added.

"We believe India can feed its people -- it has the resources," Zejjari said.

While releasing the 'Food Insecurity Atlas of Urban India' President A P J Abdul Kalam said an integrated action was needed to address the 'food problem' of India.

"We need to progress simultaneouly in all the five core areas of agri food processing, strategic industries, infrastructure, education and health care, for the overall development of the country," he said.

Commenting on the Atlas publication, a collaboration between World Food Programme and the M S Swaminanthan Research Foundation Union Urban Minister Ananth Kumar said there was a need to focus on a forward looking strategy for providing basic living condition including food and water.

(With additional inputs from PTI)

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