With an overwhelming 86 per cent of tribal households in the poorest wealth quintiles compared to 58 per cent of non-tribals, a whopping 47 per cent of tribal children in Odisha have been identified as stunted compared to around 35 per cent of non-tribals.
The severe stunting among tribal children stood high at around 20 per cent, and around 10 per cent tribal children below two years are both stunted (height to age proportion) and wasted (weight to height proportion) .
These distressing revelations have been made in a study report from the Unicef (United Nation’s Children Fund) post a sampled survey done in September to December 2016 when a multivariate analysis of unit-level data from Odisha from the Rapid Survey of Children (R-SOC) was carried out.
Why the findings count much significance is because recently the National Family Health Welfare (NFHS)-4 has revealed an improvement in the State’s overall proportion of stunted children below five years by a whopping 10 per cent, but it didn’t have any separate data on nutrition parameters of the tribal children below two years in the State.
“The gap in the level of stunting between all children and tribal children under two years is 12 percentage points, which indicates that the State average masks the stunting in tribal children,” observed the report. The report further added that the bulk of child stunting is attributed to severe stunting as in the age group of 0-5 years a high of 19 per cent tribal children are severely stunted vis-a-vis 14 per cent among all children.
Analysing the factors behind such a high proportion of stunted and wasted tribal children, the report observed that while stunting is known to be influenced by long-term basic determinants predicted by poverty and maternal factors, acute under-nutrition in Odisha prevailed and exacerbated by food shortage and infections owing to lack of access to clean water and poor sanitation.
The report highlighted the governance deficit in tribal lands as its survey found that nearly 95 per cent of households practise open defecation and around 20 per cent homes still have no access to protected water sources.
According the Unicef study results, also maternal factors like child marriage, early/repeated pregnancies, illiteracy and not seeking antenatal care together hugely contributed in having more severely stunted children among tribals. The report, thus, asks the State Government to have a sub-strategy to improve the nutrition of tribal girls, mothers and children as the results when seen in the context of implementation of the National Food Security Act in tribal areas, come as an eye-opener for the State administration to go for more extra efforts.
The Unicef also asked the State to integrate stunting prevention with management strategies of wasting as 10 per cent tribal children are both stunted and wasted.
The study results highlighted the acute deprivation among tribals as it revealed how maternal illiteracy and no-household electricity were 2- 2.5 times higher in tribals than non-tribals. Similarly, in open defecation, the tribal proportion is 1.5 times higher than non-tribals whereas antenatal practices 1.5 times lower.