Jharkhand has shown significant improvement in terms of efforts being made to shun hunger and malnutrition. However, it needs to do a lot when half of its children below five years of age belonging to Scheduled Tribes are still malnourished in one way or the other. It was the takeaway of a conference on Food and Nutrition Security in Jharkhand organised here on Friday.
Releasing its report on Global Hunger Index in Ranchi, Welt Hunger Hilfe Country Director Nivedita Varshneya said that Jharkhand was found a home of 51.5 per cent underweight Scheduled Tribes children below five years according to a rapid survey done by UNICEF in 2013-14. She added that 53.4 per cent children were stunted, and 19.9 per cent under height in comparison to their age according to same survey.
Other than Food and Consumer Affairs Department Minister Saryu Roy, the release of report event was also attended by Agriculture Department Director Jatashankar Choudhary, Department of Economics (RU) Professor Ramesh Sharan, and UNICEF State chief Madhulika Jonathan.
As far as global situation of hunger is concerned, Varshneya said, “If Africa, South of the Sahara and South Asia were to reduce their hunger levels between now and 2030 at their current pace, they would still have moderate to serious levels of hunger-falling far short of the goal to reach Zero Hunger by 2030.”
She added that India currently had the fifth highest Global Hunger Index (GHI) score in Asia-better than only Afghanistan, Timore-leste, Pakistan and North Korea. “Though India has considerably improved its global hunger index score to 28.5 this year from 38.5 in 2005, the progress has been uneven. By contrast, Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, all of whom share the BRICS high table with India, have a single-digit score,” said Varshneya.
In context to Jharkhand, Saryu Roy said that the State needed to improve the time gap between planning and implementation if it wanted to combat problems like malnutrition. “There are instances when this gap between planning and implementation turned very basic motto of the plan useless. We also need to look at localised solutions while fighting with malnutrition,” the Minister added.
Roy added that the presumption, rightly so more often than not, that only the government had all the answers with it, needed to be changed. He also said that shrinking of farmland was a global phenomenon, with Jharkhand being no exception. He also suggested for the need of population control.