India has world’s highest number of stunted children, child workers

[beijingwalker]

India has world’s highest number of stunted children, child workers
31 million of children in the country are a part of its workforce, the highest number in the world.
INDIA Updated: Jun 11, 2017 22:02 IST

A boy carries coal at an open cast coal field at Dhanbad district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.

India now has the highest number of children stunted due to malnutrition – 48.2 million, equivalent to the population of Colombia, as per the latest global report on childhood. Also, 31 million of its children are a part of its workforce, the highest number in the world.

These two factors, along with early marriage and parenthood and lack of education, have pushed India to 116th position among 172 nations assessed for threats to childhood, according to the recent Stolen Childhoods report by Save the Children, an international non-profit working for marginalised and deprived children.

Globally, 700 million children have had their childhood curtailed early, said the report which was released on June 1, the eve of the international children’s day.

Three of India’s neighbouring countries did better on the index — Sri Lanka was ranked 61, Bhutan, 93 and Myanmar, 112. Nepal (134), Bangladesh (134) and Pakistan (148) fared worse than India.

The index focuses on a set of life-changing events and uses certain indicators to assess countries: mortality among children under five years of age, malnutrition that stunts growth, lack of education, child labour, early marriage, adolescent births, displacement by conflict and child homicide.

India with the highest number of stunted children and child labourers in the world fared badly on most indicators.

India has highest number of stunted children in the world

Stunted growth is caused by chronic malnutrition in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from early pregnancy to age 2. India reports highest figures for stunting and one-third of all girls in the country suffer the condition, according to the report.

“Chronic malnutrition at this stage of life is largely irreversible, and stunted children face a lifetime of lost opportunities in education and work. They are also more likely to succumb to illness and disease, and can die as a result,” the report said.

Only one child among 10 in India gets adequate nutrition, India Spend had reported in May 2017.

As a result, mortality is high among children under five years of age. Nearly half of all deaths in children under five years of age are attributable to malnutrition according to United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. Also, one child in every 21 dies before reaching the fifth birthday in India.

For every 1,000 live births, 50 children under five die, a figure comparable to the poorer African island nation of Madagascar, IndiaSpend reported in March, 2017.

47 m youth of upper secondary age not going to schools

In India, 18.6% of children are out of school in the primary and secondary age group and 47 million youth of upper secondary age are not in school, said the report.

Children who are excluded from primary education will earn significantly less over their lifetimes than their educated peers. “The economic cost of not educating these out-of-school children – estimated at 0.3 to 15.2 percent of GDP in these countries – is far greater than what it would cost to achieve universal primary education” the report said.

31 m children working, highest in the world

Among Indian children in the 4-14 years group, 11.8% are working. That is 31 million children, the highest in the world.

Children working to support their families don’t just miss out on education, they also miss out on rest, play and recreation. They lose opportunities to engage with their community, and participate in cultural, religious and sports activities. This effectively means missing out on childhood.

Half of all children in India living on the streets or from coming from homeless families work for a living – at construction sites, hotels – and do not study, IndiaSpend reported in April 2016.

Early marriage means a deprived childhood

In India, 21.1% of all girls between 15 to 19 years are married while 103 million girls were married before they turned 18, according to the report.

Early marriage has devastating consequences for a girl’s life, effectively ending her childhood by forcing her into adulthood and motherhood before she is physically and mentally ready. Child brides frequently feel disempowered and are deprived of their rights to health, education and safety.

“Child brides are at greater risk of experiencing dangerous complications in pregnancy and childbirth, contracting HIV/AIDS and suffering domestic violence. With little access to education and economic opportunities, they and their families are more likely to live in poverty” the report said.

Further, 23.3 girls per 1,000 gave birth between ages 15 and 19, as per the report. Early childbearing impacts the nation’s economy and communities.

If adolescents in India waited till their 20s to become mothers, they would have greater economic productivity of upto $7.7 billion or Rs 49,600 crore, the report calculated.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/indi...ild-workers/story-WbN7ho6gSm2UO8n368t8kL.html

 

[rishav]

a lot of problems

In India, 18.6% of children are out of school in the primary and secondary age group and 47 million youth of upper secondary age are not in school, said the report.

this seems like outdated info ? i thought it was around 5% ?

 

[N.Siddiqui]

Pakistan HDI indicators were also going down in the last 10 plus years or so. It is improving now in KPK and Punjab though, specially KPK province has shown remarkable improvement in the last 4 years.


Quoting a recent Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) , he told a press conference that the number of those living below poverty line had declined by half under the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government in the province.

“A recent PBS survey shows that the number of those living below poverty line has gone down by nearly half to 12.27 per cent,” he said, adding that a similar survey in 2013 had put the number of those living below poverty line at 23.86 per cent in KP, the highest in the country then.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1344378

 

[beijingwalker]

How Malnutrition is Choking the Future Generation of the Country
Unless, the present corporate growth model is reversed, any hope for a better future for the children will remain a hope.
Bodapati Srujana, Surangya Kaur
01 Aug 2017

The recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS - 4) [2015-16], has put out some worrying data on the nutritional status of children in India.

A child’s brain develops rapidly during the first two years of their life. The NFHS data, which was published with five different indicators of childhood nutrition, showed that less than 10% of the children, under two years of age, in India received adequate nutrition. The rest 90% were severely malnourished and ran a high risk of permanent cognitive problems.

And this is just one of the problems the NFHS data revealed. The results showed that 34% of the children below the age of five were underweight, 21% of them suffered from weight too low compared to their height, a condition also known as wasting. 38% children were stunted, which meant that their height was far below the required height for their age.

According to UNICEF, “Stunting is associated with an under-developed brain, with long-lasting harmful consequences, including diminished mental ability and learning capacity, poor school performance in childhood, reduced earnings and increased risks of nutrition related chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity in future”. Anemia too is widely prevalent among children in India. The data showed that more than 58% of the children under 5 years age are anemic.

One may think that the problem of malnutrition is mostly prevalent in states with low economic growth and resources. But the NFHS data proves to one and all, how wrong that assumption is.

Gujarat, a state which is projected as a model state by the BJP has the lowest percentage of children who have received adequate nutrition. Only 5.2% of children under two years have received sufficient nutrition and 40% of the children under the age 5, are underweight in Prime Minister Modi’s model state.

The only other states doing worse than Gujarat, are the long term BJP-led state Madhya Pradesh, (43%), Bihar (44%) and Jharkhand (48%). The states of Orissa and West Bengal, which are not exactly the poster-boy states for for economic growth, also have less percentage of underweight children (34% and 31% respectively).

The economic growth created through corporate appeasement, in states like Gujarat, has also not benefitted the 30% of India’s population, that is still living on less than $1.9 (which comes down to around Rs. 120 a day). And it is definitely not working for the children of these poor families, who suffer from malnourishment.

All available evidence indicate, that this growth model is pushing more and more families to the brink. Under the BJP rule, India is expected to follow in the footsteps of Gujarat. In the last two years, the share of the top 1% in country’s wealth increased from 49% to 58.4% - while the share of bottom 30% became ZERO.

What is happening to the children of the bottom 30% - is obvious from the data. Unless the present corporate growth model is reversed, any hope for a better future for the children will remain bleak.
https://newsclick.in/how-malnutrition-choking-future-generation-country

What sometime puzzles me is that why Indians here care so much about affluent healthy kids in Tibet and Xinjiang, where children receive 15 years free educatioan, food and accomodation,but show little interests for their own children, do they know that children are the future of a nation as people from most countries know?