In terms of vital statistics such as life expectancy at birth, infant mortality and maternal mortality, India fares better than all except one or two of the SSA countries with comparable or lower per capita incomes. So it is puzzling that, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics, it suffers from higher proportion of underweight children than every one of the 48 SSA countries and higher rate of stunting than all but seven of them. Such countries as the Central African Republic, Chad and Lesotho, which have life expectancy at birth of just 48 years compared with India's 65, have lower rates of stunting and underweight.
If you still do not believe the absurdity of these malnutrition numbers, compare Kerala and Senegal. Kerala exhibits vital statistics edging towards those in the developed countries: life expec-tancy of 74 years, infant mortality rate of 12 per 1,000 live births and maternal mortality rate of 95 per 1,00,000 live births. The corresponding figures for Senegal are far worse at 62, 51 and 410, respectively. But nutrition statistics say that Kerala has 25% stunted children compared to 20% of Senegal and 23% underweight children relative to 14.5% of the latter. In Punjab, which has a life expec-tancy of 70 years and is the breadbasket and milk dairy of India, 37% of children are stunted and 25% underweight.