Malnutrition: The Byproduct of Poverty

India as a nation is unarguably one of the largest democracies in the world, a statement that flawlessly attains its support from the country globally being the third largest economy while being second in terms of population size and growth. The one understanding all this knowledge provides us with is the associable proclamation that India is a nation that comes with limitless potential in terms of what it can achieve and the phenomenal benchmarks it can set throughout its progressive future. However, the idea of any entity having potential is a concept that comes with its own set of supplemental consequences. Its rudimentarily the ironic occurrence that by merely being capable and having the capacity to achieve something complex and noteworthy, you will witness yourself being at the receiving end of adversities that are rich in diversity and uniqueness. Such is the case with India, a country so overwhelmed with its own potential that it suffers from the edge of the burden of inevitable consequences it remains so disastrously plagued by, may the issues be social, economic, or political in nature. What is even more ironic is the universal principle of a highly able-bodied entity losing sight of the very fundamental aspects of its existence because of the unsustainable heights it finds itself chasing. For the case of India, those fundamental issues are none other than the problems of widespread malnutrition and the severity of the existence of child labour, both of which still going strong even at this modern day and age.

The International Labour Organization, a subsidiary of the United Nations, child labour is defined as being forced to engage in involuntary work at a very young age at the cost of the child’s dignity, physical and mental health, and their right to receiving appropriate education. For a massively overpopulated country like India, the fact should come with little surprise that the country also houses the largest population of children in the world. The Indian society is one that remains rigorously divided by class, race, ethnicity, and other age-old sociological constructs. These persisting societal divisions evidently decide whether or not a child born in this nation would have access to basic human rights and necessities, such as access to education, food, water, sanitation, and the ability to choose their own path when old enough to do so. Many are fortunate enough to be born in favourable categories that ensure the provision of these rights, but for the majority of children, their fate chooses differently, and that circumstance puts them in a position of being conditioned and forced to work jobs that deprive them of the adequate livelihoods they fundamentally deserve. It is far too common for one to observe children doing odd chores all across the busy streets of the country. They work at shops, roadside food joints, and even at the industrial sector that involves large-scale construction sites and factories at an incredibly young age. It is widely deemed and accepted that children above the age of 14 can engage in voluntary work if they should choose to do so. Any child falling below that age inadvertently stands at the risk of losing the opportunity of having a relatively normal childhood. You don’t shove axes on the hands of toddlers and ask them to chop wood. At the very least, we should treat children under the age of 14 no differently.

There are a wide variety of underlining causes that provoke the occurrence of the issue of child labour in a country. in the context of India, widespread poverty and unemployment can be deemed as the leading causalities. For example, at least a third of the Indian population lives under the poverty line, affecting nearly half a billion people in the country. When these families remain plagued with the inability to provide for their children’s education, they get the young boys and girls to start working for bare minimum wages as a means of acquiring additional income. Such families remain financially constrained to such horrible degrees that they view basic necessities such as education as complex privileges. Having flawed ideological and philosophical beliefs are also contributors to the problem. Parents of the victims view education as a pointless endeavor and a waste of personal resources, so they refuse to send their children to schools even while possessing the financial capacity to do so. They give more emphasis to engaging in physical labour for the sake of acquiring additional financial support. This typology of thinking is further supported by the high corporate demand for cheap labour. Capitalistic greed feeds into companies the mindset of chasing for the acquisition of a children-dominated workforce in order to achieve their cost-cutting objectives. These factors do nothing but introduce a long list of senseless adversities to the children’s lives. to name a few, they face emotional neglect, working life-threatening jobs, social isolation, and a diverse number of psychological consequences. In addition to that, girls face discrimination at work along with enduring trauma from sexual and physical abuse.

Malnutrition, a phenomenon the World Health Organization describes as the presence of deficiencies, imbalances, or excessive consumption in terms of a person’s energy and nutrition intake to support their physiology. The terminology includes undernutrition, inadequate supplementation of essential vitamins and minerals, and obesity resulting from dietary imbalances. Unfortunately, this methodology can be used to effectively describe the situation in India where starvation and malnutrition remains all too common even today, especially for children. For example, based on the nationwide data collected by the Food and Nutrition security analysis that was conducted in 2019, it was revealed that even after all the efforts that have been taken so far to amend the problem, malnutrition-related adversities not only remaincommon, but also relatively undaunted. Because of the sheer scale of the poverty problem in the country, an extremely high portion of the population lacks the resources to acquire enough food to sustain a decent quality of life. This contributively subjects almost all children born into the victimized families to be under a constant threat of suffering from malnutrition resulting from the lack of food. The mere presence of this issue is degrading not just in an interpersonal level, but also for the nation as a whole. Productive and economic efficiency cannot be appropriately achieved if a third of the national population doesn’t even have enough to sustain themselves. Under such dire circumstances, expecting them to contribute to the economic growth and well-being of the country is unsubstantiated and unjust to say the least. The Indian government seems to understand that fact, which is why it has assertively launched and invested in several noteworthy schemes to counter the developmental problem, such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme, the National Nutrition Policy, the provision of Mid-day Meals, and several others. It is clear that the government is trying to play its part in averting the crises. However, individualistic contributions from us all, even if they are miniscule, could very much mean the difference between life and death for entire families who are actively struggling to survive out there. What we do in the days ahead will ultimately define our future and as well as the kind of a society we collectively seek to be.

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