by Kyle Farquharson and Golnaz Fakhari
To complement the article entitled “India’s Malnutrition Dilemma”, by David Rieff, which appears in the online edition of The New York Times Magazine on Oct. 8, 2009, we have included a map and three data sets that illustrate the scale of the hunger crisis in India, and compare the issue of malnutrition in that country to a similar problem in China. Rieff draws the same comparison in his article.
India State Hunger Index
Data from India’s State Hunger Index, plotted as a bar graph on Many Eyes, underscore the severity of the predicament at the state level.
The Index examines three factors among children surveyed: 1) the prevalence of calorie undernourishment; 2) the proportion of underweight among children under age five; and 3) the mortality rate (deaths per 100) of children below five. These data sets combine to generate an Index Rank. As you will notice, of the 17 states surveyed in compiling information for the Index, Madhya Pradesh, near the geographic centre of the subcontinent, appears to be most severely afflicted by hunger.
We have also presented the ISHI figures in map form, below.
China’s Per-Capita GDP and Food Production
Like its comparably populous neighbour to the southwest, China has experienced rapid economic growth over the last two decades. However, the Chinese have largely managed to overcome the significant challenge of malnourishment, while India continues to struggle in that regard.
As you will note, while per-capita GDP in China has increased at a bullish pace, a rise in food production has been almost commensurate with the country’s economic growth, as the slope of both bar graphs is relentless.
India’s Per-Capita GDP and Food Production
This graph, whose focus is India, tells a different story. While food production and per-capita GDP have grown commensurately and consistently in China since 1990, India has experienced several instances of regression in its food supply over the same period. In the decade prior to the 21st century, the ability of the South Asian nation to nourish itself grew quite robustly, like its economy. However, from 1999 to 2000, food production decreased. And despite substantial gains on the nutrition front the following year, 2002 saw another substantial decline. Since the turn of the 21st century, nutrition in India has undergone a bumpy and inconstant climb, in keeping with the situation Rieff describes in his feature story. As Rieff contends, India has managed to virtually eradicate famine, but struggles to deal with endemic malnutrition, possibly because the former represents a more urgent conundrum than the latter.