VEDANTA KHUSHI: TIMES OF INDIA ARTICLE: HUNGRY FOR VOTES, BUT NO NETA TO FIX MALNUTRITION PROBLEM
Rema Nagarajan
15th April 2014
Politicians Call It A ‘Shame’, But Do Little To Cure Ills That Plague System
In January 2012, PM Manmohan Singh declared half of India’s children were malnourished and that was a national shame. Yet since then, not a single comprehensive national survey was conducted to determine the acuteness of the problem or measure progress, if any, of steps initiated to address malnutrition. Worse, the issue figures in a token manner in the election discourse of political parties and candidates.
The 2005-06 National Family Health Survey was the last one conducted and it found 48% of children suffered chronic malnourishment — of them, 20% acute malnourishment. The survey concluded that over half the women were anaemic and 36% underweight. The Global Hunger Index, released in October 2013, placed India among a group of countries with ‘alarming’ levels of hunger, figuring at the bottom of the heap, below China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and several in sub-Saharan Africa.
Key interventions to boost nutrition levels include the targeted public distribution system (TPDS), Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the school midday meal scheme (MDMS).
Despite increased food production and procurement for TDPS, food insecurity persists and is a chronic problem linked to poor delivery. The large number of ineligible or fake ration cards issued — a serious problem in some states, usually those that need TPDS the most — has caused huge leakages. The TPDS has glaring exclusion errors. About 20% of the estimated 90 crore eligible beneficiaries are denied subsidized grain as they have no ration card, while 20% of the not-poor do. TPDS remains restricted to wheat and rice that would alleviate hunger, but not address malnutrition. No recommendation to include pulses, oil and nutritious millets has been implemented. Even the food security Act — that UPA counts among its mega achievements — focuses on rice and wheat. Had the Act included higher procurement of millets, pulses, fruits and vegetables, it would have incentivised production of these, instead of just rice and wheat that are water-intensive crops.
ICDS was meant to counter malnutrition in children between 0 and 6 years and pregnant women. Government allocation, including states’ share, increased from over Rs 5,200 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 13,700 crore in 2013-14 and the number of anganwadi centres (AWCs) has increased from 10.1 lakh to 13.1 lakh in 2012-13.
Though almost 90% anganwadis are operational, the ICDS scheme reaches about 47% of eligible children, reported a CAG audit. Coverage in states varies from about 75% in Odisha to 18% in Bihar. Most AWCs lack infrastructure. In 2011-12, only 57% had drinking water on the premises, 47% had toilets and only 25% had a kitchen.
ICDS is meant to provide supplementary nutrition 300 days a year, or 25 days a month. But the number of days the programme worked ranged from 180-250, a CAG audit found. The audit revealed irregularities such as insufficient monitoring, suspected misappropriation of supplies, badly-trained anganwadi workers and shortfall in expenditure on supplementary nutrition, which meant lower per beneficiary expenditure. For a flagship programme that addresses a “national shame” the ICDS programme leaves much to be desired.
Allocation for the midday meal scheme is up from Rs 6,700 cr to over Rs 10,300 cr between 2007-08 and 2011-12. But many states aren’t meeting yearly targets of number of meals served. The scheme’s plagued by reports of children falling ill from eating poor quality or spoiled food. Many states are yet to achieve standards set to run it: constructing a kitchen shed, timely lifting of grains, proper food storage. Women employed as midday meal cooks remain underpaid.
While proportion of malnourished children has fallen since 2005-06, not only has the decline been slow, from 46% malnourished to about 33% by 2013, it’s been uneven with a few states and districts getting worse. But with poor tracking of the schemes’ implementation, or of the population’s nutritional status, no one seems sure if the situation has become any better or worse. And that’s the national shame.
HUNGER POLITICS | Aug 2012 | Modi quoted in interview blaming malnutrition in Gujarat on its “by and large vegetarian diet”. Because it’s a middle-class state, Gujarat is “more beauty conscious than health conscious”
Media reports laid bare the bluff: His contentions didn’t square with data whichever way it was spliced. Haryana, even more vegetarian than Gujarat, has better nutritional figures
NSSO data (2009-2010) showed poverty behind state’s poor nutritional indices .
NSSO data (2009-2010) showed poverty behind state’s poor nutritional indices .
SERVED DEATH | Scams plague the mid-day meal scheme. Last July 27 village children died in Bihar’s Chapra after having the meal. Nitish Kumar cried conspiracy – that they were poisoned. Fact was, there was no monitoring, and the principal ran a racket, serving kids substandard fare.
HINDUSTAN ZINC WINS TOP 100 CISO-2014 AWARD
'Hindustan Zinc' has been
honored with Top 100 CISO-2014 Award for using information security technology
in innovative way.
The ‘Top 100 CISO Award', the
first of its kind award felicitates the finest CISO's who are using information
security technology in innovative ways to secure their business and mission
critical information in the most effective manner and deliver business value,
by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling
growth or improving relationships with customers. These prestigious awards are for the few who makes the biggest impact in the industry. These awards are given in the same format at India, America, Europe and Asia Pacific regions.
The awards were declared and
given away by Don Lee, Managing Director n Runs, Germany in a glittering
award ceremony held at Hotel Radisson Blu at Agra on 5th
April, 2014.
Mr. P K Nijhawan, VP-IT received this award on behalf of Hindustan Zinc.
Mr. P K Nijhawan, VP-IT received this award on behalf of Hindustan Zinc.
Before this, HZL is recipient of
"SAP ACE Award 2011" for “Best run IT Organization" in
November, 2011, “NASSCOM IT User Award 2012” in March, 2012, "CIO100
Award 2012" and "CIO100 Award 2013".
360 DEGREE APPROACH IN COMMUNITY SERVICE
Hindustan
Zinc takes the lead
Responsible corporates, who have established
their businesses in rural areas, engage with local community to understand
their needs and requirements. Assessment studies are carried out in association
with villagers and Sarpanchs and accordingly community service plans are drawn.
Few corporates want to connect through specific programs and few go by the
company policies and visions.
Responsible corporates, who have established
their businesses in rural areas, engage with local community to understand
their needs and requirements. Assessment studies are carried out in association
with villagers and Sarpanchs and accordingly community service plans are drawn.
Few corporates want to connect through specific programs and few go by the
company policies and visions.
But there are few, who adopt a 360 degree
approach while connecting with the local community. Hindustan Zinc, a Vedanta group company in
Zinc, Lead, Silver and Green Power business is one amongst the few such
corporates, and in fact has taken a decisive lead from others.
Hindustan Zinc, driven through the vision of
Vedanta's group Chairman, Mr. Anil Agarwal, in about a decade of sustainable
interventions, has been able to connect and build a 360 degree community
development programs.
The intervention begins with the child which
is about 0-6 years through engagement in Vedanta Child Care Centres. These
Centres are located in every village that is connected with the business
locations. These Vedanta Child Care Centres have been developed in such a way
that besides nutritious food, children are also given books, toys, and taught
through play-way method. There are designated supervisors who have been kept to
ensure smooth running of these centres.
Regular medical check-up of these children, immunization, and a record
is kept towards their height, weight and other growth. Hindustan Zinc in Rajasthan has such 1500
child care centres and 18 Vedanta "Khushi" centres.
Once the child attains the age of 6 and is
ready to take up formal education, he/she is enrolled in formal government
schools. The government has provision for providing free books and other
education material to these children.
Here in formal schools, children are provided daily hot mid-day meal by
the company. Thus company's intervention
takes care of the health of these children.
Besides, recently Hindustan Zinc has decided to completely renovate
about 112 schools falling in the villages which are near the business
locations, for their total repairs of structure, change of table and chairs,
and providing other teaching aids and materials.
Once
these children complete their formal education and want to learn vocational
traits, Hindustan Zinc has made provision for providing free training to the
youth under its youth training program in association with credible NGOs. There
has been a large participation of girls and boys in these training programs and
they are also placed accordingly.
Currently, 500 youths are being trained in different vocations.
Important
parts of the family are the adults – the father, mother or elderly people. To
engage females of the house, Hindustan Zinc has developed the self-help-groups
program, which encourages 10-15 women of similar minds to form a group and the
company provides them training in the areas they can be successful. Though most of the women prefer training in
sewing and stitching, some also prefer to adopt other different trainings where
they develop house-hold products. The company’s engagement starts from the
level of reaching out to individual houses and convincing them for adopting
self-help-groups. Once the SHG is formed and the training is completed, these
women are linked with markets and banks for the needful selling of products and
acquiring loans from the banks, respectively.
This initiative has significantly improved the economic condition of
their houses and also brought them awareness about sanitation, education,
self-dignity, water & electricity conservation, etc. Hindustan Zinc is
running about 500 such self-help-groups reaching out to over 6000 rural women.
Parellelly,
the male members who are engaged in agriculture are provided training in
multi-cropping, seed selection, water harvesting, collective farming, cattle
protection and their immunization and different methods towards increasing the agriculture
production. These farmers are also linked
with markets and banks for facilitating better returns and arrangements of
loans, respectively.
Besides,
taking forward the above 360 degree approach, where the company engages with
the youngest and the eldest member of a village family, due care is also taken
towards upliftment of infrastructure in the villages.
Few
areas that company has prominently worked include providing drinking water
through installation of RO Plants and constructing water tanks, building
community halls and libraries for the students, construction of connecting
roads and small bridges, construction of schools, sports stadiums, tree
plantation, to name a few.
Currently,
Hindustan Zinc is engaged in construction of 30,000 house-hold toilets in
villages for the BPL families in Rajasthan, in the districts of Chittorgarh,
Udaipur and Bhilwara.
The
company also provides employment opportunities to the youths, particularly the
unskilled. As per the Hindustan Zinc engagement policy with villagers, there is
a provision of 100% hiring from nearby villages for the requirement of
unskilled labour.
As
most of the mines and smelters are located in village areas, away from the
city, it becomes important to develop the community residing nearby in such 360
degree approach. At the end of the day, the entire family should benefit and
the socio-economic condition of these families should improve with advent of
the industries.
Hindustan
Zinc has been engaging with about 500,000 people residing in about 200 villages
in Rajasthan.
The
vision is only one, as the company grows, the community residing nearby should
also improve their socio-economic condition and sustainable livelihood.
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