#1. Here is a news story:
On 12 October, Zulaikha Khatoon, the wife of the only eyewitness in the case of the lynching of Alimuddin Ansari, died in an alleged road accident barely a kilometer away from a Ramgarh district court. Zulaikha was on her way to fetch a photo identification card that would allow her husband, Jaleel Ansari, to appear before the court that day. He was ultimately unable to depose.
Alimuddin was lynched on 29 June. Jaleel was the first person to alert the residents of Manua village, where he and Alimuddin lived, of the murder. According to the Jharkhand police, Alimuddin died after being beaten by the members of the Gau Raksha Dal—a local cow-protection group—and the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). The members of the extremist Hindu groups had attacked Alimuddin in the middle of Bazar Tand, a market in the Ramgarh district of Jharkhand, on the suspicion that he was carrying beef in his tempo.
And thus witnesses in cases involving the RSS, the BJP and its feeder groups keep dying. All purely coincidental.
#2. The Global Hunger Index says there is good news. In developed countries the index, which measures along the four key indicators — undernourishment, child mortality, child wasting and child stunting — has fallen by more than 25%. Also:
The level of hunger in developing countries decreased by 27 percent since 2000. During the same period, GHI scores of 14 countries, including Senegal, Azerbaijan, Peru, Panama, Brazil and China improved by 50 percent or more. Angola, Ethiopia and Rwanda—each experienced violent conflict in recent decades—were among 72 countries which improved their GHI scores between 25 and 49.9 percent..
Unfortunately, the news for India is nowhere near as good. One in every five children in India is wasted, says the report, which shows India slipping precipitously to number 100 out of 119 countries surveyed. In Asia, only Pakistan and Afghanistan rank below us. (The decline is even more alarming when you consider that India was ranked 54th in 2014 — in other words, as developed and developing nations are rapidly improving their ability to take care of their children, India — which aspires to the status of global powerhouse — is declining. Alarmingly).
I wonder if someone saw this coming? On September 20, Minister for Women and Child Empowerment Maneka Gandhi made an announcement:
The government will soon issue guidelines on supplementary nutrition to tackle malnutrition among children, women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi said.
The new guidelines will supersede all existing ones, Gandhi said at the national conference “Mission Mode to address Under-Nutrition” on Tuesday.
“After the resounding success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao programme, the women and child development ministry is now targeting malnutrition. For this, there is an urgent need to improve the quality of supplementary nutrition and also make the delivery system efficient,” said Gandhi.
It is noteworthy that a government that has a scheme for every occasion has not, till date, felt the need to even announce a scheme to tackle malnutrition. This, despite the fact that India’s ranking has steadily slipped since 2014; the fact that last year, India was ranked as low as 97 on this index.
Ironically, not so long ago, this happened:
For more than 40 years, governments have intervened with food transfers in pre-school Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) centres. These infant food transfers were mandated as legal rights first by the Supreme Court and then by the National Food Security Act 2013.
However a recent decision of the Centre threatens to inflict a body blow to this nutritional lifeline to India’s poorest children. This is by substituting these with either cash or packaged food. It is argued that these would eliminate inefficiencies, leakages and corruption.
Couple that story with this one about Niti Aayog’s recently constituted ‘Working Group on Nutrition‘:
Many members of the Niti Aayog’s newly constituted Working Group on Nutrition have significant conflicts of interests. Several are representatives of international agencies, which have close ties to multinational food companies including Nestle, Hindustan Unilever, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Mars and Ajinomoto, and which have been pushing packaged therapeutic food to address malnutrition. The government has repeatedly clarified that packaged energy dense food is against India’s policy on malnutrition redressal. Niti Aayog’s own National Nutrition Strategy(NNS) states that policy development and programme implementation should be kept clear of conflicts of interest.
But the politics and point-scoring apart, why does this not qualify as a national emergency to be tackled with every resource at our disposal? We keep beating the drum about our demographic dividend at every opportunity; we claim that this dividend is what will catapult us ahead of China as its population ages and ours skews increasingly younger. That “dividend” is our children — of what use are the numbers, if these children are growing up without access to food, to healthcare, to basic education and finally, to gainful employment?
Additional reading: An IndiaSpend deep-dive into the numbers behind child stunting as a result of malnutrition, broken down state-wise.
#3. The civil aviation sector has informed the Finance Ministry that it will take a Rs 5700 crore bath as a result of GST, and become globally uncompetitive.
#4. The Election Commission has announced dates for assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh. For Gujarat, not so much — and this has led to a storm of criticism. The main point of the argument is that the announcement has been deliberately delayed to give Gujarat more time outside the shadow of the model code of conduct, which among other things prohibits the announcement of sops once poll dates are set. On each of his visits to Gujarat thus far, the PM has announced various benefits; he is expected in Gujarat again on Monday, and there is considerable anticipation that this latest visit will result in more sops.
While on which, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani just yesterday announced the setting up of 16 new industrial estates across the state that could potentially create one lakh new jobs. All of this raises one question in my mind: Why does it take the imminence of an election for a government to announce people-friendly policies? Is the raison d’etre of a government only to win elections? (This question is underlined by the fact that historically, the majority of such grandiose announcements on election eve are promptly forgotten once the results are in. Does anyone remember the Lucknow-Varanasi bullet train, spoken of in headlines an inch deep just ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections, to cite one example?)
#5. In Rajasthan, a Manganiyar folk singer was beaten to death after a ‘faith healer’ claimed the musician’s performance wasn’t good enough to put him into a trance during a temple ritual. Following the killing, an estimated 400 Muslims have fled the region. Seriously, which fucking century are we living in, again?
#6. PSA: Medianama has a comprehensive report on the subject of digital payments in the post-demonetization era. It is free, it is here, and it is on top of my reading list for tonight.
I’ll likely be off the map, unless something major breaks, till Sunday evening. Be well, all.
