Fwd: India, Poverty and The Economist (magazine)

---------- Forwarded
From: Atanu Dey
Date: Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 10:12 AM
Subject: India, Poverty and The Economist (magazine)
To:

A couple of weeks ago, Vivek and I had attended a meet at Vijay Rajvaidya's home (CEO of India Currents). The editor of India Currents asked me to write a piece for them. I said OK. Here it is.

http://bit.ly/1SFvAAS

India, Poverty and The Economist

Atanu Dey • Published on August 3, 2015

To most unbiased observers, particularly those who have an interest in India's progress, most report cards on the Indian economy make for distressing reading. India has failed to prosper even though it has been free of colonial rule for nearly 70 years. A recent featured piece in The Economist of July 4, 2015—"Of Secrecy and Stunting"—is no exception. It reports on widespread malnutrition in India with particular emphasis on childhood malnutrition. While the trend is positive, the situation is still dire: African countries' rate of underweight children is only 21%, compared to India's 30%.

"A new study—conducted by the government and the UN agency for children, UNICEF—offers evidence of a steady and widespread fall in malnutrition. But the picture is still grim. Judged by measures such as the prevalence of "stunting" (when children are unusually short for their age) and "wasting" (when they weigh too little for their height), India is still vastly hungrier than Africa."

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