When Stars visit the starved

D N Singh

It seems in India we are not prepared to depart from the make-believe format for addressing issues of national and international importance. A star-studded team comprising a few young MPs, cine stars and media men, visited Orissa under the banner of `Citizen Alliance`. The effort was made for an on-the-spot assessment of state of child malnutrition in the region and the necessary steps undertaken to bring it under control.

The high profile team met the Chief Minister of Orissa and were apprised of the progress made to bring child malnutrition under control by the concerned official agencies. The next day, the team, along with the District Magistrate of Cuttack, visited some places within a radius of 40 km of the state capital to inspect how the Aanganbadis and schools were feeding the kids. The window-dressing exercise clicked and the delegation came back positive impressed. The visit lasted for less than two hours and that too only in the developed pockets of the state.

The media was made to understand that the programmes were working and the malnutrition rate has dropped by a whopping ten percent in the last few years. The team, in essence, failed to see the menace of malnutrition as alarming; as often reported by the media. However, the team did not even bother to take a look at the ground realities.

The fact remains that, Orissa accounts for 44 percent under weight, 38.3 percent stunted, and 18.5 percent malnourished children below the age of three years. It`s a mirror of the bleak reality of the backward pockets, far from the area the team chose to visit for the assessments. One leading newspaper had hastily dubbed the team`s intent as the `young minds break barriers and brook new ideas`. Well said, but the team of ‘young’ failed to break even out of the confines of the city. .

If the visit was aimed at merely creating awareness, then it was fine. It could have been done through the media in Bhubaneswar. But if it was a serious quest for reality then the endeavour should have been more practical. Again, if it was an attempt to sensitise the media then an argument can be made that there is more need for sensitisation of the government, which has failed to reduce malnourishment statistic from a high of 54 percent in a majority of the state’s districts.

What seems to be a bigger surprise is that the problem of malnutrition is being addressed through a piecemeal approach. In some places it is the Aanganbadis, at others it is the schools, in still others, the health department itself. This opens the floodgates of unaccountability as no Central monitoring can be created for such a diversified pattern.

The team consisting of people like Shyam Benegal and Gauri Kartik from cine world, Congress MP Sachin Pilot, NCP MP Suriya Suel, BJD MP Jai Panda and veteran media personality Neerja Choudhury should have refused to see anything through the eyes of the administration.