Anuradha Rajivan
Regional Coordinator, Human Development Reports Unit, UNDP RCC

The Context: Nutrition Concerns in Asia

The problem of malnutrition is wider-ranging and more persistent than that of income poverty in Asia. While Asia’s growth story of steadily declining income poverty in most countries, is enviable, hunger and malnutrition have proved to be resistant to change.  The share of children in the region under five moderately or severely underweight is higher than the share of population living under the poverty line of a dollar a day (Figure 1).  If micronutrient deficiencies, namely anaemia among women and adolescent girls, and other forms of adult malnutrition are added, the proportion of population malnourished exceeds 50 percent. Malnutrition at both ends needs attention – under-nutrition due to a shortage of calories and malnutrition due to changing lifestyles.

Progress can be seen in East Asia and the Pacific, where the numbers have more than halved in recent decades, yet shares across and within countries demonstrate wide nutritional inequalities (Figure 1). In South Asia, where almost half the children continue to be undernourished, the figures are comparable to or even worse than some of the poorest countries in the world: Burkina Faso (38 percent), Sierra Leone (27 percent). Malnourished children remain a cause of continuing concern as they are an indicator of the population condition as a whole. 

Malnutrition is an ‘invisible emergency’ often bypassed by the media and policy-makers focused on headline grabbing communicable diseases and deaths. With widespread malnutrition, small body sizes, as a result of growth faltering, appear ‘normal’, becoming invisible to an untrained observer.

Under these conditions, the use of grain for biofuels rather than food is also a source of growing debate. Agricultural subsidies that not only inhibit fair trade but also act as disincentives to farmers from developing countries are increasingly controversial. Countries can become vulnerable to social unrest in circumstances of extreme stress on the food front. Concerns about food security and rising food prices are being voiced nationally and internationally. Governments around the world have used different methods to create food security - food production, buffer stocks of grain, dual pricing with price stabilisation for farmers and consumers, public distribution networks, employment schemes, and direct nutrition investments. In this feature, we focus on direct nutrition investments through school and pre-school feeding schemes that are often resisted by governments but most popular with the poor. Besides governments, donors also look upon these investments unfavourably. So, if you feel that these investments are a waste of time and resources, you are not alone! In the next sections of this paper, we invite readers to reflect on evidence presented for a change in this position.

For development programming, important policy questions around direct food interventions are on effectiveness, potential, limitations and examples of good practice. Problem areas to be considered are limited political will, inadequate resources, and governance gaps.

Among developing countries, the Indian case has relevance for other countries as direct food interventions have been used as a policy instrument with some success. With a population of 1.1 billion, India is akin to 25 developing countries, displaying extreme contrasts. The case demonstrates that overall growth, including income poverty reduction, may not automatically translate into a reduction of malnutrition. While GDP growth rates have been high (9 percent in 2006) and national poverty share has declined, malnutrition is at least twice as much as the incidence of poverty.