After a decade of galloping economic growth, India’s child malnutrition rates are worse than in many sub-Saharan countries. A staggering 42.5 per cent of the country’s children under the age of five are underweight. Malnutrition makes children prone to illness, and stunts physical and mental development.
During my time in India in March, I spent a few days learning about this crisis from staff at the NGO Child in Need Institute. I also spent a day photographing at a clinic for the under-fives., where mothers take their children to be weighed, immunised and checked by doctors. They are also given advice on nutrition, family planning and sexual health.

“Malnutrition is a social problem, not a health problem” – CINI paediatrician, Dr Subho Pal, told me as we walked around the centre. “This is a cyclical problem that starts with early marriage. Girls are often uneducated and don’t know how to look after their children properly.
“Most are introducing artificial milk because they fear their milk is not enough for their babies. But these women are poor. 40 rupees buys enough milk for just four or five days so they dilute it more and more.”

Dr Pal believes the problem of child malnutrition is being ignored by politicians because it doesn’t fit their preferred image of a thrusting new India. In the worst cases, CINI admits children to its emergency ward for up to a month to ensure the reach a healthy weight. Mothers are taught how to prepare cheap, nutritious food. He would like to see wards like this built in public hospitals across the country.
He said: “The fact is that groups like ours are running a parallel health system. The government should be fulfilling this role. No one will admit these children to hospital because they aren’t sick – they are malnourished. But if India is become a truly developed nation we must have equality in health.”