Maha neglect

Worrying levels of child malnutrition in Maharashtra has HC worried. What about govt?

Bombay HC has upbraided state govt for taking public health – in this case child malnutrition – “extremely casually”. HC was responding to public interest litigations highlighting the large number of children dying from malnutrition – 65 infants in Melghat in the last six months. To begin with, fact that PILs must be filed in India’s financial capital to simply get govt to pay attention to a public health crisis shows something is very broken. But will HC’s despair bother govt? HC has repeatedly responded to PILs on the issue of malnutrition in the state – since 2006 it said – even asking for a detailed report on the dire situation in 2023.

Not that Maharashtra govt doesn’t know – 40% of its children aged 0-5 are stunted, worse than Rajasthan’s 36%, closer to Bihar’s 42%, as shared in a Rajya Sabha answer. Earlier this year, an Indian Institute of Population Sciences survey revealed that 26% of kids were wasted – dangerously thin for their height due to rapid weight loss or inability to gain weight – and 35% underweight. The Global Nutrition Report 2020 noted around 38% of children (under 5) in India are stunted, 21% wasted and 35% underweight.

In July, Maharashtra’s women & child development minister in a written reply in assembly noted that the state had recorded more than 1.8L malnourished children statewide. This included 30,800 with ‘severe acute malnutrition’ and over 1.5L with moderate acute malnutrition, per Poshan Tracker data for Feb 2025. There are 48.1L children registered in the state. There’s no dearth of data. Surely the solution doesn’t need rocket science.

This is an indictment of successive govts and politicians in Maharashtra who have prioritised all manner of political circuses to assume or retain office, completely abrogating basic governance. Without a grievous gap in governance, how can one explain the fact that Mumbai suburban region alone accounts for almost 3,000 ‘severe acute’ malnourished children and 13,457 show ‘moderate acute malnutrition’, of 2.9L registered? Urban malnutrition is spiking. The impact of growing urban poverty, poor nutrition, slum conditions and no access to clean water is telling on Mumbai’s children. With 90 billionaires, the megacity ranks fifth on 2025’s global list of billionaire-heavy cities. Maharashtra has a GSDP of ₹45L cr. But to what end such riches when every third child aged under 5 is malnurished?

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