Child malnutrition hasn’t really improved in Sri Lanka (recently), according to the IPS
1 out of 5 Sri Lankan children are underweight. In the estate sector (tea plantations) it’s 1 in 3. I find this shocking, but that’s what the Institute for Policy Studies has found in 2006 data. Despite Sri Lanka’s decent healthcare and education (by Asian/African standards), persistent inequality means that kids and mothers are still going hungry.
Child malnutrition by income
The differences are clearly demarcated by class. Almost 30% of the poorest babies are born underweight compared to about 7% of the wealthiest. When I’ve worked in offices, I’ve noticed that cleaning staff were often much shorter. This is an elevator observation, but I’ve seen elsewhere as well. Thing is that bad nutrition stunts physical growth, impairs the brain, makes it harder to get an education and decent job, which reinforces the cycle.
State Of The Estates
Child malnutrition in the estates
The issue is the worst in the estate sector, or tea plantations. The estates, as lovely as they sound, were originally run by slave/indentured labor imported from India by the British. They were treated like shit, many deported by the Sri Lankan government, and their lot hasn’t much improved. Feudal leaders like current MP Thondaman have sat in every government since creation, but the current avatar is more known for partying and spending around Colombo than much else. The Economist cites that there are 1.6 million Indian Tamils (mostly in the estates) and MP Prabha Ganesan has repeated this figure, controversially. That would mean more Indian Tamils than Jaffna, Colombo, Eastern Tamils, which I don’t think is true, but anyways.
The estate sector still has the lowest standards of living in the country. In terms of the Millenium Development Goals, remove the estates and Sri Lanka suddenly passes everything. Look at just the estates and we look sub-Saharan.
In the estate sector, about 1 in 3 under-five year old children are underweight, and 40% of babies have low birth weight (see Figure 4). A household’s socio-economic status is significantly lower in the estate sector than in the urban and rural sectors. In the estate sector, almost 63% of households fall into the poorest category while in the urban and rural sectors this is 8% and 19%, respectively. In the estate sector, low levels of education, especially among females, are a major cause of poor nutritional status, where nearly half of all women of reproductive age are educated below primary level.(IPS)
Unhealthy Mothers
I also found this shocking:
1 in 6 reproductive age (15-49 year olds) women are malnourished in Sri Lanka. Other than this direct impact, mother’s education has an indirect impact on childhood malnutrition.
Sri Lankan women seem to veer between too skinny and too fat with only a brief window of, well, attractiveness. It’s still surprising to hear that about 17% of adult women are malnourished.
I’d venture that this is not a problem of food supply or even income per se, but a confluence of socio-economic factors, including education. The estates are a particularly bad loop – the work has never paid well and many young people simply aren’t doing it. Young women go into Colombo to work as maids or nannies and return to men and an economy that can’t really support them or their kids. Or as the IPS puts it “To break the vicious cycle of malnutrition in the country, Sri Lanka needs to go beyond health and look closer at the deep-rooted socio-economic factors which are transmitted from generation to generation in lower socio-economic groups.”
In India, 40% of children are malnourished (India’s Food Crisis – Infographic). Sri Lanka’s 20% is half that, but still 20% too many. And much more than I’d thought. I recommend reading the IPS blog post in full. While more Sri Lankan kids than I thought are going hungry, it’s at least food for thought.
21% of Sri Lankan kids are malnourished !!
So, why the huge amount of money, 320 billion are spent on military instead of feeding the starving Sri Lankan kids? Does Rajapaksa Regime have a heart?
Sigh. As mentioned, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Sri Lanka has to maintain security for anything to happen, though the budget could of course be less.
You cannot, however, simply say we have this much money and buy food for kids. The state has to invest in education, especially for women, and the wide range of things you need to make socio-economic growth possible.
Do I think the government should be spending more on health and education? Yes. Do I think it’s as simple as plugging this into war politics and blaming the Rajapaksas? No.
Rajapaksa like a bull in China shop. He is always over doing it..overkill, overspent. Fonseka was surrounded by 3 rings of guards when he left the Law Court and his prison was surrounded by numerous prison guards and Air Force military personal. Always a bit too much, always forceful, harassment, threats… In war times such methods worked but in peace times they will not. Rajapaksa is not capable to govern Sri Lanka in peaceful times
It is very pointed that there has been no improvement in the malnutrition level of kids in the poorest sector between 2000 and 2006. It would be nice to know how quickly we can get an update to 2011. If the change is minimal while we have raced to mid level countries we have certainly failed the marginalized communities.
So much for any talk of spreading the wealth!
I wonder what these stats would look like when broken down within SL. I suspect the Tamil areas are much more highly affected, skewing the statistics.
http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=3611
‘”Over 60 percent of households in the Northern Province are food-insecure, and lack the income generation and food-production capacity to secure basic needs.”
The WFP also found that half the households in the Northern Province live on less than $1 a day, despite the fact that the World Bank reclassified Sri Lanka as a middle-income country in 2010.’
On the note of military spending, there is a valid point to be made when the army is expanding and military spending icncreasing, despite the war ending 2 years ago. No-one is saying abolish the army, just spend the money on something else. Why spend the money on an ethnically pure army that further serves to militarise the whole country, especially the North-East? The answer probably lies in the question.
Buy buriyani not bombs
@Thusi – as the report says, the biggest problem is in the Estate Sector, among Indian Tamils.
This is 2006 data, during LTTE occupation. Jaffna does have the lowest income in a recent HIES 2009/10 survey. Vavuniya is above average. Living standards under the LTTE were pretty shit and it’s take a while to emerge.
That said, the real problem is in the estate sector, as this is linked to education and other factors as well as income. So yes, Tamils are affected, but not Tamils who would benefit from a separate state or who were involved in the war. It’s the plantation workers, brought down by the British and represented by no one.
I’m sure you’re right about socio-economic factors being more to blame than poor food supply.
Estate workers are ignored by all, the government, their employers and their own MPs and looked down upon by other ethnic groups. On top of poverty the children suffer from neglect and abuse by poorly educated/alcoholic adults.
Yup they were pretty crap under the LTTE, mostly due to the huge embargo placed on those areas by the GoSL. Not only did that lead to soaring prices of almost everything, but there was also the torn up PTOMS and restrictions on NGOs.
No-one’s denying that the estate Tamils have got it bad though.
Like I said, it would be interesting to see how the data is when spread demographically. Rather than through definitions of “urban” and “rural”, which may cause some distortion. After all, Killinochi may be described as urban but would’ve gone through massive destruction during the war.
Also, a more detailed review of the report actually finds that “Northern Province had to be excluded from the survey due to the unsettled conditions prevailed in the province at the time of the survey.”
there are quite a few arguments you could have used:
1. infrastructure–how long does food take to get from producer to consumer? Is it optimal?
2. time-preferences of parents: are they spending marginal rupees on entertainment/religious observations/drugs/alcohol (not making a value judgement for anything but bannerjee and duflo found parents in north india doing just that)
3. the effects of prior subsidies on potential producers of food/SL being a net food importer for so long.
Still, Patrick became the first woman in history to lead laps in the 500 when she passed Michael Waltrip on a restart on Lap 90. It is when the neck is violently jerked, as in when someone is rear ended in a car accident. He made his Ranji debut last season and was also part of the preliminary Kolkata Knight Riders squad..
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