Hunger Issues in South Asia
by South Asia is continuing to face critical levels of hunger. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute the region has the highest levels of child malnutrition in the world. Half the world’s undernourished children live in this region. South Asia is now one of the current hotspots for hunger and malnutrition along with Sub-Saharan Africa.
In India and Bangladesh the high rates of child malnutrition are caused by the fact that they are calorie deficient rather than lacking food. This could because of the low status of women in the countries of South Asia and their lack of education. They don’t have any nutritional knowledge which increases the prevalence of underweight children in the region. Inadequate feeding and caring practices for children is also to blame. To improve child nutrition, women’s status needs to be raised. The child mortality rate in India is about 5.6 million child deaths per year, more than half the world’s total.
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Hunger in South Asia is concentrated in its rural areas as 79% of South Asia’s poor live in rural villages. The majority of these rural people earn their living by farming and they often lack access to land and the tools they need to produce food.
As rural villages lack roads, infrastructure and communications, they are isolated from social and economic progress. They have no access to markets or resources for education and health. This isolation also helps to preserve traditional ways of life and practices which include the marginalisation of women and girls.
Urban hunger is closely linked to rural hunger in South Asia. Many rural people migrate to the cities to try and find more opportunities than are in rural areas. In the cities, these people often find they have dismal living standards such as overcrowding, disease, poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water. High levels of inflation mean that a large percentage of people’s incomes has to be spent on housing and food.
Cities such as Calcutta in India and Dhaka in Bangladesh are renowned for overcrowding and difficult living conditions. Dhaka itself is growing by more than 1,300 people a day or almost 500,000 a year.
The next two decades could see severe crop losses due to climate change in some of the poorest regions of the world, including South Asia. Climate impacts on agriculture look particularly terrible.
Potential losses in South Asia are projected 10 percent or more for many regional staples, including millet, maize and rice. For poor farmers on the edge of survival, these losses could really be crushing. Those crop losses could lead to food shortages and a loss of livelihood in South Asia.
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