There are few more glaring holes in the Indian development story than child health and nutrition.
India has one of the highest rates of child stunting in the world: more than a third of its children under five years are short enough for their age to be counted as “stunted” under the World Health Organisation’s guidelines. This is more than the stunting rate in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world.
The World Health Organisation blames stunting on poor nutrition as well as repeated infection. It also warns that a stunted child suffers the consequences all their life, experiencing “poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages, [and] lost productivity”.
That India performs much worse on stunting than countries poorer than it, has long been a paradox. To explain this, researchers have theorised that it has to do with unhygienic conditions found in India due to the prevalence of open defecation as well as the fact that daughters…