Malnutrition isn’t a rural worry. Worse, in Mumbai, it’s not the lack of food but craving for junk that’s proving fatal.
Sammrudhi Pawar is playing with her two-anda-half-year-old brother Siddhartha. "Do you like Maggi?" we ask. She nods. "How many times can you eat it in a day?" One hand clinging to her dress, the four-year-old bends over a low stool placed outside the Dhobi Ghat centre of the Foundation for Mother and Child Health (FMCH-India), and raises the other hand, all five fingers up.
It’s the answer you’d get from a noodleloving child anywhere in the world, except that until two years ago, that’s all Sammrudhi ate. That and biscuits dipped in milk.
Her mother Anushka Pawar, 27, says with a smile, "Aur kuch nahin khaati thi. Usko biscuit hi chaahiye the."
The homemaker lives with the two children and her husband, who she says works in "housekeeping", in the Ganesh Nagar area of Dhobi Ghat, Mahalaxmi.
50% Indian kids under 5 are malnourished
Once, a predominantly slum area, it now houses high-rises built by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority. The average income of a nuclear family here ranges from 20,000 to Rs 25,000. Which means the Pawars can afford to feed their kids better, if they’d agree to eat. "Anushka brought in Sammridhi when she was a year old," says Piyasree Mukherjee, COO of FMCH, adding, "and at that time the child was far below her weight and height category."
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