Mired by controversies and scandals, the NDA Government has now secured another rare achievement. Recent disclosures, first reported in the ‘Economist’ magazine, indicate that the government has taken great pains to suppress a survey on child health, conducted by the UNICEF, in collaboration with the Government of India. The Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) was commissioned by the UPA Government and covers the period between 2013 and 2014.
Normally the survey data should have been seen as an important tool for decision making, given that this was the first nationwide survey on child nutrition conducted in almost a decade. The last source of data on child nutrition has been the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 2005. What makes the suppression of the survey data particularly intriguing is that, overall, it conveys good news and projects a significant drop in child malnutrition rates in India over the past decade. Yet, the Economist magazine recently reported that the data was never made public though the final survey report was available in October 2014.
Please click here to read more.