KOLKATA: As if the death of 19 tribal children in Odisha due to malnutrition was not bad enough, a minister in Naveen Patnaik’s government has now blamed the disaster on the large size of tribal families.
“Each tribal family has 8-9 children. There’s no family planning and therefore the malnutrition deaths,” Minister of Women and Child Welfare Usha Devi said.
“They also won’t come down from their village in the hill,” she added.
24 hours after the insensitive comment, which was slammed by the opposition, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik did not condemn the minister. This afternoon while leaving the state secretariat, Mr Patnaik said, “A task force has been set up to investigate the issue and take necessary steps.”
However, he did not answer questions on Usha Devi’s comment.
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