India, a country of flowing rivers, green fields and abundance of natural gifts. In Guinea and Mali children usually remain without food for more than 24 hours, says a study that took data from the Union health ministry’s National Family Health Survey for 2019-2021. Even in countries like Congo, zero-food kids account for only 7.4 percent of the population. The figure for Pakistan is 9.2 percent. Nigeria has 8.8 percent. Bangladesh with 5.6 percent is way better than India. It is hard to swallow this with the claims of having progressed to the fifth largest economy in the world.

It is a cruel paradox that children in India have nothing to consume for one full day, and night. Availability of food has dangerously dipped. Uncertainty hangs over the next day's meals, the dread thinking of the next 24 hours’ agony. What is India's fifth largest economy, and third largest purchasing power parity (PPP) for? On a per capita income basis, India has been ranked at 139th. Contrast this with the report’s finding – out of an estimated 8 million Zero Food children, India accounts for over 6.7 million. The study was conducted using health surveys across 92 low-income and middle-income countries at various times between 2016 and 2021.

The food deprivation is linked also with the mothers who have to work as labour and have no time to take out to feed the infants and thus more often than not, children suffer from not only lack of nutrition but from total absence of it. The result is a growing number of Zero-Food kids. Zero-food children are usually babies aged between six months and 3 months who face the absence of any milk or solid or semisolid food for over 24-hours. Mostly such babies are fed by mothers, and thus they receive some calories at least on days when no food is offered to them. But as the months are spent, children grow and the need for nutrition also grows. They need vitamins, protein, minerals and energy that is not available in the quantity they want. The issue has to be dealt with multi-layered initiative and that has to be provided without delay. The underlying factors have to be studied and resolved and for that the system’s help is also needed. Children are the future of human society and their well being is imperative for further evolution. According to available studies, infants and toddlers are deprived of complementary feeding because their mothers’ circumstances prevent them from providing their children proper and complete care. To feed a six-month-old, a woman has to get time. Mostly the zero-food children are deprived of the support they require for adequate complementary feeding.

Being a zero-food kid itself proves the poor economic status of the parents where mothers face balancing of herself in various activities — slogging for livelihood, looking after the household that includes other senior or invalid members, and taking care of the kids which usually comes last in the list. The situation is the same in both rural and urban regions. These women mostly live in slums in extreme conditions, without drinking water, proper sunlight and unpolluted air and without any clean environment. This leaves them with insufficient time to dedicate to complementary feeding for their children or to provide them with healthy food that are their imperative needs as they grow.

The study also showed that almost two among ten infants or toddlers in India face the risk of not receiving any food whatsoever for a full day. This phenomenon has worsened since 2016. There has been an increase in deprivation not only in measure but food itself. The percentage of “zero-food” children has gone up from 17.2 percent in 2016 to 17.8 percent in 2021.

The conditions are unforeseen and shocking. The days kids go without food remain unknown since there is no way to know that but the seriousness of the situation itself provides some idea of its being constant. Hunger is the constant factor in the life of kids, and there is no hope of their recovery from it. There are only signs that the issue is gaining severity with every passing day.

There were over 600,000 households covered with queries about what food children aged six to 23 months had consumed over the previous 24 hours. In both the studies, conducted in 2016 and 2021 respectively, there were attempts to know if the child had anything to eat in the last twenty four hours, either liquid or solid. More often than not, the replies were negative. As the report sums up, there was a headcount estimated of at least 5.7 million zero-food children in the six-23 months age group in India in 2021. Uttar Pradesh had the highest prevalence (27.4 percent) of zero-food children, followed by Chhattisgarh (24.6 percent), Jharkhand (21 percent), Rajasthan (19.8 percent), and Assam (19.4 percent). (IPA Service)