NEW DELHI, India - Five-year-old Payal has patchy brown hair and her hands and legs as slender as twigs. She is also pot-bellied — the typical symptom of malnutrition. For her, it makes no difference that on Wednesday is Children’s Day.
Although she is five, she looks like a two-year-old, and clings to her mother. There are days when Payal, who lives on Delhi’s bustling streets with three siblings, goes without food.
“We all live here. This is our home,” said the girl, pointing towards
the pavement where she stays with her brother, sisters and parents.
- "Whatever we get (by way of alms or whatever her parents are able to sell), we use it to buy food. We distribute what we get. But some days, there is nothing," says Payal, as she dashes towards a car at the traffic junction to beg.
- On Children's Day, millions of children like her have little to celebrate. Their life is marked by struggle, and they cannot be assured of three meals a day.
- Many of them suffer from malnutrition, and education is not even a concern.
- Construction worker Roopa would like a better life for her children.
- "Milk, vegetables and grains: the prices of all these are soaring. I take my 12-year-old son with me for work and the other two are at home. We need to survive," she told IANS, sitting in her one-room shack in Kali Basti.
- "I would like my children to have their meals three times a day, but there are days when that is not possible," she told IANS.
According to UNICEF, prevalence of stunting in India is higher than
in sub-Saharan Africa. While 48 percent of Indian children under five
years of age are stunted, the figure for sub-Saharan Africa is 42
percent.
Source: India Today...More...
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