Intelligent parenting for SUGAR-FREE LIVING

In middle class India, sugar accounts for approximately 13 percent of the daily calorie intake of children aged 4-10, and 15 percent for children aged 11-18. This far exceeds the World Health Organisation's recommended cap of 5 percent

- KIRAN BALIMANE & CYNTHIA JOHN

Prime minister Narendra Modi and the BJP/ NDA government at the Centre have set ambitious goals of a Viksit (developed, middle class) Bharat and a $30 trillion economy (cf. $4 trillion currently) for 2047 when India will celebrate its first centenary of freedom from almost two centuries of debilitating British rule over the subcontinent. However, the reality that high-quality education and good health of the world’s largest child and youth population (estimated at 600 million) is an essential precondition of achieving these goals is not being given sufficient attention.

Several authoritative studies of the Unicef, UNDP and WHO report that 19 percent of the country’s 130 million children under age five are severely malnourished with 35.5 percent of them in danger of stunting and brain damage because of poor nutrition. Simultaneously, learning outcomes in the country’s 1.1 million government schools are rock-bottom. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 published by the highly respected Pratham Education Foundation, over 50 percent of class V children can’t read class II texts and 70 percent can’t do simple subtraction and division sums.