India's growth story in recent years is being criticised for its inability to reduce the ever-increasing income inequality and higher incidence of malnutrition among its children, particularly those belonging to marginalised groups such as Scheduled Castes (SCs). This article examines the prevalence of identity-based discrimination in health and nutritional programmes and finds it to be one of the important reasons for the higher incidence of malnutrition among SC children. While examining the guidelines of two major nutritional support programmes -the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Mid Day Meal (MDM) Scheme -the article argues for making these more caste-and gender-sensitive in order to eliminate discrimination. It offers policy recommendations to address and monitor the discrimination in nutrition programmes. These include greater participation by marginalised groups like SCs in service planning and delivery, ensuring quality and promoting accountability; training and sensitisation of service providers; and the revision of administrative guidelines.
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The reduction in under nutrition is very slow in the past two decades in India even with high-economic growth rate and expansion in the ICDS programme. The ICDS evaluation studies majorly stressed on the general factors but they fail to acknowledge the structural factors -class and caste -while providing solutions. In Tamil Nadu nutritional status and utilization of ICDS services are better as compared to all-India average. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nutritional status of the poor and scheduled caste (SC) in Tamil Nadu and their utilization of ICDS services and to examine the role of group-specific factors in low reduction of nutritional status and utilization of ICDS programme. Design/methodology/approach -Multivariate analysis and logistic regression method were used using SPSS. Findings -The reduction of underweight is slow among the poorest and SC, moreover, the disparity between the richest and poorest as well as upper caste and SC is increasing. Logistic regression analysis shows that the poorest are marginalized, children belonging to poorer income group have higher chances of using the ICDS than the poorest and it is significant. After making the wealth quintile constant, the utilization of ICDS services across social groups showed that, though the poorest quintile has less access, within them the SC had utilized less compared to the other backward class (OBC). This indicates the poorest SCs are more vulnerable and marginalized across all quintiles and social groups. Research limitations/implications -In Tamil Nadu there is no sufficient sample of other caste/tribe and scheduled tribe. It would have given more insight on the utilization pattern. Lack of qualitative data has limited in explaining few phenomena to get more insight. Social implications -It will help the government to formulate more inclusive policy and address the issue of exclusion of marginalized people. Originality/value -The main core argument was based on the Tamil Nadu National Family Health Survey (NFHS) III unit-level data.
In Chennai alone, over 21,000 families have already been removed from their primary livelihood area and ghettoised in the peripheral areas of the city like Kannagi Nagar, Semmencherry and Perumbakkam, which are 25 to 30 kilometres from their original habitation. Another 31,912 families are in the process of being removed to these resettlement colonies. The R&R processes adopted by the government for the urban communities have unleashed gross human rights violations including right to adequate housing, food, water, education, health, work/livelihood and security of the person and home. There are no prescribed standards or policy in place for urban resettlement, yet government is constructing more houses in these sites. This article intends to document the human rights violation faced by the resettled communities in Kannagi Nagar, Chennai, and calls for an urgent attention to bring in necessary changes in the R&R policy for urban resettlement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.