The Rule of Iron

The Government’s food fortification scheme has not only tackled malnutrition effectively, but also produced athletes

PICTURE SPEAK

HEALTHIER: Students of Kalyani School (left); mill preparing fortified flour

Hansa Thakore, 17, an athlete and a 5,000-m champion of the Gujarat School Games in 2006, works as a maid with her mother to eke out a living. Madhavi Barot lives with her handicapped father, has already lost her mother and yet won two state-level gold medals in 3,000-m race. The father of Jashmika Soni, 16, state champion in 400-m race, is a rickshaw puller and lives in a one-room house with his five-member family. “Their transformation has purely to do with the new fortified diet that they have been getting”, says coach Yogesh Modi,

The state Government floated a scheme in 2005 of fortifying edible oil and flour with vitamins at production or packaging stage to tackle malnutrition. A total of 620 women in Ahmedabad’s Daskroi taluka were put on a fortified flour diet for three months last year after which their HB levels went up. Vanitaben Parmar’s is a representative case. Wife of a factory labourer, earning Rs 2,000 a month, her HB count has risen from 7 to almost 11. “I feel much more energetic”, she concedes as do many of her ilk.

A survey conducted by Sanguine Man-agement Consultants recently in several districts of Gujarat at the behest of the State Food and Civil Supplies Department (SFCSD), shows that nearly 80 per cent of the people, both rich and poor, are now consuming fortified edible oils and over 40 per cent are living on fortified flour. Says a jubilant S.K. Nanda, department secretary, who was instrumental in the implementation of the scheme, “there are some small hiccups, but soon we will be able to cover the entire population of Gujarat under the scheme. In edible oil, we are close to achieving it.”

After charting this scheme, SFCSD began working with edible oil manufacturers, packagers and refinery owners and convinced them to add Vitamin-A to the oil at the production stage. Vitamin packs are supplied by four companies and the whole process costs just five paise per kilo.

It was, however, not so easy in the case of iron and folic acid being mixed with flour. The cost for this, too, is five paise per kilo, but small chakki (grinding mill) owners are resisting it as they see it as an extra burden. Apart from this resistance, there is also a problem establishing a time-bound and elaborate supply chain of iron and folic acid packs to mill owners in the far-flung and remote corners of the state.

The scheme, however, is a boon for the below-poverty-line (BPL) families for whom malnutrition is a part of their existence. The Government is as a rule, selling only fortified oil and flour from its fair price shops, making BPL families the fastest beneficiaries of the scheme. If only the Gujarat model could be replicated in the rest of the country, a major front will be opened against the demon of malnutrition.

-By Uday Mahurkar

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