India’s child malnutrition puzzle

Was reading an article by Neeraj Kaushal, Associate Professor of Social Work, Columbia University by the same title in ET. Was shocked to note the details. Here are excerpts:-

• 

  Image via Unicef

  India is home to about a third of the world’s underweight and stunted children under the age of 5. A child under 5 is almost twice as likely to be chronically underweight in India as in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Poverty is one obvious underlying cause. But it does not explain the wide difference in malnutrition between India and sub-Saharan Africa. Unicef data show that about 47% of Indian children under 5 are underweight; the corresponding figure for sub-Saharan Africa is 24%.

• The incidence of child malnutrition in India remains high even in non-poor families. According to data from the National Family Health Survey for 2005-06, a quarter of all children below the age of 3 in the wealthiest 20% of families are stunted and 20% chronically underweight.

India Facing Cash Crunch on High Tax Refunds

Image via Wikipedia

Don’t panic. It is temporary cash crunch that the government of India is facing on account of tax refunds of nearly Rs 45,000 crore during April and May. But this cash crunch is prompting it to resort to short-term borrowing.

People might be thinking that this is an annual affair but why is it happening now? While tax refund is an annual affair, the use of electronic return filing and processing has resulted in faster refund of excess income. Corporation tax payment has resulted in the process getting expedited and a lot of bunched payments taking place in the first two months. In April alone, the tax refunds are estimated at Rs 30,000 crore to Rs 32,000 crore and another Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 15,000 crore would be added next month.

During the days of paper returns, a taxpayer’s details had to be punched manually. This was then tallied and refunds, if any, were processed. The whole process used to take time and the tax refund was spread across several months giving the government time to access its credit situation and work accordingly.

Now, with electronic filing the entire information is available at a click of a button. IT revolutionized I-T. The refund which used to be sent through cheques or transferred to the accounts now takes lesser time as instructing banks for electronic refunds is much faster way then it was before.