Is India hiding its starvation deaths?

Both the health ministry and the women and child development ministries refused to give affidavits to the Supreme Court on the number of children who die of starvation in India each year, reports the Times of India.

According to the Indian government, this baby napping on the street in Mumbai isn't poor. Considering starvation numbers, she's lucky to have that bottle. (SAJJAD HUSSAIN – AFP/Getty Images).

The reason? UNICEF says 50% of all the deaths of children aged below five years are from malnutrition, according to TOI, which works out to 2,438 starving children per day. But if the ministries step into the debate with their own figures, they'd be drawn into the court case — which calls for the government to distribute subsidized food to everybody in the country's 150 poorest districts rather than try to set arbitrary (and often ridiculously low) poverty thresholds. 

Yesterday, it was the Planning Commission on the mat, trying to defend its figures for the poverty line for rural and urban India. According to the economic planners, anybody in urban India who can spend 20 rupees a day (less than 50 US cents) cannot be considered poor enough to receive government benefits, while rural residents who can spend 15 rupees a day are not considered poor.  

Based on these consumption levels, the commission has declared that only 41.8% of the rural population is poor and a mere 25.7% of the urban Indians need food, shelter and social benefits from the government, the TOI said.

(Note: In Delhi, the Indian city worst hit by rising food prices, onions cost around 5 rupees a pound, while flour costs about 7.5 rupees a pound, and gas costs 200-odd a gallon. I spend 20 rupees every morning buying a coconut from the guy at the park where I go running.)