Should children be relegated to statistics?

Seems that 45% of children living in slums in Delhi are stunted and 43% are wasted. 39% of boys have received at least one dose of immunisation, but only 25% of girls have. Rates are worse than in the country as a whole, with 38.7% of children under 3 years of age being stunted and 15% wasted. India accounts for 20% of all the children in the world dying under the age of 5 years. Why, when we have innumerable schemes for the poor? The Food Security Act provides rice at Rs 3 per kg and wheat at Rs 2 per kg. The Public Distribution System also provides cheap sugar and kerosene for cooking. We understand that only cereals do not provide enough nutrition for growing children, who need proteins, vitamins and minerals in their diet, so stunting may result and a stunted child will be underweight. But why are they wasted, which implies a lack of calories? There is the Right to Education Act which forces fee-paying private schools to reserve 25% of seats for poor children. But private schools do not provide free food under the Midday Meal Scheme, so that could be a problem. Poverty is great for publishing papers and even for winning the Nobel Prize in Economics, as Amartya Sen did earlier and Angus Deaton did this year. Yet with all these highly erudite studies and 68 years of socialism, which is written in our constitution, half the children remain without food. Around 350 years ago Thomas Robert Malthus argued that unchecked population growth will outstrip resources of the earth resulting in catastrophic starvation. It has become fashionable to mock Malthus in India, which celebrates its 'demographic dividend', where increasing numbers of young people provide a pool of cheap labor for industries thus stimulating economic growth. There is gloating after China announced a relaxation of its one-child policy. In coming years the number of old people will outnumber the working young so there will be no one to take care of them. What no one is willing to recognise is that China would not be the second richest country in the world, with a $10 trillion GDP, without its one-child policy, which prevented 400 million births, freed women from childcare so that they could work, improved maternal health and reduced unemployment. In India 217 million women are missing from the workforce who could improve our GDP by an enormous 4.2% if they work. So we have 2.3 million applications for 368 posts of peons in UP, 25,000 with postgraduate degrees. A study in the poorest state of Bihar shows the rate of pilferage, called 'leakages', from the handouts given to the poor. Bihar is voting in assembly elections, which will be decided by handouts, as was the Delhi election. Children will continue to starve. Children do not vote.