I was in the field work along with my friends. We gave food packs to the destitute on street. Around 2.00 pm in the afternoon, I saw this old man who is looking out for food in the waste bin on street. On the edge of the waste bin you can see one tomato, one dall soup pack and little cabbage pack. I gave my attention to this sight and went near him. I started talking to him; he is from kallakurichi, 70 year old man who is sick, came to hospital for treatment. The money that he had got stolen on street at night. Like him we see so many destitute on streets! Many people suffer even for one meal a day as especially in the villages. That’s why many old people come to the city to survive. After my work, I was looking out for facts about hunger in India in the website. These are the facts that I got, which surprised me.

  1. Hunger remains the No.1 cause of death in the world. Aids, Cancer etc. follow.
  2. There are 820 million chronically hungry people in the world.
  3. 1/3rd of the world’s hungry live in India.
  4. 836 million Indians survive on less than Rs. 20 (less than half-a-dollar) a day.
  5. Over 20 crore Indians will sleep hungry tonight.
  6. 10 million people die every year of chronic hunger and hunger-related diseases. Only eight percent are the victims of hunger caused by high-profile earthquakes, floods, droughts and wars.
  7. 99% of the 1000 Adivasi households from 40 villages in the two states, who comprised the total sample, experienced chronic hunger (unable to get two square meals, or at least one square meal and one poor/partial meal, on even one day in the week prior to the survey). Almost as many (24.1 per cent) had lived in conditions of semi-starvation during the previous month.
  8. Over 7000 Indians die of hunger every day.
  9. Over 25 lakh Indians die of hunger every year.
  10. 30% of newborn are of low birth weight, 56% of married women are anaemic and 79% of children age 6-35 months are anaemic.
  11. The number of hungry people in India is always more than the number of people below official poverty line (while around 37% of rural households were below the poverty line in 1993-94, 80% of households suffered under nutrition).

Source: http://www.bhookh.com/hunger_facts.php