...to about three years ago. i was working with a mumbai based tabloid. my friend and colleague had to go on an assignment to interview two authors ofa the latest book that had been released on Mumbai titled," Mumbai Meri Jaan". she hadn't read the whole book then...asked for help on some possible questions that could be put forth. i read the introduction..obivously it was yet another romanticised description of the city. but it had a line which said in effect that Mumbai is a city where although there is a section of people who lead lives like animals which would put any zoo keeper to shame, no one dies of starvation.
i had a problem with the line and asked my colleague to question the authors about it(that no one dies of starvation). she did. the response was defensive and was something to the effect that they hadn't come across a single instance of it.
i even had a comment posted on my blog then from the author saying that no newspaper had reported on it (starvation), hence it did not exist. i was quite amused by the comment because the author was a journalist himself (and a pretty senior one at that)...and he would (i thought)know as all journalists do that newspapers often enough do not report an event until it is worthy enough of making headlines.
let's fastforward to the recent spate of reporting on malnutrition among kids in the urban slums of mumbai. so it's there now...for everyone to see that there is a higher level of malnutrition among kids in Mumbai slums than the tribal kids in Melghat...the domain of malnutrition in rural maharashtra.
now, there is another point that one needs to note here...that most of these kids were probably admitted due to high fever. there are several such cases that are admitted in government hospitals which cite TB or Fever as the detected illness. but the cause of it is itself malnutrition. in the recent city reports of course doctors have pointed out that malnutrition is the cause behind the fever. but several times as has happened before, death reports will only cite the disease that caused death mentioned and will mask the real cause that broke down the human immume system- Starvation.
